Table Mountain
Lines written during the search for a young friend who lost his life in attempting alone a difficult climb on
Table Mountain
Oh Mountain, I was wont to love so well
Thy rugged beauty and they changeful hues;
The memories that in thy rough sides dwell;
The million gems that sparkle in thy dews.
How often have I slept against thy breast
And watched the sun break through the morning mist,
Bathing in golden light a world at rest,
And rise till every shadowed ledge was kissed!
At eventide I’ve sat, thy lonely guest,
And seen the sun quenched in a ruby sea,
Incarnadining all the golden West –
And mighty awe has taken hold of me.
Or in thy darkening moods when thou didst frown
I still have loved thee, still thy ways have trod.
And far above the smallness of the town
Have found unsullied rest, and peace -and God.
When I have wandered far by land or sea
Thy image bound my heart and pulled the strings.
Thy smile was always first to welcome me;
My symbol, thou, of all life’s higher things.
But where I dreamed thee faithful, thou art false.
And thou art cruel where I thought thee kind.
Oh, thou art treacherous – to friendship false –
Give back to us the lad we long to find!
For thou hast lured him with thy majesty.
He loved thee, too, and gloried in thy might.
-Oh Mountain, no more beautiful to me,
His blood, not sunset, paints thy peaks so bright!
Tea at Constantia
I am sitting here under the oaks
Of Van der Stel, drinking tea
And looking at all the folks
About me, all of us wearing our company cloaks
To hide our common identity.
You are so near that I could reach a hand
And touch your hand, and yours, and smile and say
“Good day, my friend” But you wouldn't understand.
You would draw your cloak about you and turn away
Because we haven't been introduced. Yet I
It seems, have known you all my lives
In one guise or another.
Recognition strives
In vain to pass the portal of the eye
And brain, and we pretend to each other
That we have never met, nor shall again, the moment passes by
Stranger, are you not the child of God, my Father,
And Earth, my Mother?
How much we miss, who deny.
Dorothea Spears
Tea in the Public Gardens
I am sitting here under the oaks
And beeches and yews, drinking tea
And looking at all the folks
About me, all of us wearing our Sunday cloaks
To hide our common identity.
You are so near that I could touch your hand – and yours, and smile and say
“Good day, my friend!” But you wouldn’t understand.
You would draw your cloak about you and turn away
Because we haven’t been introduced. Yet I,
It seems, have known you all my lives
In one guise or another. Recognition strives
In vain to pass the portal of the eye
And brain, and we pretend to each other
That we have never met, nor shall again.
The moment passes by.
Stranger, are you are not the child of God, my Father
And Earth, my Mother?
How mush we miss, who deny!
Tell-tale mirrors
How much does a year weigh?
We have so many of them to tote
On such a long road
And cannot lay them by for a night or a day?
Sometimes they seem so light,
So thistledown their load
I scarcely feel the weight of them at all
Until I chance to see
A looking-glass, and realize
How heavy they must be.
And I am shaken, taken by surprise,
Meeting the mirrors on the wall
And in your eyes
Dorothea Spears
Tempest Torn
That part of me belonging to the Storm
Rejoices in the fury of the gale.
I ride the wild unbroken stallions of the wind
In fearful steeplechases over hill and dale
Leaving the little haunts of little men behind,
With hooves like thunder beating the stricken air
And the fingers of the lightning in my hair
And 0, the wild torrential music of the night!
The ecstasy, the freedom, the delight!
That other part of me, knowing its kinship with the form
Of all humanity, cowers before the bold
And merciless stampeding of the Storm,
Defenceless, vulnerable, shelterless and cold,
Sharing its hunger, listening to the cries
That won't be drowned by all the tumult of the angry skies.
And 0! The bitter suffering when the cupboard's bare
And the single blanket pitifully thin
And the roof a scrap of rusted tin
The misery, the bondage, the despair!
To-night I'll ride with the tempest and thrill to the will of the Storm
To-morrow I'll carry food and clothes −
But I can never carry enough to make this body warm!
Dorothea Spears
Tension
The earth, and the air, and the sky, and the sea
Are all aware
Of some unusual happening, somewhere,
That is, or is to be;
Something imminent, immense,
Involving you and me.
All life seems to sense
The tension: violence breaks out
In sudden unashamed bouts;
Even the sun and the moon are ill at ease,
And the trees what whisper in the garden
And shed their leaves too soon;
And most of all the restless winds
That go about the world, nor know
Which way to blow…
And you and I, who try to read
The writing on the earth, and the sea, and the sky.
Thank You
I wish I were a poet
To pen in words divine
The love I bear your gift and you-
But such art is not mine.
I wish I were an artist
To paint in pictured line
How I appreciate your thought-
But such art is not mine.
I wish I were musician-
But dreams I must resign,
And only hope you’ll understand,
For high art is not mine.
Dorothea Graham Botha
The Epworth Press
1925
Thanks for Christmas
Thank God we still have Christmas! With the years
So many things are changed, so many things
Are lost; but still the Christmas season brings
The Star, the Babe, the Mother, and the Kings.
Despite the merchandizing and the gay
Inconsequential keeping of the feast
In many places, this is still the day
When those with much remember those with least.
And this is still a time of year that men
Remember friends and friendships and recall
The half-forgotten fellowships again,
And sense, somehow, the oneness of us all.
And Christmas symbols still have power to start
To life the latent love in the human heart.
Dorothea Spears
Thanksgiving
Because the sun shines on the glittering bay,
And lights the distant purple hills beyond
To green and gold, with his warm, magic wand,
That we may see, we thank Thee, Lord, this day.
Because the rain has fallen through the night
And washed all clean and fresh the face of earth;
For birds that fill the air with rapturous mirth
That we may hear, we thank Thee, Lord of light.
For friends that grow more true with passing days,
To cheer for us the lonely paths of life;
For hearts that beat with ours in one accord;
Oh, Father, hear Thou now our grateful praise.
For sun and rain and song and rest from strife;
And hearts to beat with ours, we thank Thee,
Lord.
Dorothea Graham Botha
The Epworth Press
1925
The 95th − Day
THIS is the 95th day of the State of
Emergency in South Africa.
Deciduous Trees
Brave deciduous trees that offer shade
In Summer when the days are long
And rays are strong
For mortal men to bear
How wonderful the ways that God has made
For mortal care!
For Winter strips them of their lovely leaves
When days are short and wet- and cold
Lest they withhold
The coat the weakened sunlight weaves
For shivering men to wear.
Dorothea Spears
The 123rd Day
THIS is the 123rd day of the State of
Emergency in South Africa.
Karoo Thorn Trees
I have seen them standing stark
And white and dark
Like skeletons against the umber earth.
"Can these bones live?" I cried.
They rattled and replied
With ghostly mirth.
But what they said I could not understand
Until I passed again
Through that transfigured land
After rain.
Then I knew that Time would always
Bring the young and tender green
Of latent Spring,
The waiting thorns regain
Their living sheen.
And from a distance, then, the white thorns sing
The lovely song of fruit trees blossoming.
Dorothea Spears
The 134th Day
THIS is the 134th day of the State of
Emergency in South Africa.
9/8/1960
Words and Winds
Words are like the wind, like the wind
Blowing over fields of snow
Or fields of clover,
Thick with scent or thinned
To icy sharpness, blowing over
Fields of blossom or of snow.
Words are zephyrs; words are gales
Tempered by the desert or the ocean
Over which they blow
And set in motion
Weather that sings and weather that wails.
Words are winds blowing over the heart
And as the heart is so they heal or hurt
Or soothe or smart.
Dorothea Spears
The 137th Day
THIS is the 137th day of the State of
Emergency in South Africa
Fifth Column
Have you not heard them creeping through. the night,
Intangible, invisible and real;
A darkness in the darkness; in the light
A shadow seeking shelter, velvet, steel?
As starlings find the one unminded spot
And occupy the roof; as waters seep
Unseen through tiny inlets guarded not
To breach the dyke: so fear and hatred creep
Through rifts of unforgiveness, occupy
The stronghold of the mind and storm the heart −
Italian beetles, house to house they fly
And riddle nations till they fall apart
Be vigilant of fear and hatred, Soul,
Who undermine the love that keeps life whole.
Dorothea Spears
15/12/60
The Age
No time …
No time …
All rhyme,
No rhyme.
Turn, wheels,
Faster, faster –
No man’s
His own master.
All slaves
To sheer speed,
All boasting
One creed.
No faith;
Souls terrene.
One God –
The machine.
No man’s
His own master –
Turn, wheels,
Faster, faster!
The Arm Chair
I see your white arm
Lying along the arm of the chair
Palm up… it will be there
When the rest of the rust coloured fabric
Has faded into dust
And none will care.
I sit here, now,
Time and distance from where
You sat that day
And wonder how many images
I have disturbed who share
The shelter of this old
And hospitable armchair
And if my image too,
As yours, imprints the air
Will imprint this chair.
Jan 3, ‘74
The Arrogant
Why should there not be visitors from Space
If, shod by science, winged by far desire
The men of this Dark Planet dare aspire
To tear aside the artificial lace −
That veiled so long the universal face
And, tutored in the hidden art of fire,
To bid their lives to prove a guerdon higher
Within the compass of this human race?
Are we so arrogant we can't conceive
Of greater evolutions than our own,
Of knowledge such as we have never known,
Experience to plan and to achieve −
The things that still to us are dream alone
Is this too strange a concept to believe?
Dorothea Spears
The Basic Heresy
I have held the planet in the hollow of my hand;
Twixt thumb and index finger held the ocean and the land,
One integrated unit but men will not understand.
We sketch our sovereign borders with a flourish, underline
In red our demarcations with a bold NO TRESPASS sign
Defy a violation of each artificial mine.
Twixt nation and twixt nation, man and man, and race and race,
Our artificial barriers desecrate God's holy place
And foil the purpose of His Love, the flowing of His Grace
We believe in boundaries: that’s our schism: that’s the sin
Against the Holy Ghost that will not let the Spirit win
Domination on this wayward earth to bring His Kingdom in.
Dorothea Spears
The Beautiful Reality
Do you remember how we paused, each half afraid
To put to test the dream that we had made?
Lest contact with the world should break its sunny wings?
For dreams, like butterflies, are fragile things.
So beautiful, so gossamer; so strong and frail-
Like spider’s webs that hold before the gale
Yet shiver into ruin at one ruthless touch.
Oh, dare we risk the dream that meant so much?
How could we know, at the year’s end the real would seem
More beautiful and fair than any dream,
The web of love unbroken still, the frail wings bright,
And life’s symphony, my dear, of sheer delight?
The Body
This body, this intricate house of flesh and blood
And bone and sinew, exquisitely formed.
Perfected through the Six Days of Creation
To house and hold the Holy Incarnation −
Dare we despise it, cover it with shame,
Accept, and further yet, its degradation
Because our thoughts are evil? We defame
The temple fitted for illumination!
The evil is not in the body, God-designed,
But in the coverings woven by the mind
That counts as evil this miraculous thing.
Strip off the drapings! You will find a wing!
Dorothea Spears.
26/5/57
The Bridge
Here are the restless millions of the East,
Ready for the miracle of renaissance;
Looking to the West, and to the North,
And wondering and weighing…
Revolting from the merit of obeisance.
The Ancient Wisdom clothes itself anew
In modern garb and venture boldly forth
Across all Borders, seeking for a bridge
To link the indivisible hearts of men
Against the Darker Powers that would divide,
And bring the Cosmic Christ to birth again.
And on the other side –
Here we are the fearful millions of the West
Working, playing, praying;
Driving themselves to death one way or another,
Mistaking knowledge for wisdom in their zest
To master Nature and usurp her gifts
To sell for profit or usurp for power;
Distrustful of the truth that is not seen –
And each one has so much to give the other
If only they could bridge the gap between!
And here are the millions of Black folk waking
From centuries of sleep, like children, taking
And making and breaking, and unconsciously seeking
Always a bridge to link them to the land
Of the adult, who will not understand.
We could have built this bridge in Africa,
Between the East and West, Black and White,
And Childhood and Adulthood, if our sight
Had not been blinded by our little selves
And foolish dreaming of a White Man’s State…
Is it too late?
Veritas
Constantia
The Broken Bowl
We pray for peace with perjured lips who hold
Our own possessions dearer than the fate
Of humankind. We cry too loud too late
For birthrights which we have already sold.
From tortured earth we tear the living gold
And turn it not to beauty but to hate.
We reap unready harvests. desecrate
The suffering soil that nurtured us of old.
For individual gain we sacrifice
The common good, deny the common goal,
And in a billion bits we break the bowl
Of beauty. seize each fragmentary prize
With frightened hands and will not recognize
That peace can only be held in the perfect whole.
Dorothea Spears
The Caretaker
Here, Memory, take this perfect bloom
And keep it in your living room
Of loveliness where nothing dies.
And when the skies are great with gloom
I’ll come to you, and feast my eyes
On all the beauty I have known
And you have kept, and make my own
Dorothea Spears
The Choice
I stood upon a high pinnacle in the Cosmos
Overlooking Time and Space on the planet men call earth.
And I could see along the corridors of Time, backward and forward,
As distinctly as I could see along the corridors of Space.
There were mountains and valleys in Time, and continents and seas
And waves of species rising and falling, and troughs and crests,
And smooth seas in Time when tempests slept.
And there were volcanoes and earthquakes erupting new civilisations
And burying them…
Until I scarce knew which was the landscape of Time
And which the physical face
Of earth manifesting geographically in Space.
There was Time, like a map drawn in relief,
Spread out below me, three dimensionally
And standing thus I saw
All the innumerable ways of planetary Time and Space
Converging…slowly…surely… in one place.
