Dorothea Spears 

             I Am Man

 

I am man.

However high or low I am,

Whatever my status or degree,

I am man.

Upright I stand.

Truly, I displace

No greater space upon the earth

Than rock or ape or tree.

But see! Only I

Can hold the universe in my hand,

And time, and eternity.

 

Airlie Close

Constantia, C.P.

          I Am Victorious

I am Victorious! This purging flame

That threatened to consume my peace of mind,

Has merged into a star, by which I find

The Christ of Bethlehem, for aye the same.

This raging flame that burned with such a fire

Within my heart, and filled me with unrest,

It has become a light within my breast

To purify and purge and lift me higher.

I would not have the contest less severe;

I would not lose one throb of sad-sweet pain,

If I could live this pulsing time again-

For every throb has made my peace more dear.

And bound my soul more firmly into Thine

By this pure earthly love, oh Friend divine!

 

Dorothea Graham Botha

The Epworth Press

1925

       I am, you are He is . . .

     We were we are we shall be

I am a thought in the mind of God

And He is a thought in The mind of me

Perpetually enmeshed together

Mortal to immortality . . .

Immortal to mortality,

How brief, how permanent, is the thought

Caught in this prescient moment of time

Wrought in the indestructible mould.

Designed of inseparable mind,

Creation's prose, infinity's rhyme!

Time enveloped in eternity,

Space confined in the unconfined,

Conjugated, could we but see

In the limitless endless verb to be

     

Dorothea Spears

                  I am

          (For Easter weeks)

I am the manger where the Christ was born.

I am the river where the dove descends.

I am the mountain top where clouds are torn

Transfigured where the earth with heaven blends.

I am the wilderness, the place of fasting,

The mountain, place of prayer, and I am the tree.

From everlasting unto everlasting

God is crucified again in me.

I am the Garden, and the thorns adorning.

I am the tomb wherein the Christ is laid:

To me the glory of the Easter morning.

To me at last, ascension, unafraid.

 

I am the path that many feet have trod;

I am humanity, the son of God.

 

Veritas

Constantia, C.P.

I Called To You—In Vain

By Dorothea Graham Botha.

I needed once a friend’s strong hand
So I called to you again.

Because I knew you could understand
I called to you—in vain.

I fought my fight through the lonely hours
Till my strength was well-nigh done-.

I battled lone with the Unseen Powers,

And, with God’s help, I won.

But still remains to Eternity

Like a never-easing pain

That old, indelible memory,

I called to you in vain.

By Dorothea Graham Botha.

I Mowbray, Cape Province.

       If my Life’s sun should set to-day

 To never rise again;

 If all my skies were turned to grey

 And clouded o’er with pain:

Though you should steal all joy from me

One thing is still mine own—

You cannot take the memory

 Of Beauty I have known.

Then sun or shade, no matter which .

Shall claim To-morrow’s way,

I am imperishably rich

While I have Yesterday.

           THE DROUGHTSTRICKEN FARMER.

                                A Portrait from South Africa.

He has known laughter once, this
man, with the face gray and grim.

He was young in the days gone by,

but- now his eyes are dim ^

With searching the skies for rain : 

the drouth has parched the soul of  him.

His lands  lie open-mouthed, agape for

 the rains that never come

Like lathes in the wind his cattle
 stand,   dim-wondering and dumb,

Ghostlike he stalks his. ruined lands.

. . . Apathetic. ... Numb.

 He has had his season! cynical laughter.

He had his period of cursing after;

He clung with liis teeth to the hopes of the past :

He fought the Fates with laughter and curse
And flung in their faces his empty purse—

But they broke his spirit at last.

He stalks his lands : the last lear.
sheep bleat pitifully; and cry.

Time was when the sight had pierced
his heart, but now he passes by

With never a word for the helpless beasts : 

he is used to watching them die.

What is  he thinking behind that mask, 

this man who is young in years

And old in suffering, tight-lipped, hard; 

untroubled by hopes or fears ?

That granite face—will it smile again ?

Or those eyes be moved to tears?

        I Do Not Like New Houses

I do not like new houses, although the eaves be wide.

My house is old, and full of dreams: it has been sanctified

By love and tears and laughter a hundred years.

Inside little children have been born and old men have died.

New houses are empty – there are no dreams to fill

The rooms with silent whisperings – new houses are so still:

They have no sudden rustlings to take you unawares;

There are no friendly ghosts to brush against you on the stairs.