Like the thread that binds a necklace and holds the beads in place,
Like the theme that integrates a symphony,
Like the plot that underlies the divergent scenes of a book or play
And ties them all together at the end, tidily –
I saw one Energy running through and binding all that was and all that is
And all that is to be –
The Energy of Synthesis.
From Chaos into Order from amoeba into man…
From solitary caveman, fearful, crude,
Through tribe and city-state and nation, empire, commonwealth…
Following the same sequential, consequential Plan…
Each little Whole uniting with its fellows to form a greater Whole,
A greater Whole, becoming more than just the sum of all its parts;
Appropriated, motivated by some vaster soul…
The irresistible process of Creation moving to its God-appointed goal.
Standing thus in wonderment I heard One say
That there was but one evil where men trod,
Only that evil which separated…man from man…
Man from God…and hindered the fulfilment of the Mater Plan
That wrought an earth from chaos, and has lately brought
The utmost corners of the earth together through their common envelope of ether.
For the river of evolution brooks no permanent stay
And that which seeks to block its course shall surely be swept away:
Not in punishment; not in wrath;
But simply, detachedly, as a river in flood sweeps all from its path.
The time for sloth has ended. Now this earth
Must hasten to fulfil that destiny to which
Slow moving aeons have contributed.
Man must transcend his individual limitations, rise above
The petty barriers he has made of race and castes and creed and State
(Lest fences built for shelter turn to prison camps)
And realise his freedom as son of God
To seek the good of that one great Humanity
Of which his little unit forms a part by right.
There is no time for selfish pride, for greed, for hate,
And he who seeks to save his life shall lose it
Be he called Communist or Capitalist or Black or Brown or White.
Around the earth there sounds the clarion call
There is only one world, one good – and that is the good of all.
United, man shall stand, Divided, he must fall
Because that Power has been released, however man employ it,
That shall make whole this little world, this earth –
or else destroy it.
Veritas, Constantia, C.P.
The Christmas Tree
Alone at last, a strange thought came to me.
I wondered – should this be –
a young tree slaughtered in its prime
for our festivity?
I leaned my heart to catch the low reply:
“For His nativity
we must die most joyfully,
for Him Who likewise in His prime,
was slain upon a Tree.
Thus every year we do
our glad atonement make for Calvary.”
I silenced thought to listen. Happily
Laudo, Domine!
The Cloak
Because there's so much hatred in the air;
Because there's so much hate:
Because the strife is rife,
Because the hour is late . . .
You and I must wear with care
And keep in good repair
The invisible cloak of love that safeguards life.
A single tear
Gives entry to the fatal knife
Unsheathed and bare.
Beware, my soul . . . beware.
Dorothea Spears
25/10/57
The Cloak
(For Doris)
"Nature is the garment of God"
She always said, −
"And he who seeks will find
Himself within it and behind.
And if you tread
Where Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring have trod
(If you've a seeing mind)
You'll see His footprints in the sod,
And sense His breathing when the wind blows,
His fragrance in the rose.
Of mountain, sky and sea,
Of valley and river, flower and tree,
And sun and moon and star His garment is designed,
Concealing . . . And revealing . . .
One with delicate fingers for feeling
And sensitive ears to hear and eyes to see
Can trace Him through the texture even of you and me."
Dorothea Spears.11/6/58
The Common Wealth
Are we not rich beyond the dreams of avarice
Who have an access to so many kingdoms
To travel or to tarry in at will,
We in them and they in us,
Subject only to that mortal tyrant, Time,
Where we may sip or pause to drink our fill
Of the intoxicating wine I Of beauty and truth:
The kingdom of the Body, and of the Heart,
And Nature's kingdom where a man may roam
And chance to find the keys of death and resurrection;
The kingdom of books, of music, and of art;
The kingdom of Mind, where wise men make their home,
The kingdom of the soul . .
All ours, all ours to enter, ours to choose,
Being the heirs of all,
Which inexhaustible riches we shall use
Or abuse or refuse
Or let fall.
There are so many golden highways to be trod
Within the fabulous Commonwealth of God!
Dorothea Spears
The Daisies Are Out
All starry eyed above the Town
Today, the laughing hills look down
Assuring timid souls of fear
That Spring will surely soon be here.
And ‘round the corner of the Peak
Rough wildebeest and zebra sleek
(God sun a-shine on sable bars)
Stand ankle deep amongst the stars!
The Days Between
Here in Constantia, now, the golden oaks
Are full of sun and indolent with days,
Holding their tattered, multi-coloured cloaks
With loosened fingers where the fabric frays.
The russet vineyards, their fulfilment done,
Lie idle now against the autumned hill,
Content with summer, sleeping in the sun:
And for today the shouting winds are still.
The poplars and blossom trees are bare
And do not care if poinsettias write in red.
The hawthorns, though, are vividly aware,
And here and there a late rose lifts her head.
The Dead Bird
So frail, so frail a form to fly so high…
I hold the yielding softness in my hand
But a moment since from heaven scanned
Us heavy earthbound creatures crawling by.
Still warm within my helpless hand you lie,
Intrepid heart: you did not understand
The clear deceptive window-panes than spanned
The space through which you chose to reach the sky.
And I, frail spirit in frail form aspire
To higher heavens than you ever sought,
To skies beyond your uttermost desire.
I wing my way on powerful-pinioned thought.
Has God’s house windows of invisible fire?
And if I strike them am I freed or caught?
Veritas
Welbeloond Road
Constantia C.P. South Africa
The Deceiver
I find it difficult to tell
Sometimes, if I am talking to
A Bokmakerie or a Fiscal Shrike.
The arrogant fellow quotes so well
And sounds so very like
The friendly occupants that dwell
In my surrounding trees -
Unless one sees him in his suit
Of black and white
(Especially in a fading light) -
Can one be sure the word one heard
Was Bokmakerie . . . or a Butcher bird?
Dorothea Spears
The Deserted Shine
Some men, when love has left them make complaint
That from their skies the sun of life has fled:
No ray of moon or star illuminates their road,
Or banishes the darkness from their way.
For these, because men cannot always live
In darkness, some new sun must sometimes shine:
But men live forever in gloom.
And so, for me, is no oblivion,
Nor yet a new light to replace lost love.
In high Cathedrals of the Roman faith
The tapers burn before each worshipped saint,
Kindled by ardent hands, and shed their light
Together through the space: if one forget,
And darkness closes one accustomed shrine
The other alters still illume the dusk …
And so with me – since you no longer tend
The tapers of one alter, neither bring
Your offering, nor deck that desolate nook
With your affections flowers, I too, kneel there
No more: and in the temple of my life
The shrine of love remains forever bare.
The Doctors’ Dilemma
The doctors grave in conclave sat
For in the fire had gone the fat
And Cronin’s ill-timed book had stirred
The populace to doubting word.
Said one – “The way to end this siege
And to restore our lost prestige;
To combat this malignity
Is by access of dignity.
We must brush up that great possession –
The dignity of our profession!”
. . . . . . .
Oh Medicos, it is too late…
How learned your debate
When callings you commercialise
They’re no more sacred in our eyes.
True – we revered the old G.P.
A minister of healing, he,
Whose calling meant more than his fee
And gave him natural dignity.
You’ve lost, and by your own confession,
The dignity of your profession –
Here’s the reply to your complaints –
Men who make fortunes can’t be saints.
One Esau proved this saying true
You can’t have prestige and birth right too.
The Dogs Are Loose
……………….Once more
Man has unleased the hungry hounds of War.
Across the Continent we hear them bay –
The fierce dogs, ravening for human prey;
Making an end of innocent delight.
No more shall we sleep dreamlessly at night…
The ravenous dogs of War are on the trail
And there no earth for us that will not fail.
For these are not tame hounds, that come to heal
At whistle or command. With jaws of steel
And breeding hate, they occupy the land.
They gorge on beauty, glut themselves with youth,
And drag in the mud the tattered garb of Truth:
They hunt down Innocence, and snarling, tear
God’s image from men’s living breasts; lay bare
The reeking flesh of Lust that shame would hide:
And men do murder in the name of Pride.
They have not found our scent yet, but who knows
Which way the treacherous wind tomorrow blows?
Then let us not in fancied safety gloat –
Tomorrow we may feel them at out throat.
For man may loosen, but man cannot thrall
The hungry hounds of War…God help us all!
The Dominions of England
England, Mother England,
So distant and so dear,
Beset by the aggressing hordes –
We hold our breath with fear
For all that you must suffer,
For all that you must bear:
We had not realised before,
How vitally we care,
Your children, who adore you:
But over all the earth
Our hearts are broken for you,
For you who gave us birth.
England, Mother England,
From half the world away
Your sons are rushing to your aid;
Your daughters work and pray.
That God who gave you Beauty,
That faith which made you strong,
Will bring you safely through this hour
Till Right deposes Wrong.
“Oaklands”
Newlands Ave
Newlands, C.P.
South Africa
The Dream
Knock . . . Knock . . . Knock . . . Not daylight yet
Who's there? You're dreaming. Go to sleep again.
The knocking at the door is not more loud
Than knocks the heart against its cage of bone,
And Innocence holding the hand is poor comfort.
"Open" . . . The police . . . to violate
The sanctity of another home - your turn!
Strange. You wouldn't open a letter sent
To one of your own, yet these insensitive hands
Will rape most intimate diaries, profane
Most private papers and previous manuscripts
That will not ever seem the same again.
* *
A narrow cell, and silence. Neither book
Nor pen nor friendly voice. A naked light
As cruel as the darkness. Day and night
The sudden questioning; the slanted news:
Uncertainty assuming shapes grotesque
And terrifying: sense of security severed:
Something bent that you will never straighten:
Something broken you will never mend.
* *
Ninety days. How long is ninety days?
Time for a season's passing: time to end
A way of living . . . to betray a friend . . .
Or lose a reason. To-day it is a dream.
Tomorrow it may be true. It may be you.
Dorothea Spears
The Drought-Stricken Farmer
He has known laughter, once, this man with the face grey and grim.
He was young in the days gone by, but now his eyes are dim
With searching the skies for rain: the drought has parched the soul of him.
His lands lie open-mouthed, agape for the rains
That never come.
Like laths in the wind his cattle stand, dim-wondering and dumb.
Ghostlike he stalks his ruined lands…
Apathetic…Numb.
He has had his season of cynical laughter.
He had his period of cursing after;
He clung with his 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 the lands: the last lean sheep bleat pitifully, and cry.
Time was when the sight had pierced his heart,
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?
The Eldest of Many Brothers
Was he the First of many brethren, born
To bring birth on earth another age?
To turn for man a new and vital page
In evolution, supervening torn
The dog-eared pages of an age outworn;
To found a finer kingdom, to engage
Potential God and merging man; a mage
To open virgin doors to time unborn?
Is He the Bond by which man shall attain
The sentient synthesis, the golden goal?
A living Catalyst to fuse the soul
Of man and men and God and Nature, gain
Immortal oneness through this mortal pain?
We touch His garment… shall we be made Whole?
Veritas
Constantia, C.P.
The Empty Cup
He speaks in parables because He knows
The fallibility of fashioned speech,
And who can teach the way a flower grows
Or pose the limit of a man's reach?
A word is but a cup to hold a thought
That men may sup, but it becomes a mould
To set and shape it and the form is caught
And taught and fought about, and bought and sold.
No words can hold the Word, no vessel hold
The unadulterated wine that fills
The Universe, though wrought of jewelled gold
We clutch The cup the while the wine spills,
And thirsty by The glittering tree Man stands
The empty cup of Christmas in his hands.
Dorothea Spears
The End of the Chapter
Now Death had writ “Finis” to our friendship.
I turn the leaves before I lay it by,
This book made up through shining days, together,
The pages we had written, you and I.
The leaves are starred with poets’ songs, and fragrant
With crumpled grasses and the scent of flowers.
Marsh-marigolds, wood violets and heart ease,
The sudden singing of the lark, were ours:
And aspen woods, and moors and arid desert,
And Southern skies where Beauty came unsought;
The best of both hemisphere, was ours,
And the luxury of honest word and thought.
And these are written herein words of silver
With more beauty than of erudition…
I had not thought our book would end like this –
Abruptly, like a modern composition.
I lay it by, But it is sad my friend,
That anything so beautiful should end.
Oaklands
Newlands Ave,
Newlands, C.P.
The Evening and The Morning Are a Day
Every morning is a little birth, and every death
A mourning, the brief exhaling and inhaling of a breath:
And the evening and the morning are a day.
A birth in each beginning; a little death in every ending,
Losing or winning, breaking or mending, sinking or ascending:
And the ending and beginning are a day.
The little birth of waking and the little death of sleeping;
The taking and forsaking, the making and the breaking, the sowing and the reaping:
And the sleeping and the waking are a day.
The little birth of sight in dawning light,
The mirth of earth, and afterwards the little death of night:
And the darkness and the dawning are a day.
The sun and the rain, the loss and gain, the parting and the meeting,
The gloss of joy and pain, the starting and completing:
And the parting and the meeting are a day.
. . . .
And listening I heard the Prophet say
“A thousand years, O God, to thee are as a day.”
“Veritas”
Constantia, C.P.
The Eye Can Read but Cannot Understand
To-day there is magic in the air.
Is it some quality in the atmosphere
Of earth, that suddenly makes the earth appear
So luminous that I must stand and stare?
Or does the consciousness become aware
At times of hidden meanings hovering near
The surface, making visible and clear
The rarely realized but always there?
The eye is impotent to understand
Or to interpret symbols that conceal
The meaning modelled by whatever hand
The heart and mind taste and hear and feel
Before the surface symbol can expand
Incipient meaning and its self reveal.
Dorothea Spears
The Fabric must be Full of Light
The fabric must be full of light
And loveliness, a pattern that sings;
A happy pattern, serene and bright
Woven of colours that have wings
For this is the pattern of Mary…
Into the pattern I weave
The colours that I choose
The pattern I conceive:
And the warp and weft I use
Determine the harmony.
Oh, would I could match and mate
The pattern of the years
As deftly as I create –
Rejecting the colour of tears,
Discarding the pigment of sorrow
And threads that are dreary and dun –
To weave today and tomorrow
In the colours of the sun!
The Face
There is a face that I shall not forget.
Never, never can the years erase
The frightened eyes, the tremulous lips that yet
Refuse to tremble, the bewildered face,
That time had traced with kindly lines and deep,
And fashioned for serenity – before
The changing world had robbed the night of sleep
And set the wolf to howling at the door.
It is a terrible thing to lie and hear
The howling of the wolf, and feel the cold
Creeping into the lonely heart, and fear
Of tomorrow, when one is defenceless and tired and old.
Shame on us! Shame, that such a thing can be
Within a civilised community!
The Fairest Cape
Familiar beauty never stales for me
(If any beauty can be said to be
Familiar, when each vibrant new-bow day
That shapes it differs in some subtle way
From every other day) - nor fails to free
My folded wings of immortality
A little, pinioned by this cage of clay.
Beauty always has so much to say
That repetition cannot dull nor sight
Betray her words, that run the range of light
From hour to hour and day to day and year
To year, in star and flower, and far, and near,
In seas and mountains, trees and fountains, flight
Of birds, and changing skies, and day, and night.
Each repetition makes more clear and dear
This manifested beauty . . . now . . . and here.
Dorothea Spears
(Collection for Cape Peninsula Welfare Organisation for the Aged – May 5th 1954)
The Fire of Mind is a Cold Fire
Are we not pulling poetry, painting, music, out of their natural sphere,
Always trying to plant on the mental plane the ineffable thing?
So many symbols the eye and ear of the soul can see and hear
That baffle the battling mind;
The bright intangibles that beggar the touch;
The bloom on the butterfly's wing.
For none, however erudite, can prison love in a word
That can be heard and analysed and measured and defined:
Or even the song of a bird.
None can bottle the essence of beauty in a phial or a phrase,
Nor cage the spirit in canvas, or stave, or page,
However brave or sage.
The fire of mind is a cold fire, as he who manipulates it understands:
It will illuminate, destroy, create - but never warm the hands.
Dorothea Spears
The First Full Moon of the Year
Is not this night too beautiful to sleep?
The tranquil full-orbed moon is riding high
Across a vast serenity of sky:
The silent peace is immanent and deep.
Some say that Cosmic power is ripe to reap
At such an hour, that mortal earth can try
Immortal contact, certain of reply
When constellations have a tryst to keep.
The fingers of the wind are clasped and still
Enlapped in a profundity of light
The earth is wrapt in silent meditation.
O Mortals, let us wake and drink our fill
Of the immortal beauty of this night,
At one with heaven and earth in adoration!
13/1/58
THE FLAMING STAR.
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!
The freedom march (Monday, May 20 1957)
. . . . . . We march . . . . . .
. . . We march . . .
We march
Across the pages
Of time: and through the ages
Tyrants have trembled
To hear the replication of our tread.
The beat of the feet
Of the living and the dead
Answering the call.
Not alone we march: not unknown
Into the future out of the past.
Neither the first or the last
But part of a never ending line
Stretching across the years.
Determined that the light of liberty shall shine
for ever and for all.
Undeterred by threats or jeers
We march
. . . We march . . .
. . . . . . We march . . . . . .
DOROTHEA SPEARS Constantia. C.P.
The fruit and the fire
What was the tree of which Adam was for-bidden to eat
In the Garden of Eden
The fruit or the tree or the knowledge of evil and good
And was it bitter or sweet
To the tongue at the first tasting?
What was the fire Prometheus gave to man,
Incurring a punishment so dire
From the angry gods, who knew
The consequences of unguarded fire.
Not the innocent apple-a-day that keeps
The doctor away - of that we can be sure,
Be very sure; and I doubt
If all the Promethean fuss was about a spark
That enabled man to cook his food
And kindle light in the dark.
The fruit and the fire . . . the knowledge and the power
To create and destroy held in mortal hand.
Unversed in time and desire . . .
No wonder God and the gods were wroth,
Who could understand
The coming of the inevitable hour.
Dorothea Spears
The gap
How mend the gap that gapes between
The action and the thought?
How make the unseen seen
Or trap the unborn beauty caught
Within the mesh of mind, the dream
That dies unwrought?
Some there are can build their dreams on earth,
And some, alas, as I
Can seldom bring to birth
The beauty built against the sky.
The airborne edifices of the mind,
The gardens of the soul,
Remain unmanifest. We cannot find
The stuff to bridge the gap that rifts the whole.
We think serenity and peace
But when the voice is heard
How often lips release
The unkind word.
Dorothea Spears
The Garden
Stay, Spring, the while I sing the praise,
With honey words, of halcyon days;
Of beauty bursting from the earth
Is unpremeditated mirth;
Of beauty breaking through the sod
In reminiscence of God;
And how, when beauty first began
The Garden was the home of man.
He’ll walk unscathed through mammon’s mart
Who keeps the Garden in his heart.
Airlie Close
Constantia C.P.
The gardener
Next year or the year thereafter
Or the year after that (What matter?)
Other laughter will ripple over the grass
I pass with loving feet:
Other chatter will ripple through the trees,
And other flowers than these
That I have loved will lift new faces
Full of happiness inviting the caress
Of other eyes than mine
To bless them and possess them,
And other lips than mine will sing their praises.
Next year . . . or the year thereafter
Or the year after that . . . what matter?
It is enough that I have loved
And laughed and laboured hard to bring'
This beauty into being. I shall be
Unseeing, part of it forever
As it will always be a part of me.
For beauty is never lost . . . Never . . .
Dorothea Spears
The Ghost 1
The light in the middle room
On the top floor was bright
As I heard your prayers and tucked you in bed
And said Goodnight
And suddenly felt that I
Was outside in the dark, looking in.
I stood outside in the park
Alone
Looking up at the house
That I once called my own
(when I had need of a house
to shelter flesh and bone)
One window after another
Winked as the shutters were closed
Or curtains drawn until
The light in the middle room
Of the top floor crept over the sill
And I knew that you were there
And I turned away because
It was more than I could bear.
The window was open wide –
But you could not have seen me
Even if I had come inside.
Meonstoke.
The Ghost
There is a ghost that walks in my garden
And sits in my room with me.
Wherever I go, he follows;
And where I stay, stays he…
A slain man haunting his slayer –
(I murdered him with my sin)
He walks with me to the graveside
-The man that I might have been.
The Ghostly Shoal
(A Legend of Table Bay)
The poet sings of ancient ghosts
That haunt old castle halls,
And tales are told of ‘ventures bold
Within their mould’ring walls.
But I will tell a story true,
A tale of death and life:
A yarn I’ll spin of Spirits in
The wild Southeaster’s strife.
Some folk will laugh my tale to scorn –
(the practical of soul)
But on a day in Table Bay
There swam a ghostly shoal.
Three thousand fish there seemed to be –
Like silver glistened scale,
Like bloody dew the blown spray flew
Before the raging gale.
The boat cut through the seething mass:
The shoal engulfed her hull.
Old sea-dog Brand, with wheel in hand
Saw all his baskets full.
He shouted wildly to his men –
“Quick, to the nets!” cried he.
The coloured crew the clean nets drew
And cast them in the sea.
Then “Haul away!” and “Haul away!
Here’s money, lads; here’s gold,
So fill the net with fishes wet,
And overflow the hold!”
They hauled away and hauled away;
A mighty catch they caught:-
But no one knew in all that crew
The harvest that they brought.
For as the loaded net drew in
Loud shrieked the Southeast squall;
The bloody spume lashed deck and boom
The sky was green as gall.
Old Brand clung fiercely to the wheel,
As seaman’s oath he swore.
His course he held: the mainsail swelled
And drove him towards the shore.
While ghastly upon the deck
Each of his crew lay dead,
And in the place of each man’s face
There grew a fish’s head!
Stark lay those limbs whose muscles tugged
So lately at the ropes,
And fish’s eyes in mock surprise
Scoffed at their human hopes.
And in the lately hauled net,
Grinning the grin of Death,
The Fish’s king rejoiced to bring
A catch in Old Brand’s breath.
Old Brand, who feared nor sea nor land
Old Brand of Gelden Groon!
He loosed his grip, forgot his ship,
And fell into a swoon.
And through the moan of a Southeast gale
There rose a ghostly jeer
At him who lay in bloodred spray
Forgetting how to steer.
The sky was clear; the sea was blue.
Old Brand’s eyes opened wide.
Hurled by a wave, his ship so brave
Lay grounded on her side.
But flapping idly in this breeze,
As if to prove this tale,
The sailcloth lay still soaked with spray
Blown bloodred in the gale.
The Gift
We hung our stockings up on Christmas eve
Against the roomy chimney of our Lord
And asked for Peace, expectant to receive:
And in the morning – Lo, a naked sword!
“A sword’s a dangerous plaything for Mankind,”
We said, yet, “who dies fighting hath increase.”
And marvelled much the flaming sword to find
Less fatal to the soul than opiate Peace.
The Glory Of War
War. You talk of glory of war – My God!
Were you there? Were you there in muck and mud
That clung like dying hands in the putrid sod;
Wet to the skin with slime and your brother’s blood,
Till your very soul was smeared with the crimson stain
And your forehead throbbed with the burning brand of Cain?
The glory of War… the hounds of Hell let loose,
Baying within your brain like the dying cries
Of the men you’ve slain. Peace cannot call a truce
To the din in your ears, or the visions that haunt your eyes.
The world cries “Peace!” and the hand of slaughter is stayed,
But the deadly ghosts of War will not be laid.
I
A momentary lull, a hush, a thrill –
Clamouring hearts held fast by an iron will –
A word – and we’re over the top and into the fray!
Fighting, killing, mad with murder lust –
Filled with a thirst for blood we fire and thrust –
Back to the savage : it is the only way.
This is the glory of War. And behind the line
A woman waits for the man you’ve killed;
The sign of the cross she makes,
And prays to the Virgin Mother
To bring him back, and tonight his children cry
For the man who lies at your feet with glazing eye.
- Shall we ever escape the curses that follow us,
Brother ?
We fought for the right, our Country, and our King
And God was on our side. (They said the same.)
We did our duty…and War is a glorious thing!
We won the widows’ curse, and undying fame!
II
Hark, what sound is that above this Hell,
The din of shot and the screech of bursting shell?
Is it an angel singing through the strife?
Akin – a violin in a master hand,
Surely, the bullets themselves must understand –
A genius for a shell – and spare that life.
… his bow is broken forever… his blood is red:
Not man alone, but Music there lies dead.
This artist with his hand forever stilled;
That dreaming poet wandering in the cloud
Of Fantasy (‘Twill be his only shroud)
These are not men, but Beauty we have killed!
The blood of murdered Beauty cries from the ground:
Peace cannot cleanse our souls of this dire stain:
Something is lost that will never more be found.
Something is dead that will not waken again.
…
This is War, that stills the poet’s tongue,
That rifles the fairest gems of Beauty’s shrine.
This is War, that leaves God’s harps unstrung
And kills within us something rare and fine;
- A poisoned dart from the hand of Satan hurled
To mar the image of God in the heart of the world.
The glory of War… Its iron has entered your soul
But we face the truth at last with eyes that see.
We who fought shall never again be whole,
But the knowledge of truth shall set our children free.
In the name of God and Beauty and Truth – Go tell
There is no glory in War – but only Hell!
The Golden Cage
Some men understand the open spaces,
And some have given their hearts to
Sate less seas,
While others find their joy in human
faces…
I have loved the graciousness of trees;
Of blossoming trees that stir the heart like Spring;
Of common or garden trees and hedges
shy
where birds can nest and shelter, mate and sing;
of stately trees that tower against the sky.
Yet I have learned a hedge may hide a view
To stretch the soul, and foliage thick above
Can intercept the sky – for it is true
That we are limited by what we love.
The proximate beauty can prison a man
like bars
and hide him from the vision of the Stars.
The Golden Cage
Some men understand the open spaces,
And some have given their hearts to
State less seas,
While others find their joy in human
faces…
I have loved the graciousness of trees;
Of blossoming trees that stir the heart like Spring;
Of common or garden trees and hedges
shy
where birds can nest and shelter, mate and sing;
of stately trees that tower against the sky.
Yet I have learned a hedge may hide a view
To stretch the soul, and foliage thick above
Can intercept the sky – for it is true
That we are limited by what we love.
The proximate beauty can prison a man
like bars
and hide him from the vision of the Stars.
The Golden Door
The house of love has a golden door, they say,
And whosoever wills to enter, may;
But always I have feared to step inside
Although the golden door stands open wide.
For sorrows, too, within that portal dwell,
And some have entered it to find out Hell;
And sometimes Grief and heartache stalk the floor
Beyond that tantalizing door.
I should have gone forever by, I swear,
Had I not paused one day and seen you there,
And all my fears dissolved themselves in bliss
Within the nectar of that first sweet kiss.
“Dawn”
Silwood Rd
The Gracious World
Come, cast thy frowns… this world’s a gracious place
To live in. Every silver winged day
Some beauty has its birth along our way,
And some new love-light glows with tender grace
In Mother Nature’s dear old wrinkled face.
Yes, it’s a gracious world, where children play,
Where trees lift leafy branches high to pray
And sunshine weaves its mystic shadow lace:
Or where the mountains stoop to meet the sea
And hark to gossip of a far-off land;
Or that wide veld, to all of heaven unfurled,
Rolls grandly to the skyline, splendidly
Unconscious of the storm, what men planned
For it or me… yes, it’s a gracious world!