 

My house is richly peopled with human hopes and fears

And dreams of generations gone that linger through the years,

But should I not like a new house, although the eaves were wide.

 

            I found a pot of gold…

I found a pot of gold…

At first I thought it was only

A late bouquet of yellow roses

Sent to brighten the day

With shining thoughts from a friend.

But as the day grew old

Those blossoms stretched their wings –

I saw buds unfold

And there was the pot of gold.

Unknowing I had found the rainbows end.

                  I Heard A Flute

I heard a flute –

Like the cry of a lost love

it pierced the stricken soul of Night.

Her sigh ruffled the placid pond

and marred the image of the moon.

The lotus lilies stirred uneasily

and cherry blossoms drifted down,

like innocent thoughts, to earth,

and lay in the dust, broken.

I heard a flute –

My heart wept, silently,

for the sadness of longing unfulfilled,

for the loneliness of the world.

 

(Tokyo)

              I Miss You So

I miss you so

At every corner of the day

I turn, and half expect to see

You, waiting in the same old way,

With outstretched hand, to welcome me-

You know.

I want you so!

There’s something missing in all mirth:

I stand apart. Unbidden tears

Cause clouds of mist across the earth,

And cast a shadow down the years

To go.

I need you so!

Great dreamer of dreams, who made

My little life to Heaven aspire:

Alone I slip; I am afraid:

I cannot win to my desire,

Nor grow.

Come back to me, oh sturdy-hearted friend,

That by your side I triumph in the end.

 

Dorothea Graham Botha

The Epworth Press

1925

             I Saw Them Dancing

I Saw Them Dancing

a-down the quiet alleys,

along the busy street,

I saw them dancing, dancing

On nimble nut-brown feet.

They whirled and dipped and curtsied

To some mysterious rune

And oh! Such lilt and laughter

Were in the unheard tune

My heart went dancing after

Beside the urgent breeze

That gathered them in bevies

And danced them from the trees!

In suits of green and yellow,

In frocks of gold and brown,

The gallant leaves of Autumn

Went dancing through the town.

 

 

I saw the brown lads dancing

Before they sailed away,

The blue lads, and the khaki

And they were blithe and gay.

The winds of war had torn them

Ultimately from their trees

And over strange lands borne them.

And over sullen seas.

Oh, when their days are numbered

And all their measures trod

May they go dancing, dancing

Into the arms of God!

 

Cape Times

          I Went into The Woods Today

I went into the Woods today.

It was so long since I had walked this way…

So long, and tangled up with care,

I had forgotten life could be so fair.

 

So still it was. A poplar tree

Bent down a silver branch and spoke to me.

And ancient oaks above my head

Were murmuring “Peace” and “Peace" the forest said.

 

I went into the Woods today.

It was too long that I had been away…

Too long, for tangled up with care,

I had forgotten life could be so fair!

                        Idolaters

Within what idol do we worship God?

Upon what alter do we sacrifice;

What temple raise upon what earthly clod,

To reach what mortal circumscribing skies?

All idols are not made of stone or wood,

Or graven gold or silver: some are wrought

Of stuff intangible that men call “good”

The living images of graven thought

Images of Classes, Creeds, or Nations

To which men bow are fashioned out of mind

And fanes are raised on nebulous foundations

To house the idols built by humankind.

 

Ideals men worship with mortal brain

Are often idols on the mental plane.

                             IDOLATRY

I know you're not as fair as I should paint you;

I know you’re not as good as I would think.
For I am very sure you’re not a saint, you

As I should sketch you in with pen and ink.
To me you are the height of every virtue.

The light of heaven shines out when you smile
And since my thinking so will never hurt you.

I’ll limn you this within my mind awhile.

For it is good to think a fellow creature

Can come so near as this to the divine;

Can be a practicer as well as preacher—

It helps a fellow’s faith so, friend of mine.

But may God never send that fatal day

When I shall see my idol’s feet of clay.

 

 

Veritas

Constantia, C.P.

                  If God be myth

If God be myth, man has no meaning.

If there be nothing finer than flesh

Or higher than the heart

Or mightier than mortal mind,

Haphazard; undesigned:

No end, no goal,

No planned perfection:

No synthesis behind and in and through

The whole - what is the point

Of being, without purpose,

Without hope,

Without soul?

 

Dorothea Spears

    If He Can Be Humble Enough To Learn

Life itself is miracle enough.

We struggle, how we struggle, to transmute

Created elements to living stuff!