The Grand Old World
Love life? Ah yes, this world’s a grand old place
To live in. Every silver-winged day
Some beauty has its birth along our way,
And some new love-light glows with tender grace
In Mother Nature’s dear old wrinkled face.
Aye, it’s a grand old world, where children play,
And tress lift leafy branches high to pray,
And sunshine weaves its mystic shadow lace.
Or where the mountains stoop to meet the sea
And hark to gossip of a far-off land;
Or that wide veld, to all of heaven unfurled,
Rolls grandly to the skyline, splendidly
Unconscious of the storm, or what men planned
For it or me … Aye, it’s a grand old world
The Habit Of Old Love
Do you still care, does your heart beat more fast
At the mention of my name? ‘Tis long ago
We loved, but wellworn habits of the past
Will not be broken in a year or so.
We loved so well, and now love is no more.
Yet when we meet the pulses quicken still
As when you held the key to my heart’s door
And entered and possessed it at your will.
In time, I doubt not, it will surely pass,
This habit of old love, and we shall greet
And see each other only through the glass
Of mere acquaintance when we chance to meet.
Though oft we swear the old love to forsake,
The habit of old love is hard to break.
The Happiness of Waking at Night
Is It not happiness to wake at night,
At two or three o'clock, when daylight still
Is but a dream beyond the watching hill,
And feast the ear on silence and the sight
On darkness, or perhaps upon the bright
And soft reflections from the moon that fill
The valley with its strange unworldly will
And unfamiliarity of light?
O God be thanked for darkness that unveils
The universe to understanding eyes,
To consciousness the shining Milky Way'.
At night the mind can set enchanted sails
And find the worlds that live within the skies
Concealed behind the light of common day.
Dorothea Spears
The haunted
It is better that we should lay our ghosts
Now, while courage is strong.
The day is full of hiding places
Now, but the night will be too long
To escape from their accusing faces.
It's no use trying to bury a thought or an act
Until it is shriven;
No good trying to escape
A ghost unforgiven.
There's no unconscious deep enough to hold
An unlaid ghost
When nights grow long and cold.
It is better to summon them up, now,
And make our peace undriven.
Dorothea Spears
The Healer
The hands of Silence are more genie than the hands
Of Love to men who have been buffeted by Sound
Day long and none so well as Silence understands
The pain of bruised and tingling nerves that show no wound.
I wonder that men do not woo this gentle one
To soothe their aching selves that all day long have trod
The noisy treadmill of the town, when day is done
Who knows but she might lead us, at the last, to God?
Dorothea Spears
The Holiday
In fleecy sky
The sun mounts high,
Clouds hide and seek;
Soft breezes sigh.
Across the grass
The shadows pass
As clouds go racing, chasing by.
On tall tree tops
The bright sun drops
A shining mantle
Gleaming gold:
On clear lake, see
The crowned tree
In shining splendour aureoled!
From wooded hill
Returned birds thrill
A morning song,
A roundelay.
And sleepy heads
From dewy beds
Lift shining faces fresh and gay.
All Nature smiles and seems to say
My love, this is a holiday.
The House of Four
A score or more have knocked at the door,
But none have entered the House of Four.
Yet the door will swing at an infant’s touch,
No bars on chains to hinder such
As would enter the door of the House of Four.
A score of more have knocked at the door,
For Love and Peace and Justice and Truth
Are constantly sought by inconstant youth;
But decades are days, and the childlike muse
Is lost in maturity, when men must choose.
A score of more have knocked at the door,
Yet no one has entered the House of Four,
Save One who retained and infant’s finger,
Whose Spirit and teaching persistently linger
The statesmen and judges have crucified
The message of music for which He died.
The idealists
Is it because we have asked too much,
Because we have aimed too high,
Because the flesh cannot keep pace with the soul,
Because our earth is too heavy for our sky?
We fly, like Icarus, too near
The sun of aspiration
And are betrayed by that we hold most dear.
Our bright imagination
Launches us on wings of wax too weak
To bear the weight of such a flight
As we immortal, seek
Within mortality, too near, too near the light
Do we expect to harness our sun too soon,
Not having learned to curb our stars, our moon?
Dorothea Spears
The Incessant Song
Every day is full of song, I suppose,
If only one knows how to listen.
But whence it comes and whither goes -
Who knows?
The song of the earth and the song of the sky
The song of growing and glowing
And coming and going and reaping and sowing,
Of question and reply;
The song of laughter and crying,
And birth, and dying . . .
The song of the world is never still,
Under the water, over the hill;
In every part of every sphere
Soft and slow, or loud and clear,
But always near . . . near . . .
If only we could hear'.
Dorothea Spears
The Indestructible
Don’t misunderstand me…
What I’m trying to say is this –
That joy, distinct perhaps from happiness,
Is not dependant on the weather,
Ever.
It is a quality, innate, profound,
A song in silence,
A silence in sound,
An inextinguishable light
Impervious to time or space
Or day
Or night
Or sun or rain
Or ineradicable pain.
I have come face to face with Joy
In the most unexpected places
And times and weathers;
Rising from the ashes
Singing like a lark
In sunshine when the world was dark:
I have seen Joy
Running up the garden path
With the shining face of a young boy
Holding creation in his hand
Like a new toy.
Happiness, gaiety, these
Are allergic to pain and sorrow,
But not Joy.
Joy is always, forever,
Yesterday, today, tomorrow.
Airlie Close
Constantia C.P.
The Infrangible Fabric
Our thoughts give life to that on which we think,
Perpetuate in space the image wrought
In mental matter, welding link by link
The chains in which our blood and bones are wrought.
We build our bondage in our minds, create
Our world of war and hope and violent death
And good and evil from our love and hate
And bring them into being with our breath.
If we could cut the atmosphere and see
How thick with thought it is, and watch it set
In peace and war and hate and history –
Would we not have a care what we beget?
For nothing’s unnoted; every secret’s caught
In the vast infrangible fabric of tangible thought.
The Inner Silence
There is a silence deeper, more profound
Than forest corridors at high noon tide
When all the birds are quiet, and subside
All whispers in a hush too full for sound,
When stillness like a carpet clothes the ground;
Not as of death but vital, as the tide:
Herein perpetual peace and strength abide…
Within thyself this silence may be found.
In every self there lies this vital core.
Seek for it, Mortal, if so be not yet
Hast thou discovered it. Nor fear nor fret
Disturbs that silence, though the traffic roar
About the ears, nor passion, nor regret,
But joy incomparable in mortal lore.
The Interpreter
God be praised for beauty in whatever guise
It penetrates the consciousness of man,
Through sight or scent, through taste touch or sound,
Or through some deeper more profound
As yet uncharted sense.
And gives him glimpses of more skies
Than earthbound eyes could ever scan.
Since Time with silver scythe first cut the cord that bound
The infant race to mortal Mother Earth
And set the human spirit free to rise
Into the Consciousness that had begot its birth,
Beauty has revealed to tense
Evolving man in answer to his cries
Some semblance of the plan
That guides to infinite end this finite enterprise.
God be praised for beauty through sound and sense and sight
Interpreting the Father to the sons of Light.
Dorothea Spears
The Keerboom Tree
(Prelude to The Voortrekkers)
There is a tree, the Keerboom Tree,
With feathery foliage ever green
And blossoms like the wild sweet pea
Or flowering bean.
Elusive is the scent and sweet
As lilac in the storied Spring
Of England, and as passing fleet
When wings sing
To spread its carpet of pale mauve
About its feet, with silent grace
Surrendering its treasure trove
of purple lace.
A lover of the sun, it grows
In open spaces, free as air:
It has no love for gardens close
Or gardener’s care.
From out the arid soil it shoots
Defiant, hardy, unafraid,
Cleaving the hard earth with strong roots,
Creating shade
Wherein more timid seedlings gain
The courage needed for life’s call
And burst the bonds where they have lain.
Then, growing tall
Beneath the Keerboom’s sheltering boughs,
They spread themselves and swelled with pride
Look down upon the tree that bows
So shy beside
Their stateliness. The Keerboom tree,
That loves not shade, its duty done,
Fares farther, independently
To seek the sun.
The Knysna forests, so men say,
Were nurtured thus in days long gone:
These pioneers led the way
And then moved on.
Moved on, forgotten, to fresh fields
To seek the sun, to break new ground;
New forests in frail youth to shield,
New frontiers found.
The Keerboom tree, that loves the sun
And knows not stays nor fear
And dies, a new life having won –
The Pioneer.
The Key
Change is the key to immortality.
Is not life itself a succession of deaths,
A cycle of rebirths, a constancy
Of brief inhaling and exhaling breaths?
The Manifested world proclaims in deed
This fundamental truth; emerging life
Is mingled with emergent death from seed
To soul in constant metamorphic strife,
The earth to tile magnetic sun replying.
Not one change but a constant synthesis.
Not one death is required but constant dying
In life’s eternal metamorphosis.
Think you we are immortal, you and I?
Only as we die . . . as we die.
Dorothea Spears
The Key
We cannot purchase peace with all our gold,
For cash is not the coinage of the Mart
Where such commodities are bought and sold.
Cash is not the coinage of the heart
And force of arms is futile to release
The energy of synthesis to bind
The disparate factors in a common peace.
Or love to reconcile the disparate mind.
Mankind will never reach his destined goal
Till man has learned to merge his small ideal
Within the mighty concept of the whole,
Through transient seeming sensed eternal real.
Here is the key to peace and sanity
- One God, one goal, and one humanity.
The Launching
So often beauty takes us by surprise.
The lovely moment flashes unaware
Across our quiet unexpectant skies
And leaves us breathless as we stand and stare.
The day September took her leave was bright
With unaccustomed sun, and folk came down
To Zeekoe Vlei in indolent delight
As nature smiled, who did so often frown.
Forget of all controversial things,
I watched them launch Pygmalion's new-made boat:
I saw her come to life, and spread her wings,
And join a flock of pelicans afloat.
And none but she took flight and flew away
Across the broken surface of the Vlei.
Dorothea Spears
The Law
There are many laws, but only one Law,
Ineluctable, irrefragable and just.
Man’s sovereign and God-given duty is to see
That man-made laws with Law are in conformity
For only as man’s little laws interpret Law
Shall they be valid when the final force of man
Is superseded by the energy of God.
For man-made laws made counter to the Law’s decree
Shall be of no avail against eternity.
Who falls upon this Stone shall surely broken be:
On Whom it falls, he shall be crushed to dust…
And the Kingdom of God shall be given to another Nation.
The Liberator
Do not hate him when he teaches you
Detachment, my Theophilus. when he,
Through his unkindness, sets your spirit free
From earthly ties to anchor in the blue
Of open skies.. And if he be untrue.
−Despising all you prize, can you not see
That pain can force the door of liberty
And push the disillusioned spirit through? −
Be grateful when he drives your spirit forth
From false security of earthly love
To higher consciousness and wider skies.
Adjust your compass to the spirit's North,
The Polar Star, and strongly rise above
Emotion's bondage, tolerant and wise.
Dorothea Spears.
27/10/59
The Light Within
Always there is singing; there is light.
Although the quivering silence be intense,
Domain of darkness brooding and immense,
Enveloping the being like a night
Bereft of stars and moon, bereft of night –
That inner eye can pierce the gloom and sense
The beauty of the spirit’s immanence
And touch the shining hem of all delight;
The singing, not of tamed birds in a cage,
But ecstasy of the ascending lark
With body, soul and spirit all aligned…
The light that has endured from age to age –
Behind the vast and unendurable dark
The radiance that all may seek and find.
“Veritas”
Constantia, C.P.
The Little Wind At Dawn
The secret of the day
Is hidden in a veil of mist…
Who shall say
Whether it will be grey
Or opal or amethyst…
Or silver? None knows
Unless, perhaps
The secret little wind that goes
Silently through the sky
And blows,
As if in plat
A corner of the mist awry
And silently steals away.
“Veritas”
Constantia, C.P.
The Long Journey
It has been a long time and a hard climb
Out of original ooze to the wearing of shoes:
Unfathomably long from slime to song
Inconceivably hard from bird to bard.
Traversing the kingdoms of earth through death and birth
Often we've had to retrace our path to the place
We took a mistaken turning, slow to learn,
Travelling over the face of time at the pace
Of Eternity, never knowing where we were going.
Have we reached the end of the journey, gone
As far as we can go? I don't Think so.
Perhaps our goal lies through a kingdom of soul
Still unexplored, half guessed, unmanifest.
But if we lose our way we shall have to pay
With blood and tears for another million years.
Dorothea Spears
The Lost Nativity
What are you looking for?
I asked the old man with the shadow in his eyes,
Sitting in his chair and looking backwards,
Enveloped in an air of questioning surprise.
What are you looking for? I asked the society matron
So busy filling her life with festive preparations,
With unimportant things that look important,
To cover up the unforgettable separations.
What are you looking for?
I asked the merchant playing his paying part,
Surfeited with a superfluity of successful selling
That failed to fill the coffers of the heart.
What are you looking for? I asked the tense teenager
Rushing round and round in circles that have no end
And lead to nowhere, thinking to fill the hands
With brief excitements that only turn and rend.
What are you looking for? I asked the children
Precocious with this twentieth century, half-grown,
Unconsciously, intuitively feeling after the Father Christmas
Their parents have discarded and they have never known.
What are you looking for?. . .
The Spirit of Christmas that we cannot find;
We have mislaid it somewhere in the years behind
And cannot find it anymore
And yet . . and yet . . . the Spirit of Christmas is here
And now. It is only we who cannot see
The beautiful reality; standing in our own light
We lose the sense, the sight the consciousness of the Nativity.