And yet… in each divisible, minute

Unvalued sperm produced at random lives

The image of its maker, beast or man,

Which, mated and developed, grows and gives

The story of his evolution’s span.

Beside this miracle, how vain are we

With all our proud and various inventions,

Who haven’t learned A.B.C

Creation spells, despite our vast pretensions.

 

Perhaps within another million years

Evolving man might learn to govern spheres.

        If I had but the eyes and ears

If I had but the eyes and ears

To read within what now appears,

Then should I see in every face

An innocent interior grace,

And, as the clouds of thought unfurled,

Be native of the golden world.

 

For not by thought shall I acquire

Re-entry to my heart’s desire

Nor, as a ticket tourist, come

Out of exile to my own home.

All things that are of earth and hell

Men win or lose and buy and sell;

But heaven’s deep-enclosed delight

Is an hereditary right

Which this man’s lust nor that man’s hate

Nor my cold sin can alienate;

But lives alone, when all else dies,

Within my blood, within my eyes.

So true is it, that my disgrace

Is absence from my native place.

               If It Is Too Painful

I can do nothing, nothing but remember

Their shining silky coats and liquid eyes;

The eagerness to please, the childlike trust

With which they nudge their trainer for reward

When they had done their pretty tricks…

Three young seals… I saw them in a circus

Years ago, … Why should they haunt me so?

I do not want to think of them. Not now.

 

“Veritas”

Constantia, C.P.

 

 

             IF LOVE BE DEAD.

Softly, softly, toll the bell

If Love be dead

He wants no rolling requiem

Above his head.

He was so full of joy and strength

And all delight

He wants no crashing, clanging hells

To mark his flight.

And we, who stood and watched him die,

And could not save -

We could not bear to hear loud bells

Above his grave.

They can but wake our hearts to pain

Oh, softly tread...

And softly, softly toll the bell

If Love be dead.

If my life s sun should set to-day

 

If my life s sun should set to-day

To never rise again;

If all my skies were turned to grey

And clouded over with pain:

Though you should steal all joy from me

One thing is still mine own

You cannot take the memory

Of Beauty I have known.

Then sun or shade, no matter which

Shall claim tomorrow s way,

I am imperishably rich

If my life s sun should set to-day

 

If my life s sun should set to-day

To never rise again;

If all my skies were turned to grey

And clouded over with pain:

Though you should steal all joy from me

One thing is still mine own

You cannot take the memory

Of Beauty I have known.

Then sun or shade, no matter which

Shall claim tomorrow s way,

I am imperishably rich

     If my life s sun should set to-day

 If my life s sun should set to-day

To never rise again;

If all my skies were turned to grey

And clouded over with pain:

Though you should steal all joy from me

One thing is still mine own

You cannot take the memory

Of Beauty I have known.

Then sun or shade, no matter which

Shall claim tomorrow s way,

I am imperishably rich

While I have Yesterday

If Those Who Teach us To Fly Have Forgotten 

How Shall we Learn?

 Living in the valley as we do,

Between the concrete precipices high

And densely populated, thick with thought

Caught in the atmosphere or on the page

And inescapable, how shall we reach the sky,

Conditioned by the science of this age?

We breathe continually the impure air

Already used, confused, by lung and mind

And mechanism and polluted by

The subtle scientific fall-out that bids fair

To filter into every plane and find

Some vulnerable target for despair.

Earning our daily bread so close to the earth

And the soil of the earth, how long can our desire

Find time and space to exercise the wings

Potential in a human being’s birth

With which to soar and seek a higher vision,

Transcend the prison house of proven things?

And if the two forerunners into space

Who hitherto have led our human race

Across the face of time to find a goal –

If Art and Literature become content

To mirror the confusion of our days,

How shall we learn to fly, or see life whole?

 

 Airlie Close

Constantia C.P.

               If Winter Told You

If winter should say 'Spring is in my heart'

Who would believe Winter?" Would you believe,

Not having seen the willow catkins start

Or  snowdrops  whispering  of  earth's reprieve?

And not alone in memory they live,

Each season in each season. not alone,

But interlocked as each must take and give

And nurse in turn the life it makes its own.

The seasons of man's lives are subtle, too,

But indivisible, from eager Spring

To waiting Winter, in the old the new.

The rhythmic pattern in the endless ring.

 

Will you believe when Winter claims his part

In you he carries Spring within his heart?

 

Dorothea. Spears

             ILLIMITABLE MOMENT

To glimpse for but a moment the pattern of time
Apart from time, the pattern of evolution
Apart from evolution, behind the mime
Of manifestation, pure of its pollution,

To sense the circling galaxies in vast
Inexplicable pattern of creation
Unlimited by Present, Future, Past
(Those henchmen of old Time’s hallucination)
For but a breath, transcending earth and air
Attempt the transit Sun and Son have trod
And in extended consciousness to share
The indivisibility of God—

Is this not immortality, to see
And know that we are in eternity?

             Important Question

Man dare not fear the power that lies concealed

Within an atom, pregnant with unknown

Potentialities; not yet postpone,

Since God had chosen that it be revealed,

The taming of this power which must wield

For good or ill. This choice is man’s alone –

Construction or destruction. By his own

Decision he shall be destroyed or healed.

 

Is a man sufficiently mature to trust

With such vast reservoirs of power as wait

In dormant servitude for this release?

Can he be trusted with such a force as must

Determine finally our human fate,

Who juggles in weak hands with War and Peace?

 

 “Oaklands”

Newlands Ave, Newlands C.P

              In a Mirror Darkly

Sometimes, walking down life's busy street

Intent on my own business and my pace,

Suddenly, in some unexpected place,

A stranger mirror meets me and I greet

An unfamiliar self, and for a fleet

And startled moment I come face to face.

With me as another sees me, therein trace

An unsuspected image, strange conceit

Sometimes I think the image flatters me;

Sometimes  it caricatures,  sometimes distorts,

And I am shaken by the view I find

Although I know that man can only see

The world self-coloured by his own reports

Reflected in the minor of his mind.

 

Dorothea Spears

 

                In Camera

Is it too obvious to suggest –

Concerning this debate

That floods “The Outspan” week by week

In scintillating spate

Of simulated hate –

That Martin Hind should have it out

With Avis Tait-a-tete?

Would Martin, think you, get the bird –

(That’s clever, you will find!)

Or Avis, soaring to new heights

Leave Martin K behind?

 

Newlands C.P.

 

           In Constantia, now

How full of sun and indolent with days,

Holding their tattered, multi-coloured cloaks

With loosening fingers, where the lace frays.

The russet vineyards, their fulfillment done,

Are idle now against the autumned hill,

Content with summer, sleeping in the sun.

The shouting winds have wearied, and are still.

The poplar trees and blossom frees are bare

Nor care the bold poinsettias flare with red:

But hawthorns still are vividly aware,

And here and there, a late rose lifts her head.

Why chafe that change is scrawled across the sky?

Today the valley is at peace . . . and I.

     

Dorothea Spears

 

 

                                                                

 

 

 

            In Defence Of Table Mountain

In all the world on Table Mountain broods

Above the mother city of a land,

Magnificent, through mortal interludes,

Cradling a nation’s culture in her hand.

Uncognisant of microcosmic fueds,

Unmoved, when cities crumble she shall stand

With infinite healing in her solitudes

And strength renewed for all who understand.

One man, far-sighted past his time, has spanned

Her lower reaches with aspiring woods:

And one who dreamed in continents, here planned

And drank his inspiration from her moods.

 

But we would trade God’s sculping for a cottage

And sell our birthright for a mess of pottage.

                In Different Worlds

You say we live in different Worlds. How true…

My world’s still peopled by the Little Folk

Green fingers in the garden can evoke

And somewhere joy is always breaking through.

My grassy hills are green, and heaven’s blue

Is still the colour of Madonna’s cloak:

Compassion’s in the willow; strength in the oak…

And God is always love – but not for you.

 

I find the melon sweet: you bite the rind.

My world’s designed to harbour divas and elves.

The people in my world are mostly kind.

For good and ill are one: your Fate is blind.

Your world is peopled with men who love themselves.

The heart could bridge our worlds, but can the mind?

 

Veritas

Constantia, C.P

            In England – Now

What is it like in England now?

At Whitsuntide?

Are golden cups still held to catch the dew

In countless meadows? Are the pied

Daisies venturesome this year, or has the plough

Despoiled their realm, supplanting new

Utilitarian crops that march in rows

Like England’s sons?

Have nightingales succumbed to distant-roaring guns?

Do thrushes prattle where the hedgerow runs

Beside the lane, and does the close

Still dream its ancient peace?

Oh! Is it still the England my heart knows?

Most surely there are birch woods still, in vales of Derbyshire,

Where shy wood violets make the morning sweet,

And streams where waxed marsh- marigolds

Tip-toe on muddy feet?