Dorothea Spears
The Lute
I heard a lute –
Like the cry of a lost love
It pierced the stricken soul on 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 lute –
My heart wept, silently,
For the sadness of longing unfulfilled;
For the loneliness of the world.
The Magicians
All things live by magic, Lordly Man,
Who arrogates unto himself such power,
Could not keep earth revolving for an hour.
Should earth's magicians falter in the plan
Or fail to function, even for a span,
Man could not hold aloft a plane or tower
Nor make an infant, animal or flower;
Alone, is impotent since time began.
The season cycles, summer, winter, spring:
Seedtime and harvest; migratory flights;
The mystery of every living thing
The rhythm of blood and tide and day and night:
Is wrought and caught by magic in the ring
Of bright reality, and mocks man's might,
The Marines at Hankow
The naval men treated the situation as a joke. One agitator in theatrical manner challenged the marines to shoot him. A bored looking sailor, strolled up and took him by the ear remarking, “You just hop it, matey!”
Thereupon the agitator ran off. Cape Times January 11.
We were anchored upon the Yangtse, when the Chinee saw things red
And started actin’ nasty, and we ‘ad t keep our ‘ead
With orders from ‘eadquaters not to ‘em taste the lead.
You should see us standin’ solid w’ere we landed at Hankow
With the yallow devils plaguing us like flies upon a cow,
And we could only swish our tail and stick their bally row.
They kicks up such a shindy wi’ their blinkin’ ‘eathen yell
That we can’t ‘ear to think straight – not to speak about the smell!
And all that we can do is grin, and wish ‘em all in ‘ell.
And while we were waitin’, one mad Chink climbs up on the wall
And shouts to us to shoot ‘im – like the ‘ero of the scrawl
But Matey cramps ‘is style a bit, up in ‘is front row stall,
And grinning like a Cheshire cat ‘e grabs ‘im by the ear
And shouts out, “ ‘op it, Sonny, we don’t want no corpses here.”
And, believe me, “Sonny ‘ops it and we fetches ‘im a cheer.
The ‘eathen took to throwin’ stones – just like their dirty trick –
And Tommy caught a yellow Chink a-heaving ‘arf a brick.
So ‘e tells ‘im soft and gentle, “you ‘ad better change your tack
Or you’ll get a blinkin’ whacker w’ere you ‘eathen pants are slack.”
But the Chinee went on ‘eavin yaller brother of Ol’ Nick.
So ‘e grabs ‘im by the trousers, and ‘e fetches ‘im a whack
That echoes down to Shanghai, and we ‘ears it coming back!
But we kept our blooming tempers though I’d call a man for less than arf of w’at them ‘eathen said, and leave ‘is face a mess,
I s’pose it’s good for character, and Gawd, but I’ll confess
I wus proud to be a Briten w’en I sees ‘em standin’ there
With orders not to fire a shot a-keepin’ on their hair,
And takin’ ‘eathen back-chat like they really didn’t care,
a-keeping cool, and grinnin’ like it was a bally play!
But I’d rather do my jolly fightin’ any ‘appy day
With guns and lead and bayonets, the good old-fashioned way!
The Martin K. Hind
(With apologies to Mr. Longfellow)
It was the weekly Outspan mag
That’s read from sea to sea
That the father had given his pretty daughter
To keep her quiet till tea.
Her eyes were as blue as the jacaranda
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the pig lilies
That’ ope’ down Cape Town way
. . . . . . . . .
“Oh father! I hear the sound of bricks,
O say, what may it be?”
“Tis Martin Hind, he’s throwing them
At romantic fools like me.”
“Oh father! I see superman
O say, what may he be?”
“Tis Martin Hind, who cannot stick
Absurd humanity.”
“Oh father! He thinks we’re all BFs.
O say, what may he be?”
But the father answered never a word
For he choked in his cup of tea.
The maiden clasped her hands and prayed
That she might saved be
From supermen like Martin Hind.
Who lives in J.B
The Minor Poet
God of love, have pity
On one whom Thou hast curst
With insatiable hunger
And unquenchable thirst:
On one whom thou hast given
A flute he cannot play;
A burning love of beauty
His dumbness doth betray:
A soul that’s set for singing
And lips with scant refrain –
Dear God of love, have pity
Upon his easeless pain!
The Miracle of the Vines
Man marvels that the Holy One of God
Two thousand years ago at Cana’s feast,
When manifested in the flesh He trod
The land that lies between the West and East,
Once telescoped the seasons to a span:
The seedtime and the harvest merged in one
And choicest wine from water firkins ran
Transmuted by the blessing of the Son.
Yet man, unwondering and unimpressed,
Watches these barren stumps drink up the rain
And swell to fragrant fruit, a surfeited guest
At Nature's feast, and calls for signs in vain.
Each year man sees the water turned to wine
And views unmoved the miracle of the vine.
Dorothea Spears
The Mirror
Is it not strange to think this fragile glass,
This mirror, shatterable at a blow,
Before I was has seen my forebears pass,
Has seen the generations come and go.
And when I am no more it will reflect
As faithfully to those who follow after
Their images, nor ever resurrect
A shadow of my grief or rage or laughter
The Missing Key
Life imprisons all, but gives to each
Five master keys with which if man be wise.
He can extend the level of his reach
And unlock doors that give on Paradise.
I had not known the heavy doors of night
Could prison one in darkness so profound
And solitary, when the key of Sight
Is useless and he has no key of Sound
I had not thought, before, how many doors
Within the house of life are locked forever
When one has lost the key of Sound; what stores
Of common treasure he can rifle never,
Shall we not grieve for him whose lost key bars
Some door that gives men access to the stars?
Dorothea Spears
(There will be a street collection for the deaf today.)
The Model
Slowly parting the purple curtains of the night,
Day comes tremulous, shy and half ashamed
Of all her lovely nakedness, and clasping tight
Her pale grey draperies of clinging mist.
Reluctantly she mounts the dais and falters framed
Against the verdant hangings, virgin, white,
The clinging scarf unloosed: then by the great Sun kissed
She blushes roseate, and stands erect.
With softly quivering breast. All beautiful and bare
She poses for her lord at high noon’s tide …
Evening falls, and drooping wearily, unchecked
She draws her draperies round her and a tear
Reveals the delicate pink of flesh. Then, dewy-eyed,
She slips again into the curtained night.
The Need For Dark
Be wary of the light
At the onset of old age,
We need the dark for dreams.
A street lamp’s neon glare
Nags all night at the brain
To rub the nerve ends raw.
Restless, I pick old scabs
To find them wet with blood,
My thoughts twist in the light.
Lost images emerge;
I rocked you in my womb –
What gives you comfort now?
The blessed dark, you said,
And turned aside to sleep
Sure of my watchful care.
I hang new blinds to shield
The windows of my mind:
My eyes search in the dark.
The Need of Friendship
There is but one thing that I lacked
To make my happiness complete,
So many various joys had packed
My life to make it full and sweet.
And then you came, God-given friend,
Uplifting, understanding, wise;
And life was perfect, naught to mend-
It was too much like Paradise.
They say that life should never be
Too happy. So a cloud arose
And separated you from me-
A line of poetry turned to prose.
As who has tasted longs the more
For that which he has proved sweet,
So lacks, more poignant than before,
One thing to make my life complete.
Dorothea Graham Botha
The Epworth Press 1925
One there was had fallen among
thieves—
(I think his name was Poland, but
no matter)
They left him well-nigh dead and turned to scatter
Among themselves his children and his sheaves.
But some who saw them set upon the knaves.
Who turned and broke their cudgels on new heads—
Now far and wide the desolation spreads,
And many valiants fill untimely graves
Were it not better these Samaritans
Had left the helpless weakling there to die
And kept their homes intact the same as I?
To give one’s life to save another man's—
It is not practical ... Was I not wise
To pass by quietly with averted eyes?
DOROTHEA SPEARS.
The Old Love and the New
My old love robed herself in white
At Christmas time;
In snow and sequined rime,
With diamonds that glistened bright
And scintilled in the light
Of that far northern clime.
My new love goeth garbed in green,
In summer dress:
Then shall I love her less,
That rubies deck her gown terrene?
Shall emeralds and summer sheen
Bring less of happiness?
For my white love I shed a tear-
My love of yore-
Then turn to new love’s lore.
And she shall teach me Christmas cheer:
Not that I hold the old less dear,
But love the new love more
The Old Town House
It has the still serenity of one
Who’s not surrendered his integrity
To that dictator, Time; now bowed the knee
To this new god that desecrates the Sun
And bids men neither stand nor walk but run;
To this Baal men call Efficiency,
And sacrifice the truth that makes them free,
The silence in themselves where peace is won.
Time’s underlings, the Hours, have called in vain
Their urgent tunes: these walls cannot forget
More leisured measures, and these halls retain
The tempo of that stately minuet.
Within this courtyard ghosts of peace remain
And Time has signed a truce, unbroken yet.
23.11.55
The once familiar spirits:
Forgive me, spirit of the mountains.
Forgive me, spirit of the earth.
Forgive me, spirit of the sky.
That I, who have been blessed from birth,
Should cease to see your beauty, passing by.
Forgive me, spirit of the garden,
When I've not heard your poetry of birds,
Have missed your melody of flowers
Because my head's too full of practical words,
Because my days are never full enough of hours.
Forgive me, spirit of the silence,
Harbourer of peace,
When I neglect your once familiar way,
Reject your swift release,
And in betraying you, myself betray.
Dorothea Spears
The Onlooker
(At the Outspan, Stellenbosch)
Sitting quietly here behind my book
I watch you as you pass and re-pass
In ones and twos and threes and fours … You look
Natural, made-up shabby, smart, shy.
Assured, full of the zest of living, tired
(At nineteen, twenty?) Unloved and desired.
I watch you as you pass, on foot, in car,
On bicycle, or scooter, flashing by –
I look at you, and love you… as you are.
How very young you seem, how very dear!
How many of you wake? How many dream
That manifested things are as they seem?
Some of you will sleep your life away,
Eating and drinking and duplicating
Your physical image, swayed by love and fear
And hate, and never know for what you’re waiting;
Happy enough, and good enough, let’s say,
But never imagining the depths and heights,
Never seeing reality at stake;
Speaking your piece according to your lights…
But for this lifetime you will never wake.
Are you the lucky ones… or those who find
The heights and depths beyond the mortal mind?
For some of you, unwitting, will attain
To fuller consciousness, will wake and learn
Through suffering, through hunger and through pain
The meaning of reality; will burn
The bridge that binds you to return…return…
And earth will hold its hands to you in vain.
I look at you and wonder what life holds
For each of you, what sorrows and what joys,
And how you will re-act to broken toys –
And though I know that only suffering moulds
The perfect clay, my foolish heart goes out
To shield you from the heartbreak and the strife
That flays and wounds and wakens you to life.
You happy ones who loiter two and two
With starry eyes – what does life hold for you?
You pass, unconscious of the love I bear
To you, and you, and you… and how I share
Your heaven, though I know how very frail
Is love’s young dream to weather old life’s gale.
How weak of me that I should want to pave
Your path with dreams, want desperately to save
And shelter you from life’s remorseless heat,
The loneliness of failure and defeat,
Although I know that you must surely go
Through fire and ice until you learn what each
Accomplishes, and what it has to teach
If you would reach the predetermined goal,
The summit from which man can see the whole
Of life and what it means and what it is…
Should I not rather wish you strength for this?
For here is peace that only pain can give
When life has learned that dying is to live.
It is because I know how life can hurt,
How wounds too often opened leave a scar;
That suffering and pain can make – or mar –
That happiness can beckon like a star:
That only you can choose how you will use
The triumphs and disasters on your way
(For most of the experiences life loans
Can serve as stumbling blocks or stepping stones)
So I, who love you, give you this to keep
That you be not afraid to wake from sleep,
To suffer and grow, for at the end
Your deepest pain may prove your dearest friend.
But luckiest of all are you who find
The secret of self while you are young,
That constant Light illuminating mind
And heart and body, as the sage sung;
The constant immortality behind
The forms of brief mortality that hind
The spirit to the flesh upon the wheel
Of life, and from the symbol real to real.
And some of you will learn eventually
To use the power of silence and of thought…
But these are truths that you will not be taught
In classrooms at your university.
You’ll cross the threshold of the unknown years
Tradition-tied, unhumble, knowledge-bound,
With blissful ignorance – but capped and gowned.
Anticipating what? It disappears
If you have not been tutored to transmute
Your knowledge into wisdom, or refute
The personality’s insistent claim
For wealth and comfort, happiness and fame.
And if you spell success with L.S.D
Or with renown, and win your desire
Untempered by the purity of the fire,
Untested by the fury of the sea,
Unconscious of your kinship with the sun –
What will your life be worth when all is done?
I, who love you, give you this to hold,
Who had it from the messengers of old
As well as from the Messenger within –
That separateness is the only sin,
Unconsciousness of vital synthesis,
The individuality of soul.
For all man’s lonely misery stems from this
Refusal of the parts to make a whole.
The Ordinary People
We are the ordinary people…
You think we do not care,
Eating and drinking too much ourselves,
That others’ cupboards are bare.
If you could tell us a feasible way
You would find us ready enough to share.
But we are not prepared, we say,
To toss our hard-won winnings
Into a melting pot to be frittered away
Or watch the delicate colours of life
Diluted for all to a common grey.
We are as conscious as you, my friend,
Of the bleak injustices men bear
But shouting will not bring an end
To injustice, nor despair.
Give us an architect, a plan
On which to build, a blueprint made
To house the world and shelter Man-
Then you would find us unafraid
And ready enough to dare.
Don’t make any mistake about it –
The ordinary people care.
Brownwich Farrm House
Titchfield
Hants PO14 4NS
The Ostrich
Great ungainly thing –
You cannot put him into rhyme
Because there is no rhythm
In his stride.