And surely sometimes still the eager ear

May, catch, between the planes, cascades of sound

Poured molten from the lark’s throat as he quits the ground!

 

(1942)

In Excelsis

 The Love Lay of a South African.

 I love you, dear, I love you.

What fair words can I find

To measure my devotion

To your enquiring mind?

 

What metaphor is worthy

This task, what simile?

I have it, Dear, I love you

More than my morning tea! *

 

*In the backveld substitute coffee.

                   In Love with Sleep

I am in love with Sleep, the secret, deep.

Mysterious dweller of the silent night.

I have a late and longed for tryst to keep

With my beloved, and a singing flight.

Where do we fly together, Sleep and I?

That is a secret hidden from the day,

Forgotten often in the light, but high

And low and near and very far away.

Sometimes I watch in vain the whole night

For my beloved, but the hours are fleet

- So many things there are for thought to do -

The while I wait the coming of his feet.

And some time Sleep's tall brother, Death, will wait

For me, and we'll go through the one-way gate.

                

Dorothea Spears

                 2.8.1962

               In Memoriam

This is the way I’d like to be remembered

When I have given up this house of clay –

If, when you loiter in some lovely garden

You should say, “She would have loved this garden.”

Or when the rhododendrons come in May

Or beauty startles you in flowers or trees

You should murmer, “She would have loved these.”

                     In One Rose

All the roses of the world in one rose,

All the roses of the world and of time -

The beauty and the fragrance,

The leaf, the bud, the bloom,

The rhythm. of creation, the poetry, the prose,

The permanence. the transcience.

Life and death, and room

For birth and growth.

For brief perfection swift decay,

For season and for reason and for rhyme -

All the roses of the world in one rose,

All the roses of the world and of time.

 

Dorothea Spears.

                    In Perspective

“A thousand years,” I heard a poet say,

Within the Mind of God is but a day.”

I do not find it strange that this should be

For treading softly in eternity,

With even my incarnate mind I see

A life in time as but the hours that span

From dawn to dusk; a day in the life of man.

From day to day, from life to life we go

And pay tomorrow what today we owe

And reap today what yesterday did sow.

It is not strange. It is not really strange

It should be so; that every day we change

The freshly garment that enwraps the soul;

That every life we learn a different role.

A hundred days, a hundred lives gone by –

Just vaguely we remember, you and I:

Just vaguely sense in some familiar face

A friend that has transcended time and space.

And as the days that men call lives flash by

In ever fast cycles: as the “I”

Grows wiser life and day hold less allure

The end to which we move becomes more sure.

The toys that children set their hears upon –

Desire, and fame, and riches – soon are gone.

They have no hands to clutch the questing soul

That once has caught a vision of its goal.

Who lives within eternity can gauge

With confidence the law that will assuage

Frustration and injustice, that clears

The real behind the veil of what appears;

The underlying order that prevails

Throughout the Universe and never fails.

Tomorrow, truly, is another day

And man returns to serve, to learn to play:

Less eager for the dawn that men call birth

That wakes him to another day on earth,

Another garb, another part to learn;

More eager for the dusk that spells return

And peace within the Father’s home at night,

For there “at eventide it shall be light.”

Less both to liberate the prisoned breath

Within the freedom that that mankind calls death.

 

Yet would I not untimely close each day

Of life on earth, there being debts to pay,

And tasks to finish. Let my work be done,

In order, I greet the setting of the sun.

 

There is a journey that must be complete –

The journey back to God. And if my feet

Go laggardly, if I am slow to learn,

Again… again… to earth I must return.

                      …………………..

“A thousand years,” I heard the poet say,

“Within the Mind of God is but a day.”

 

August 1952

              IN PRAISE OF BEAUTY

Although I know the frost is fined that bites
The beauty that’s embodied in the rose :
Although I know how swiftly beauty goes,
How fickle the enchantress that invites
The mirrored magic of these moonlit nights .
Although the heart forgets, the mind knows
How swiftly unrelenting time flows
And bears away ephemeral delights.

Because the beauty vanishes, shall I
(Because the freezing days are close at hand.
And all our castles built upon the sand)
Lament its death before it has to die?

No, I shall gaze and praise, who understand
How briefly beauty stays... and passes by.

IN ROWLAND STREET

In Roeland Street, where the road runs down
From the suburbs into the heart of Town,

A garden flares like a tropic day -
A flash of flame against walls of grey.

As red as the crimson bands of shame
The silent, dull-eyed gardeners wear:
Aye, red as the blood of broken hearts
That wait for them in dumb despair.

And we ride down in cushioned ease.

Upholstered in pride and smug conceit.

For what to us are broken lives
Behind grey walls in Roeland-street?

But One goes through when the gates are barred
And knocks at the bolted hearts within.

He looks with plying eyes on those
Who pay the price of discovered sin.

But His gaze is steel as he turns to us
Who hurry by on the other side.

And the wounds in His hands break out afresh
In lifting the brothers we have denied

My soul is seared by his flaming look!

And crumbled to ashen shame my pride.

In Roeland Street, where the road runs down
From the suburbs into the heart of Town
A garden flames against walls of grey.

And it burns my soul when I pass that way!

In the Avenue

I, the Grey Squirrel

Walking up the avenue

Yesterday, about half-past two,

At the top of Adderley Street,

Whom do you think I chanced to meet?

A friendly squirrel in a trim grey suit!

He paused for a moment, irresolute,

Then cocked his head in the sauciest way

And looked at me as if to say

“Well, what about a nut or two

As toll for using my avenue?”

I hadn’t a nut, but I laughed and said

“You are a pet!” He bobbed his head

As if to say he quite agreed –

But even pets still like a feed.

So we stood and talked, one chap to another,

As if he had been my long lost brother.

The we said goodbye. And now I stop

To think I’m sure he was “Ginger Pop!”

In the Malay Cemetery

As I came up the road the other day

A blaze of vivid colour caught my eye,

A flame of orange gold that lit the way

To sudden glory for the passer-by.

“Someone loves the still limbs buried here”,

I thought, “to make their resting place so gay. 

Someone must have held them very dear

To heap so rich a tribute on the clay.”

As I drew nearer it was plain to see

The mounds had not been decked by human hand

The vygies had transformed them utterly!

My heart leapt up to see and understand.

 

'Twas love, indeed, that did such tribute bring

Immortal Love, who manifests as Spring.

 

Dorothea Spears

 

IN THE WOODLANDS

God is abroad in the woodlands :

I would be still, and hear

The sound of His voice in the pine trees-

Hush ! He is very near.

God is abroad in the Woodlands :

I would be still, and see

His shadow upon the river

Down by the blue-gum tree.

God is abroad in the Woodlands :

I would be still, and feel

The touch of His hand in the twilight

To comfort, and soothe, and heal.

I would be still in the silence;

Still in body and soul:

For God is abroad in the Woodlands,

Loving the hurt things whole.

In transit

Fragile . . . Breakable . . .

Handle with care . . .

With what solicitude

We prepare

Our proud possessions

For here and there:

China, pottery,

Precious glass,

Antique furniture -

Things that pass;

And yet how often

Are unaware

That human hearts

Should also bear

The label . . .  Breakable . . .

Handle with care.

     

Dorothea Spears

IN TRANSITU

Man enters humbly, through the door of birth,

Whatever may have been his past estate,

 This treasure house, this castle of the earth;

 And chooses here his treasure, small or great.

For three-score years and ten, or more or less,

He wanders through life’s spacious rooms, collects

What fancy dictates that he shall possess,

Acquiring ever: seldom he reflects

If what he chooses can be taken hence.

Possessions of the flesh and of the mind

He hordes, and therein lies his recompense,

Enjoys a little space, and leaves behind.

 

And after three-score years, or less, or more,

Goes forth, a beggar, at life’s other door.

In Umbria

Something I have found here, something distilled

From the crowd filled, cloud thrilled Umbrian hills

so thickly populated with the past

that I am jostled everywhere

by all the years that were and the years that are,

And the near, and the very very far:

Jostling me at every turn of the way,

At every turn of every day

And crying “We lived, too… even as you!

We are so old… and he who shares our Earth

Must bear our strength and beauty, bane and dearth

Whose birth is lost in the mist of years

And laughter and tears and time

We have been cruel… and sublime.

Etruscan, Umbrian, Roman… who knows

Our heritage, except that it goes

Far back…far back… but always rooted fast

In Umbria, this present in that past.

 

Cape Times

13/9/69

Indelible

Even in our lifetime we outlive

Men’s need of us, and few of us survive

The searching test of death: the breath

Of flame will not proclaim our name.

So quickly men forget and yet

We have an earthly immortality . . .