He wobbles-
Thus-
From side
To side;
His lanky neck outstretched-
And on the farther end is perched
A tiny head.
It always makes me think about
A crooked question mark.
Vile tempered, cow-hoofed creature;
Tiny eyes
That gleam maliciously …
… And feathers fit for queens!
Ah well, fine feathers do not make fine birds,
The ostrich is a gawk!
The Passing Of A Year
Speak softly … Death is here…
To-night the Old Year dies.
No more the miracle of dawn shall come
For him, nor shall he see the great sun rise
The world around; nor hear the happy hum
Of homing birds … He shall not see the skies
God paints at sunset… Day shall find him dumb.
The dark priest, Midnight, waits to close his eyes,
And shrive the passing soul…
About his bed
The ghosts of vanished years in silence wait
To lead him to the regions of the dead
And hear how fares our little world of late.
And some wear wreaths of laurel on their head,
And some have bloody hands, and gnarled with hate.
The priest comes nearer by a step : the end
Draws on apace … Forgive me if I shed
A passing tear – The Old Year was my friend.
He gave me much, and much forgave. He led
Me tenderly, broke naught I could not mend…
And yet you found him ruthless in his tread?
But hush…the bells are tolling…
Speak not ill of the dead
The Pattern of Spring
This is the pattern of Spring:
Sap rising, burgeoning
Leaf, colour, scent;
The sound of birds singing,
Flinging a mantle of song
Over the lawn and bringing
Delight in winging flight
To eager dawn.
Winter went
So softly no one heard -
Only the flower and the bird
And the grass and the trees,
And the doubting clouds that leant
Against the sky, and night,
Perhaps, who heard the cry
Of birth from travailing earth,
This is the pattern of Spring:
The beauty and joy and mirth
And pain of awakening.
Dorothea Spears
The People’s Welcome
Young Prince, the people welcome you, from kopje, veld and town,
People of many colours – white folk and black and brown.
Our names may not be mentioned when you meet the land’s elite,
For ours are but faces that will line your every street.
And if we lack decorum, we’re sure you will not wince –
For it’s just a loyal welcome to the people’s royal Prince.
. . . .
No doubt you will meet us at the Dinner or the Ball;
You may not see our faces in the great Reception Hall,
Buy you’ll hear our high cheers ringing as you pass along your way,
And you’ll know we are your people, and you’ll know that
We shall pray
When we see your grey ship anchored ‘gainst our Dawn’s first rosy tints –
Not just “God bless the Prince of Wales,” but this:-
“God Bless Our Prince!”
The Pharisee
The Lord of the World came to South Africa.
“What have you done with my dark-skinned children,” he said,
My backward ones, who have so far to run?
Have you taught them to sow and reap; make their bed
The modern way; to spin the silver thread
That keeps them clad; to lead as well as be led?
In brief, have you taught them to take their place in the sun?”
South Africa confidently shook her head –
“But we have given a Bible to every one!”
(With a useful story of Man underlined in red.)
“Veritas”
Constantia, C.P.
News Report : Plans are being made to provide every South African home with a Bible.
The Pigeons
Strutting all about my feet
As I walked
Up the street
Underneath the oaks, and through
The Avenue –
Pigeons, proud and unafraid
And very fat.
And that,
I thought,
Is how God made
His world to be –
Unafraid
Of you and me.
Alas…
How seldom does it come to pass?
Oaklands
Newlands AveThe Poems of Dorothea Spears
The Poet
I, that men call a poet,
What am I?
Only a voice for your longing,
A breath for your sigh;
A reed to sing your sorrows
And be laid by.
From hearts with sorrow wrung
I catch the tears
And give to each a tongue.
Unwitting I must share
Your every loss.
Some portion I must bear
Of every cross.
I wonder if the harp’s strings
Ache with the pain
Of the player as my heart trembles
Under the strain?
These are not mine, these yearnings
That hold me long-
My heart is broken only
To sing your song.
I wonder if the viol
Sometimes tires
Of playing, as I of singing
Your mute desires?
These are not my griefs I’ve known
That I must sing
And feel – they are your own!
For I, that men call a poet,
Sad and shy,
Am only a voice for your longing,
A breath for your sigh;
A reed to sing your sorrows
And be laid by.
The Poet’s Craft
Practice your craft every day
They say,
So I sit down each night
To write
The song in my heart.
But the song that I sang with such joy
Is a ploy
As I strive to perfect
The effect
Of the words of my art.
And the rhythms I wrote with such ease,
Just to please,
Are teased to a style so complex
As to vex
The hope in my heart.
So the pattern I wove in my head
Is quite dead
When it comes to the page,
And I rage
At what craft has not done for my art.
Feb 87
The Polar Bear In Heaven
They say that animals
When they must die
Can never go to Heaven –
It’s a lie.
I know because I saw
Up in the cloud
A great big Polar Bear –
He looked so proud.
Just where the clouds were brightest,
There he stood;
So I know bears go to Heaven
When they’re good.
And if bears go to Heaven –
Why I know
That dogs and kittens must-
Don’t you think so?
14-1-27 D.G.B
The Pretender
Now half the oak trees think they've seen the spring!
The delicate prunus suddenly blush and glow
Even the willow buds are burgeoning.
And gardens white with drifts of almond snow
The orchards hesitate by the winery −
Foolish ones to be deceived each year
To putting on their gossamer finery
Believing the rumour that the spring is here
Because a day or two the sun is sweet
And soft winds whispering their amorous lies
Awake desire that sends the sun to meet
The summer innocent, unweather-wise.
Only the skeptic poplars undeceived
Await their season, patient and unleaved.
Dorothea Spears
The Price of Peace
Blue in the distance dream the silent hills.
No thing disturbs their mute tranquillity;
Perfect philosophers; nor good nor ills
Upheave their bosoms’ smug sterility;
Nor rain nor shine, nor blight nor blinding storm
Can waken them to laughter or to tears.
They have found peace. No beauty can transform
Their rigid features through the changing years.
Yet once within them flamed a mighty fire;
They seethed and glowed and teemed with restless life
As burns within my heart this fierce desire
As rages in my breast this mortal strife.
The flame is quenched now, dead, and they are old –
Must peace only come when the heart is cold?
The Price
What does it cost to be a queen
And live in a palace, fine and tall?
All the hours that lie between
The sunrise and the moon’s fall.
What does it cost to be a queen
And wear a jewelled golden crown?
All the thoughts that lie between
The sun-up and the moon down.
What does it cost to be a queen
And sit upon a regal throne?
All the loves of life, I ween:
For a monarch stands, at last alone.
What does it mean to be a queen
And keep a people hale and whole?
Everything that lies between
Desire and the Spirit’s goal.
The Process
Does the clay welcome the wheel that turns it,
Spinning and sloughing and shaping the perfect bowl? −
Does the porcelain welcome the oven that burns it,
Firing its weakness into a tempered whole?
Does the marble welcome the tool that shapes it,
Chipping and hewing to set the spirit free
Until the hidden form within escapes it
And stands revealed for all the world to see
Does the seed welcome the soil that takes' it
And buries, and Into ultimate beauty wakes it?
Without the process even the fairest vase
Would never quit the clay, unseen, unknown:
And all the glory Greece and Rome was
Would still lie hidden in the broken stone.
Lord, let us not forget, who dare aspire,
When on the wheel of life the form is caught −
To welcome the wheel, the chisel and the fire
Since only thus is lasting beauty wrought.
Dorothea Spears
The Rarer Air
Now we become aware how petrol fumes
And smoke pollute the purity of the air.
We even legislate to eliminate
The vitiating factors, to repair
The irreparable damage of an age
That sells its birth right, wastes its heritage.
We become aware of the price we pay
To mechanise mankind, and strive to find
Alleviation, that we may bequeath
The coming generations air to breathe.
But we are blind and deaf to the part played
By the individual emanations of mind
And heart that permeate the atmosphere
With love and hope or hate and greed and fear.
Airlie Close
Constantia C.P.
The Rationalist
To rationalise
I was taught in my youth
Is the process by which a man
Persuades himself
Of the logic and truth
Of what he desires to do
So he can.
Airlie Close
Constantia C.P.
The Riddle Of Life
Man lives his little span, to pass
From unknown to unknown sphere:
Nor can he fathom from this mass
Of evidence why he is here
Nor what he is, nor whence he came,
Nor whence came that which made him so.
That God, that Power – whatever name
He calls it by – whence does it flow?
No beginning … and no end –
Yet untold worlds revolve
With life no mind can comprehend
Nor Science nor Religion solve.
With pigmy wings and puny cries
Man beats the bars of ignorance,
Unwilling still to realize
The ego’s insignificance
He pits a Darwin against God:
He analyses with such pain,
And from a known and measured clod
He seeks to raise up Life again.
Poor fool! Should even this be done
He’d be no nearer, at the last,
To knowing how it had begun
In the unimaginable Past:
Nor why, nor by what fateful Power
It came, nor whence that Power derived.
The riddle has no clue. The hour
Runs out … a man has lived and died …
With all his knowledge knowing not
What Life and Death is, how, nor why;
Unknowing ought of this strange plot
Except that he must live, and die.
World after world …son after son…
So it was always, so it must be –
Unterminable, unbegun,
Unthinkable Eternity.
The Role Of Spring
She, then, whom we call Spring, is no magician.
She can create no single shining flower
Nor bud nor blade nor leaf; her single mission
To waken with her smile the dormant power
Within each sleeping root and bulb and tree;
To quicken into life the potent will
To beauty and immortality.
She can create no single daffodil,
Already is the flower within the seed,
As is the God in every soul of man:
To call it into blossom is the need,
The smouldering, immortal spark to fan.
‘Twere no ignoble role to play the Spring
To Man, and stir his soul to blossoming.
The Same Difference
Could we but recognize
That we are different
And that we should be different;
That in our difference lies
No worse nor any better
(As one word is no better than
But serves a different need
The same as any letter)
Then might we be agreed.
When each must prize
His special virtue, minimize
The virtue of his brother;
When each one's wisdom seems to him most wise:
And when the judgment magnifies
The faults we choose
To criticize
We can't conceive what happiness we lose −
Striving to recreate each other.
Dorothea Spears
The Same Infinity
Whichever way we turn stretches infinity.
We fling our consciousness across the starry space.
We seek to span the inconceivable gulf of time.
Backwards . . . forwards: even the present moment's mime
Offers a mere facade, a make-believe embrace.
Or, inward turning, if we seek divinity
At circle's point we stumble on infinity.
Backward. forward, in and out, above, below . . .
We cannot find the ultimate virginity,
Nor to a conscious ultimate ending can we win.
We lose ourselves at last beyond where the mind can go.
Yet, backward or forward, or outward, or within . . .
Striving in opposite directions . . . even so
Seeking, seeking ever, dimly we discern
It is the same infinity to which we return.
Dorothea Spears
The Search-Lights
Within the realm of Nyx, come acolyte
Of Mars the long-awaited sound has caught.
Like fencers for encounters eager sought
The watchers have unsheathed their blades of light
And pierced the silken mantle of the night.
The keen, metallic blades, unbending, taunt
Cross and re-cross in ghostly silence, fraught
With menace for the interloping flight
They probe the farthest corners of the dark,
Night’s treacherous cloak concealing the approach
Of brutal, winged Death that hums on high,
Until each gleaming blade achieves its mark
And pins the alien plane, a silver brooch,
Against the frightened bosom of the sky.
The Seekers
We woo . . . pursue . . . our whole life through
But never win perfection . . . never.
And some are false and some are true
To what they see: some stupid, and some clever.
But true or false do any find
Or touch or hold the ultimate star
For which their dreaming was designed:
However high they seek, however far?
The love we touch by touching tarnished fades
However much we strive
To keep the brief unbearable light alive:
The source of light evades us . . . and evades
The flower we bought . . . the bird we caught -
They held a lingering perfume, lilting song,
But they were not the thing we sought:
They only held the thing - nor held it long
We seek the Sun itself, and think we trace
The image bright beyond compare
In many a bidden place and hidden face
But it is never really there.
However fast and far we run -
We catch reflections but we never catch the Sun.
Dorothea Spears.
The Seer
(CJR)
He spoke in terms of Empire, it is true.
He thought in terms of empire, but his aim
Was not an island's glory or her fame,
Nor yet the wealth or power that might accrue.
He shaped the means to fit the end in view.
He was a piece in the eternal game
Of evolution; Out of time he came
And empire was the biggest thing he knew.
He glimpsed the blue-print of the Great Design
Of synthesis. Perhaps too soon or late
He set himself to force the hand of Fate.
It is not strange that those who glimpse no line,
Whose highest thought aspires to me and mine,
Remember him with unforgiving hate.
Dorothea Spears.
(Matopos.)
The Silent Visitor
Someone has passed this way of late to still
The eager laughter and the joyous song,
And scattered grief and sorrow all along
His sombre way. Still dwells the voiceless chill
Where he has passed and paused awhile to fill
Bright eyes with stranger tears; and break
the strong of heart. His shadow lingers on the throng,
Though he has passed again beyond the hill.
He makes no sound. I know where he has trod
Because joy withers underneath his feet
And hope grows pale before his icy breath.
They say he leads the way at last to God,
But soon or late he comes to every street,
This silent visitor whom men call Death.
The Simple Things
It’s not the fine, high-sounding things
That win their way into the heart;
But when the soul of the poet sings
Simplicity embodies art.
The finest canvas ever hung
Will never thrill beyond the eyes;
But just a baby, flowers among,
Will move the soul to rhapsodise!
The grandest sermon ever heard
Will win the plaudits of the day.
But ‘tis the simple, love-spoke word
Will turn the sinner from his way.