Every one of us shall be

Immortalized by what we give,

Our contribution to humanity

In kind, for none can pass from birth to death

And leave no mark behind.

 

Dorothea Spears

INDELIBLE PATTERN

The time grows short. The minutes of our days
Print their imperious patterns on the page
Of time, where time betrays
Our limited illimitable heritage.

The stencils of our thoughts meet, merge, and part;
The figures touch, and overlap, and sever :

Recorded by the fingers of the brain
And undecipherable by the heart
The ineradicable heiroglyphs remain forever.

And time, unprejudiced by poetry or art
Or science, through the ages will retain
The patterns that the minutes of our days have caught
Indelibly, created by our thought.

Indian Summer

Blue drips the sunlight through the trees

And lies in quiet pools upon the earth,

And on the rich brown carpet of old leaves

Wherein tomorrow’s forest have their birth.

 

Rough branches hold their breath lest they should shake

The yellow and uncertain leaves adrift,

Fearing the naked Winter months of dearth

And clasping close the tattered yellow shift.

 

Tomorrow boisterous winds will shake the glade

Whipping to fury purple pools of shade,

Clouding the air with quivering leaves in flight

And shattering the pale blue shafts of light.

 

But for a space bold Autumn checks her stride,

Leaving her bronze and burning leaves a-flame

On vine and tree in all their flaunting pride,

And Winter, for today, is but a name.

 

Indian Summer Sunday

I knew when I awoke that this would be

No Common day: the silence held a note

Begotten only in Eternity

And sounded deathless from Creation's throat.

It was as if the common cloak of form

Wore threadbare and revealed the Light behind

Of which all things are made, the changeless norm

Inviolate within the Eternal Mind.

A new and unfamiliar beauty held

The old familiar earth within its hand,

And for a day the timeless truth was spelled

In words that simple men could understand.

And those with ears to hear and eyes to see

Could stretch a hand and touch Infinity.

 

Dorothea Spears

Indivisible

Peace is indivisible -

Write it in the sky

And on the earth

Where every mortal passing by

En route to death from birth

Can see it and be reconciled.

Write it on the mind of every child . . .

Security is indivisible

Till each man makes this truth his own.

While any beggar dies in a ditch

No king is safe on a throne.

Whatever else is said or done

Of this be very sure -

There's no security for one

Until the world's secure.

      

Dorothea Spears

Inevitable?

There are thoughts which lie too deep for words

And griefs too hard to be dissolved by tears,

Too bitter to be coated like a pill

With sugar for the swallowing, and fears

Too potent to be hidden by the will.

So we are silent. So we do not weep.

So we bury thought. But the heart knows

And is appalled, watching the doors close.

 

Airlie Close

Constantia C.P.

Informal Autumn

Now I know it’s autumn, now the mist

Has given the garden the dewy look

Of one who is loved and has been lately kissed.

The Summer-sharpened angles of the day

Are rounded: last Spring’s furnishings

Begin to fray, are threadbare, tattered, torn…

The garden had the friendly look

Of being comfortably worn.

The eyes of the sky are kinder and more wise.

The Autumn is the wearer of tweeds –

No tails, no black ties.

 

 Airlie Close

Willow Road

Constantia, C.P.

INITIATE

You will never be warm again. When stark winds blow

And the pads of the pitiless rain go thundering down
The bleak streets of the unprotected Town
A part of you will shiver and crouch, although
Your house be weather-proof, your fire aglow.

Nor fur, nor leather, nor any great renown
Shall serve to warm you, nor ermine, nor a crown—
You will never be warm again because you know.
Being one member of the body of God,

One integral part of that eternal Whole,
You will never again be easy in your soul
While any member shivers and goes unshod,
No more shall you delight in the voice of the storm
Nor be wholly warm, until the Whole be warm.

Insight

A radiant rosebud, pearly pink,

A single sprig of mignonette-

Such trifles, these, to hold the heart-

But trifles one cannot forget!

For with the nosegay shone a smile

Reflected from a heart that’s true;

And in all the nosegay’s fragrant sweet

I see the shining of you;

As pure and faultless as the rose;

In thought as fragrant as the spray

Of mignonette you gave to me,

And said goodbye, the other day.

Dorothea Graham Botha

The Epworth Press

1925

Interdependent

Behind it, and behind it, and behind −

Have we not caught the thought? Have we not caught

The breathing of the countless ones who bought

Our simplest comfort, and the ties that bind

All ages and all men? Are we so blind

We cannot glimpse the countless minds that thought

Our every use, the countless hands that wrought

To benefit the body of mankind?