The Epworth Press
1925
The singer
“Why do you sing?” I said, “Why do you sing,
Walking along the long road by yourself?”
“I sing for the joy of the thing,” he said,
“That is deeper and stronger than sorrow,
And because the faces of men are sad
Perhaps if I sing they will borrow
A lilt from the lay I leave in the air -
On the way they may walk tomorrow.”
Dorothea Spears
The Song Is Ended
(L.C. Dec ’36)
The song is ended. Put away the cello:
Relax the bow and lay it close beside.
This music, with the pages turning yellow,
And this quite new, and some not even tried …
Gather it all together: stack it neatly.
Pick up the resin. Lay the mute away
And lock the case, for she who played so sweetly
Will not be playing any more today.
The brief sweet song of her so soon is ended,
And though we clap our hands and cry Encore!
She’ll play no more to us whom she has friended,
For Death has written Finis to her ecore.
She’ll play no more to us, but we her comrades,
Must go on reading our appointed parts:
But till our own Finale sinks to silence
Her melody will linger in our hearts.
The Song Of A South African
It’s a beautiful land, a glorious land, a wonderful land,
this land of ours:
With azure skies as blue as the skies of only a Southern
land can be,
Majestic mountains in purple haze; the pine and the
shimmering silver tree,
And round and round our wondrous Cape the swell of
a southern sea.
It’s a glorious land, where the far veld rolls to the still
of the might grey Karoo,
Where the aloes lift like spires of flame in the days of
never-ending blue;
The open road and the open heart, in a land where
Hearts are true.
It’s challenging land, where the grey Vaal flows
Forever in search of the restless sea,
Where the earth is veined with shining gold and the
hosts of hidden treasures be,
Where all the world holds an open door, and the souls
of men are free.
It’s a beautiful land, where the Drakensberg lift snow-
Crowned peaks to a brilliant sky.
And over and into the Christmas land where East
meets West and the palms rise high,
Where the warm sun woos in ardent love, and the
Ships of a realm go by.
It’s beautiful land; the tropic East, the smiling
Cape with its azure dome,
The grey Karoo with its flaming spires; and never
the hearts of its loved shall roam
From this wonderful land, this glorious land -South
Africa, our home!
Hark, I hear him coming back again.
I see the rustling leaves where he has trod.
And in my garden now the tall flowers nod ;
They hear him coming, too, a-down the lane.
He’s nearer now, he rattles at the pane
And tugs the careful curtains on their rod.
The
flowers lean closer to the friendly sod,
Affrighted at his rollicking refrain.
Ah, now he casts his caution to the sky.
And sweeps across the garden with a shout!
The stately pines bow low as he comes by;
The gentle leaves are rudely put to rout.
The wretch ! We like him not, the flowers and I
We give no welcome, but he comes without!
The Star Of Bethlehem
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!
The Sudden Ray of Sun
When winter holds the earth and storm rides high –
From out the sullen all-pervading grey
How beautiful the sudden shining ray
That flashes for a moment and is by,
Reminding us, though hidden from the eye
By lowering cloud that darkens all earth’s day
Where warring elements hold bitter sway,
The sun still holds his lordship in the sky.
Sometimes, swift walking in a city street
On business bent, or in a crowded hall
An unknown face has flashed a smile at me
And suddenly the day has been replete
With sunshine and I know that back of all
Man’s clouded thought still reigns divinity.
Cape Times 31.7.52
The Ultimate
Beyond us, always, is another door…
The thought that ultimate God can be confined
Within the concept of a mortal mind
Is ludicrous. We reach the farthest shore
Of matter known to man ; uncover lore
Of Ancient wisdom; everywhere to find
But manifesting of some Cause Behind…
Nor ever reach circumference or core.
We split the atom and dissect the clod:
And though with mentally enlightened eyes
We span the universe and chart the skies
And bring to life the seed within the sod;
Beyond, within, our utmost thought there lies
Unknown, Unknowable, Transcendent - God.
The Ultimate
Soul cries out to soul
Across the intervening barrier
Of alien thought
And of inalienable flesh.
In vain I beat upon the door of words.
I strive to scale the steps of understanding,
To gain an access to the plot whereupon
Another builds his house.
Alas,
Love is the only way
To unlock man to man
And even so can open but a window.
The last impenetrable fortress of myself
Remains inviolate.
I cannot, though I would, surrender it
To any mortal siege.
And God, who made the soul impregnable
To any power save His,
Will not assert His own prerogative
To force entrance,
Soul cries to soul
In unavailing perpetuity…
Until at length, enlightened, searching self
Cries out to God alone
And is at rest.
The Ultimate Beauty
There is no definition of beauty, none
To satisfy the ever questing heart.
Like God himself, this attribute is one
Which can be comprehended but in part.
Unfolding consciousness expands and goes
Through opening portals. each of which reveals
New vistas and new doors. Experience knows
But cannot catch in words the truth it feels
The beauty of all beauty's so intense,
So far beyond the limits of the mind
Though impact comes through every quickening sense
The ultimate beauty man can never find.
For be man great or small or young or old
His mind can only have what it can hold.
The Ultimate Sanity
Are you not joyful when a fellow mortal
Ascends some pinnacle beyond the reach
Of ordinary men; unlocks some portal
Hitherto fast-barred, and through the breach
Reveals new vistas opening to man,
Celestial and terrene; or brings to birth
Some haunting beauty, some immortal plan –
Are you not joyful for our common earth
When we can sip the nectar of the sky?
And if men call it you or I or he
Who fills the cup, what matter? You and I
And he are an inseparable we…
Are one within that vast and ultimate sanity,
The knowledge of the oneness of humanity.
The Un-nostalgic Lover
Am I an ingrate, then, who cannot thrive
On scenes nostalgic conjured from the past?
Am I unnatural who know each live
Expanding moment greater than the last −
Who worship at no dim ancestral fire
But find the living flame on every earth,
Unblinkered by remembrance or desire
Accept each beauty at that beauty's worth?
Who joyously, but with unfettered mind
Home gladly here with quiet, flight-poisoned wings
Yet keep the heart-strings loose lest they should bind
Myself to outgrown customs, thoughts, and things?
For not alone does she look back, Lot's wife,
And forfeit thus the new and greater life.
Dorothea Spears
The Unacceptable Prophet
(JCS)
There was always distance in his eyes
From walking such upon the heights alone,
And sweeping seas and mountain tops and skies,
And far horizons of vast unknown.
His little people could not understand
The devastating vastness of his vision.
He saw the world. They only saw their land.
They spurned his wider wisdom with derision.
Upon his Sinaitic Peak he saw
A new far horizon and greater goal,
The process of universal law,
Of healing, making holy, making whole.
But in our valley, with a viewless verve.
We built a little golden calf to serve.
Avondrust Cottage
Klein Constantia Rd, Constantia, C.P.
May 1964
The Undefinable
Why must man define the undefinable
And mutilate the mystery of metaphor?
A living person cannot be reduced to paper,
Produced in canvas, marble, bronze or clay.
No more can literal lines or words confine, much less convey
A living truth, an infinite dimension.
The vastness of immaculate conception,
Virgin birth, baptism, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension . . .
The wine transmuted into blood, the bread made flesh -
We lose the secret hidden in the symbol
When we reduce the symbol to a word, a fact, an act.
We lose the living meaning of the Word defined
Dissected, analysed, reduced to grammar
And mercilessly pinned against the mortal mind.
Can we imprison the livingness of love in a word or a deed?
Can we manufacture a living rose - or even a living seed?
Dorothea Spears
The Unfailing Star
The star shines on as in days of old,
But we, with doubt-dimmed eye, pass by, nor heed
The promise in its rays of glowing gold
That seek to pierce our growing gloom of greed.
So was it even in those olden days:
The heavens were aflame with shining light,
But men, unheeding, held their common ways;
The Wise Men, only took the path of white.
And so today amidst the strain and stress
Of our discordant life some wise men see
And seek to follow it through all life’s press
And find the living Christ. I, too, would be
One of the wise men, following afar
The guidance of our Faith’s unfailing Star.
The Violets
What shall I tell you – that the trees are bare,
The air is hot at noon and cold at night,
The August full moon bright, the Cape so fair?
Or shall I tell you that the violets
You gave me once, a dozen years ago,
Are still so full of fragrance, still so deep
In colour, standing tip-toe still to show
Above luxuriant leaves; that I still keep,
Through various vicissitudes, the strain
That bloomed along your paths when you were here?
Do you remember how they used to fill
The August air with such a heavy scent
That we were well contented just to sit
In silence, drenched in the perfume of that bloom
Drifting through the windows, through the room,
Through the cottage? Another continent
Has claimed you now, another hemisphere,
And other seasons. Do you remember, there,
How fair the Cape was in that other year,
And the scent of the violets? Do you still care?
Airlie Close
Constantia, C.P.
The vision
(In Memoriam – J.C.S.)
May 24th, 1870
We have not forgotten. Deep enshrined
Within our hearts the mighty vision lives,
The vision of the Whole toward which mankind
Inexorably moves, which focussed, gives
A meaning to the Universe, a goal
Towards which creation works with tireless urge;
The tendency of life to form a whole
In which the pieces of this puzzle merge
To form a pattern in a pattern… so
The pattern will evolve to synthesize
These warring elements. This way we grow:
This way eventual consummation lies.
To ever greater whole life gravitates
Where wholeness, healing, holiness awaits.
The Visitor
(From the Persian)
I sat in the doorway, reading the words of the Master.
The sun was troubled by encroaching cloud
And the air a presence of disaster,
And in the sky the pattern of a shroud
How best to right the rhythm Man had broken?
And what the mantric words that should be spoken
I pondered thus beside the garden door.
And silently beyond all mortal seeing
A hand was laid across the taunted strings
And harmony vibrated through my being
And peace that was not borne on earthly wings.
It was the master, standing by my chair
Against the doorway, healing my despair.
Dorothea Spears
The Visitor
I met a 'stranger in etheric space'
Pacing through the planet where the race
Of men, immured in mortal bodies stays.
He gazed amazed, and turning his head said
(In astral language, of course) Pray tell me, friend,
Why these peculiar, often beautiful~ bipeds spend
Their little lives of little nights and days in such peculiar ways.
Everybody always seems to be either doing what you call killing, spilling
What you call blood (which seems to be your symbol of life),
Racking your planetary body with futile strife..
Or else seeking something nobody ever seems to find.
What are you looking for?"
"The alchemists of old
Thought it was gold, I said, "that they could hold,
Or the elixir of life, or the fountain of youth
Or Grail or goal, Samadhi, or ultimate truth,
A Word, a living Light . . . I only know
It's something that Adam lost a million years ago.
Haven't you heard the fable?
And ever since then Cain has been killing Abel
The Way
The way that was taken is taken
It isn't any good, now, saying
“If I had taken that turning
At such and such a corner,
Discerning
The unseen bend
Beyond the third tree,
That altered the end -
If I had gone that way
The day I came to the fork in the road,
Had turned to left or right,
Or chosen that companion to walk with me -
I should have travelled farther before night''
You can’t turn back the hour hand of the years
Or the minute hand of the days
On the clock of time,
Nor unchoose chosen ways
Dorothea Spears
Theophilus Overcoming the Wheel of Rebirth
What shall I say to you, my love, who shed
No tears? How shall the unwatered plant survive
The mortal years? Fears fall dead unfed.
And love unwatered - will it last alive
And thrive and bear the mortal blossoms men
Desire in mortal gardens? The ear hears
When it has lost its sensitiveness, then,
And only eyes incapable of tears
Can see, one said. Before the voice can speak
Above it must have lost the power to wound . . .
It is to speak with Masters that you seek,
To higher cadences you would be tuned?
Impervious alike to joy and pain
You’d stand. But mortal flowers need sun and rain,
Dorothea Spears
Theophilus to His Son
Is not separatism the ultimate evil,
The basic error, the sin against love
Whose property and end is synthesis?
Herein is summed all prophecy and law −
To love the Lord thy God with all thy heart
And mind and soul, thy neighbour as thyself.
Analysis is proper as a means,
Not as an end. Never forget, my son,
All harmony is in the eternal One.
Dorothea Spears
There Is A Loneliness
There is a loneliness
That is not a loneliness for kind,
Not a loneliness of heart
Nor of the mind.
This loneliness is of the soul
Sequestered in a separate form
And longing for the Whole;
The loneliness of the glow
Imprisoned in a lamp at night,
Knowing itself to be
A part of all Light.
19.03.53
There Is No Song
There is no song but shall outlive the singer.
There is no wrong but shall be shrived at last
However the unrelenting finger
Of shadow pointing darkly to the past.
There is no gift but shall reward the giver, no love but shall return a thousand fold;
No rivulet but flows into the river
And hears at least the ocean’s secret told.
There is no soul but shall possess the future.
No furthest goal beyond the nearest reach;
No parting of the everlasting suture
Uniting God and mankind to each other.
Should he be satisfied with earthly things,
Who is created with potential wings?
There Must Be a Purpose
There must be a Purpose somewhere.
Otherwise
This universe . . . this body . . . make no sense.
There must be a reason in the recompense
And energy expenditure that ties
The equilibrium this world relies
Upon, infinitesimal, immense;
Some pattern showing whither, where, and whence.
And knowing the whens and whys or fall and rise.
There must be, somewhere, a cartoon to guide
The weaving of a tapestry so vast.
Working blindly from the underside
In masses and colours inexorably fast,
We must believe, to live and work with pride,
Some planned perfection will appear at last.
Dorothea Spears
There’s still an England
Thank God there's still an England - miles and miles
And miles of England - forests, valleys, hills
Moors and parks and stately homes; and stiles.