 

All, all are one: the ones who planned

And dreamed and dug the clay and shaped the bowl

And made the spindle (Can we under­stand?)

Are units in the Unit of the Whole,

Inseparable as the brain and hand;

Are souls within the One Immortal Soul.

 

Dorothea Spears

Interlude

(From Garden Days and Ways)

 

Sitting here, enjoying the hospitality

Of this sky-conscious tree

That spreads its benison of shade to shelter me

Against the ardent amours of the summer sun,

I loose my trusty messengers and bid them run

Across the yielding carpet of the grass

And through the shrubberies

And round the floral borders, noting as they pass

The Belladonna lilies that have thrust

Their pinked tipped spears so swiftly from the ground

I had not heard them coming (Nature must

Be urgent in their bulbs!)

And they report, my faithful messengers of sight

That summer’s past her height, and they have found

A rustling restlessness of tree and bird

Throughout the precincts of the Garden Close

Which my two other messengers had thought they heard;

An intimation that this interlude of still

Untroubled beauty cannot last forever

With Autumn sending her scouts across the hill,

Though no one knows exactly when the moment comes and goes…

 

                      . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“Up, Lazy Bones,” my conscience says, “Have you no work to do?”

And I reply without compunction, “Go away:

I’m playing Mary today.

I’m choosing the better part…” God knows we need it

These days!  And how can we expect the soul to grow

Unless we stop, sometimes, and feed it?

 

 

Airlie Close

Constantia, C.P.

Intimation of Creation

Light and dark – the first differentiation

Of God, divisible indivisible One

Diversity in Unity begun

In unimaginable manifestation.

Initialling the aeons of creation…

Of life outflowing to and from a sun…

Through a father-mother-son the ages run

In vast division, addition and multiplication.

The prism splits the undivided light

And multiplies the colours, but men discern

The unreality of such separation.

Will time resolve eventual day and night

Fulfilled and on the pathway of return

To indivisible illumination?

Inviolable Vision

They say the glory passes with the years;

That the immortal vision is drowned in mortal tears;

That heaven recedes with childhood, and the eyes

That pierced the symbols of the earth and seas and skies

Are blinded by the smoke from funeral pyres

Consuming slaughtered innocence in immemorial fires.

 

I say It is not so: the heart that knows

Can find the wonder of the world within a single rose.

A curly cabbage folded leaf in delicate leaf

Can stir the mind to wonder, the reason to belief,

And all the splendour of the sun be caught in a broken grass

Or in a single raindrop glistening on the grass.

 

Today the beauty of the world is so intense

That man can find immortal joy through every trembling sense.

 

Dorothea Spears

Is sight in the eyes?

And if To-morrow should be born blind?

Think you she would develop some new sense

Some inner sight to serve as recompense

And to illuminate the halls of mind.

Revealing relevance that lies behind

The manifested view. The_. present tense,

The brief reflection of unseen immense

Reality Today could never find?

Perhaps Today is blind that sees today

As all there is to see, nor probes beneath

The seeming scene, unreticent and brief,

And bares its wares in windows of display,

And in the arrogance of unbelief,

Has crucified the guide and lost the way.

 

Dorothea Spears

Is This Bird Immortal?

Is this bird immortal? Is this bird

Unseen but heard

Immortal? Will it sing for me

Forever?

I have heard his song

Above the milling of the throng

And under the devastation

Of Hiroshima, in pure elation.

No weather vane

Affects his sure refrain,

Nor storm nor calm nor violence,

Nor day, nor night, nor pain.

This bird heard

Unfailing in the being’s core

Independent of external strife

Or beauty, underlying the whole

Pattern of life –

Is it the soul,

The indestructible part

Of me, beyond the mind and heart,

That only Death sets free?

 

Airlie Close

Constantia C.P.

It Is Ordained

I was not meant to live with happiness-

To see her as a shadow passing by,

To walk with her an hour mayhap, descry

The restful radiance of her; to guess

Her baffling Beauty, sense her power to bless;

And then- to bid her silence goodbye,

As shadows when the sun deserts the sky;

As shadows, with so subtle a caress.

 

It is ordained so : I have not grieved

That it should be.  For one sweet fleeting hour

We sat together, she and I, content

Beyond my dearest dream of death and weaved

A spell as fragrant as the lotus flower.

It is enough, and I do not lament.