And hedgerows full of blossoms; daffodils;
And nightingales and skylarks, and the song
Of thrush and blackbird; swans that sail like ships
On placid waters; evenings soft and long;
And ancient low-browed inns to wet the lips,
And fields and fields of corn, and pastures lush
With vivid green, and comfortable kine;
And miles of trees and rivers, and the hush
Of twilight . . . fruit of apple and of vine . . .
- Miles and miles of England still, thank God.
And Englishmen to till the English sod.
Dorothea Spears
These Days
We tread the beautiful familiar ways
Of dappled days. How slender is the; thread
On which this beauty hangs in every head'.
And who can say how long his trio plays!
Together, Body, Mind and Soul, how long
The tautened strings will hold the tune; that sings
The individual Creation song
For each of us, or what tomorrow brings?
Now consciousness is constantly aware
Of the ephemeral quality of things,
The temporary soar of temporal wings
In transitory time that mortals wear.
Before each beauty now I stop and stare
And listen and absorb and taste and feel
Lest I should waste the beauty time will steal
Inexorably, none know when nor where:
Lamenting, for the loveliness of days
The meagerness of muted mortal praise.
Dorothea Spears
These houses
These houses flesh and bone
Or brick and stone
That shelter us
And that we call our own -
What part of us are they
Or we of them
That shield us - or betray?
Looking at them thus,
Detached, do we form them . . .
Do they form us?
Dorothea Spears
These Precious Hours of Peace
These beautiful hours
Untouched by terror and unstained by hate
Where buds still blossom into flowers
Under friendly skies that do not harbour death!
Do you not know how precious these hours are
Beloved? Do not mar
Their brief perfection by your frosty breath.
Tomorrow some unanswerable Fate
May force this planetary gate
And at a blast release
Upon our world marauding hordes that' wait
To slaughter peace.
Tomorrow may silence the singing of our birds
And rape the budding flowers
Beloved, let us not shatter these' fragile hours
With ugly words.
Dorothea Spears
These Twain Shall be One
To FS
Heart of my Heart, we know not whence
We came, nor why, nor where we go;
Nor for what merit or offence
Our questing lives are ordered so.
Only we know that from your birth
And mine (whatever birth may be)
As YOU and I we paced the earth
Till YOU and I were merged in WE.
In Life’s unmeasured crucible
Where God’s mysterious work goes on,
Before the white-hot flame of love,
We two were welded into one.
No more separate entities
We journey, fearful and dismayed:
As one we meet the Mysteries
And Face the Future – unafraid.
Mrs D. Spears
“Oaklands”
Newlands Ave
Newlands
They say
They say that Beings from the Outer Space
Are beaming rays of light upon the earth
To hasten evolution of the race
Preparing for another, greater birth.
They say that man is standing on the verge
Of such a cataclysm as will shake
The world he knows, from which it will emerge
As from a chrysalis and new forms take.
They say the work of demolition done
The period of transition safely passed
And unimaginable beauty won
Creation consummates a Man at last.
They say immortal man shall cleave this clod
An epoch nearer to the Mind of God.
Dorothea Spears
“They Twain Shall be One”
(Written to my husband, Frank, on the occasion
of his 28th birthday, August 4th, 1933)
Heart of my heart, we know not whence
We came, nor why, nor where we go;
Nor for what merit or offense
Our lives are ordered so.
Only we know that from your birth
And mine (whatever birth may be)
As YOU and I we paced the earth
Till YOU and I were merged in WE.
In life’s unmeasured crucible
Where God’s mysterious work goes on;
Before the white-hot flame of love,
We two were welded into one.
No more as separate entities
We journey fearful and dismayed;
As one we meet the mysteries
And face the future - unafraid.
Dorothea Spears
Things of Which to Beware
Half-truths, more dangerous than lies;
Weeds that masquerade as flowers:
Facts so masked that they disguise
Their real identity, even from the wise,
And arrogate unpossessed powers.
This Adolescent Present
Tomorrow is only yesterday with whiskers,
And yesterday’s tomorrow at the breast
Imprisoned in the adolescent present
Man makes the pilgrimage from east to west,
From dawn till dusk. Tomorrow never comes
And yesterday is never now or here:
The world is never toothless.
Ruthless Time dictates the nightingale and chanticleer
There is no yesterday and no to-morrow…
The world is never old nor ever young
In our experience. We have but heard
The sons of Eden and Apocalypse sung.
To-day can only hold to-day in its hand.
The rest is hearsay… who can understand?
This Art Needs Solitude
If we could wander lone like Wordsworth’s cloud,
Commune with Nature unassailed by Time,
Perhaps upon our page the thoughts would crowd,
And images approaching the sublime.
If we could climb the heights of silence, bold
Against the solitude of flaming sky
Perhaps we too, the vision might behold,
Might catch a glimpse of Greatness passing by.
If we could discount Time and seal the hour,
Could loiter where the singing winds have trod,
Perhaps we too, might pluck the spirit flower:
Perhaps we, too, might hear the voice of God.
For even in the noisy ways of life
We glimpse the glory, sometimes, through the strife.
Veritas
Constantia
This Is An Age Of Conflict
This is an age of conflict.
Is man it’s victim or its instigation?
The energy engendered is the mind
Is so potential that the heart is shaken
In contemplation. The possibilities stagger the imagination.
Think! Is Man the co-creator
Caught in the web wrought of his own thought?
Think!
Even the seasons are uncertain.
Unruly clouds do battle in the skies
And whirlwinds take their toll of life
Violence seizes portions of the earth
And shakes them as a terrier shakes a rat,
Mercilessly, setting
Mammoth tidal waves in motion,
Stirring sullen depths of unexploited ocean.
The bitter breath of winter breaks and blights the land,
And parching drought, and devastating flood,
And fire out of hand.
Animals run amok, and sharks grow bold.
Lawlessness and violence and accidents
And murder multiply, and strife
And suicides are rife; and little wars
Break out like running sore
Across the body of the earth.
And all the while the mind of Man devises
Mightier destruction and wonders with surprise
The violence by violence begotten.
Reflected on our roads and in our skies.
Airlie Close
Constantia, C.P.
This Is What New York Said To Me
I met New York on Fifth Avenue
At 28th Street, on a Saturday morning
When March said goodbye.
The wind had scarce discovered it was Spring
But the sun knew it was April.
And what did New York say to me
That April day?
She sang.
She sang a hymn of praise.
She put into words of concrete and marble and stone
the dreams of the men who planned;
The toil of the men who laboured to make the dream come true;
The skill of the men who built and knew that it was good.
I heard it all as I paced the unbusy street
And my heart was uplifted within me
Because it was a good song
And the words were clear.
But when it swelled to the climax,
When I came to the Channel and looked West –
My soul took off its shoes.
The tulips in the garden were lifting bright faces,
The fountains in the pools were lifting high voices
And that mighty dream in limestone,
Radio City
Was raising its stones to heaven
And shouting praise to God.
And I was lifted out of myself
By the volume of the song.
I know not if the men who dreamed
And planned and executed
Knew that they were writing psalms in stone,
That they were praising God –
But all their work was shouting “Hallelejah!”
. . . . . .
And afterwards, inside that vaulting hall,
I heard the organ and the singers
And the dancers, and it seemed to me
They too, were praising God
In the beautiful rhythm of the Terpsichore.
For surely who aspires to perfection
Aspires to God,
Whatever name he gives to his creation.
Perhaps I was lucky.
Perhaps it was only the day or the time of the year.
Perhaps if I go again it will not be so.
But this is what New York said to me
That Saturday morning when March had said goodbye
And the wind had scarce discovered that it was Spring.
But the sun knew it was April.
This Loveliest Cape
Familiar beauty never stales for me,
- If any beauty can be said to be familiar,
When each little new-born day
That shapes it differs in some subtle way
From every other day – nor fails to free
The folded wings of immortality
A little, pinioned by this mortal clay.
Beauty always has so much to say
That repetition cannot dull nor sight
Betray her words, that run the range of light
From hour to hour and day to day and year to year,
In star and flower, and far and near,
In seas and mountains, trees and fountains, flight of birds, and changing skies, and day and night.
Each repetition makes more clear and dear
This manifested beauty now and here.
This Only Do I Ask
This only do I ask of Death –
Rest – from interminable words,
Disputant men and dogs and cats,
The noisy bickering of birds.
This only do I ask of Death –
Not that sweet music wrap me round,
But that there shall envelop me
A silence that surpasses sound.
This only do I ask of Death –
Complete surcease from sound of strife,
For Silence, and that quiet Peace
Which I have asked in vain of Life.
Newlands C.P.
This Shall Remain
What is man that Thou should’st mind his way?
-Nothing but a model from the sod,
A fairly fashioned bit of earth, a clod;
A pretty image from a lump of clay,
Allotted such a span of work and play
As pleases his great fashioner, his God
Who rules his puppets with an iron rod
The while it suits His pleasure. Then – decay.
Decay…an earthy clod…and dust again.
If this were all ‘twere scarcely worth the strife
To keep alight the flame that men call life.
But when all else is gone, this shall remain –
The breath of God, which man has named the soul
-This shall remain, and justify the whole.
Thought and Word and Deed
How can love and hatred occupy
The same dimension without rending apart
The fragile fabric of the human heart,
Without the one giving the other the lie?
Words are nails we use to crucify
Defenceless love; a word a poisoned dart
To start a festering wound that all the art
Of Aesculapius cannot put by.
And what are wars but words manifest,
The unforgiving hatreds of mankind
Converged and merged and into being brought?
None is guiltless who harbours hate in the breast:
War is born in the heart and bred in the mind,
The deed that follow the word that follows the thought.
Airlie Close
Constantia, C.P.
THOUGHT FOR A MOONLESS NIGHT
Flamboyant Autumn puts a nip in the air
And startles the summer swallows into flight.
The pyracanthus berries burning bright
Against the hedges flaunt their flame and dare
The riotous redhot pokers to despair.
And overhead the crystal clear delight
Of winter stars against a moonless night
Compels a wondering world to stand and stare.
You worlds a million years of light away—
Do you know cycling seasons? Does your Spring
Revive a rested earth from Winter’s sting?
Does Autumn paint your hills and valleys gay?
Or is your beauty one we cannot sing.
Who know the mortal meaning of decay?
Thought For Dark Days
I do not know why suddenly the sky
Is overcast, and why the blessed sun
Is darkened and the pathway overrun
With shadows past lights but intensify.
Across the face of heaven storm rides high:
The birds that late were singing one by one
Are silenced, and Earth’s robe of peace, late-spun,
Is rent by Tempest’s talons hem to thigh.
But of this one thing I am utterly sure:
Whatever darkness fall, whatever night –
The causes are all earthbound that obscure
From earth the blessing of the source of light.
Whatever clouds of storm the heavens fill
The glory of the sun is constant still.
Thought for Goodwill Sunday
(March 3rd, 1946)
To celebrate the supper of Our Lord,
To drink the wine, partake the broken bread
Come, gather ye about the blessed Board
And eat and drink with Him, as he has said.
But wait… If in your heart be any hate
Or any unforgiveness, leave the plate.
Go forth unblessed, but dare not defile
This cup with hate-contaminated lip!
Go forth and with your brother reconcile
Before the blood of God you dare sip.
Or to your own damnation do you drink…
Himself has said it… Stay your hand and think.
“Oaklands”
Newlands Ave, Newlands, C.P.
Thought for Meditation
Three words there are that spring from one root.
When man has solved the secret of' their flowering
Men shall taste the sweetness of their fruit.
A trinity of words, a cryptic key for man and men and planet peace empowering.
Heal and whole and holy . . . one in three.
20/11/57
Thought Of You
As soft as the mist
Stealing down the hill
to keep its tryst
with autumn: as the dew
unheralded and still,
condensing, cool and kind …
Is the thought of you
in my tired mind.
Thoughts For Union Day
I
Our trouble is that we’ll not bury our dead.
The odour of corruption taints our days
From putrid corpses of old words long said
And rotting carcasses of ancient frays
Wherein resentment’s maggots thrive and grow
To winged hates, contaminating all
They touch; and fear, that poison deadly, slow,
Injustice – spreading, floods the mind with gall.
Come, let us build a mighty funeral pyre
Upon this Union Day, and free our lives
Of ancient ill, and fear, and fan the fire
Until no maggot-breeding thing survives:
Then hand in hand, in sacrificial mood
Re-dedicate us to the Common Good.
II
I think it takes big men to rise above
The pettiness or personality.
I think it takes great vision, broader love
To stake this span of brief mortality,
Submerging self to fit the Master Plan,
In greater loyalties the less forgot:
Subjecting love of men to love of Man
That seeks to know not Who is right, but What.
Small souls, afflicted with Myopia,
Who cannot see beyond the expectant near,
Can never glimpse that bright Utopia
Beyond their puny dykes of hate and fear
With which they strive to stem this breaching sea,
The evolution of Humanity.
“Veritas”
Constantia, C.P.
Three o’clock
Three o’clock in the morning, or thereabouts,
When the sap of life is lowest and sleep at bay,
When mind becomes a prey to creeping doubts
That seek an entrance between the night and the day;
When the sign of water would quench the sign of fire . . .
The minutes pause in their urgency of flight
And the moon is dark, and silence deep with desire
And thought is unobstructed by sound or sight . . .
The heart can open the portals of despair
When will is weak, for things undone or done,
For unlaid ghosts are always waiting there
Where the traffic of day is ended and not begun.
And yet, to him who can transcend the power
Of earth the hour can open into a flower.
Dorothea Spears
Through A Glass, Darkly
Amongst a multiplicity of mirrors I revolve.
I turn this way and that, and catch a brief reflection
In every looking glass, seeking to resolve
The problem of the personality’s imperfection.
For each man sees his world and all that walk therein
But in the mirror of his individual mind:
What every man is now and will be and has been
By each is shaped and typed and coloured and confined.
I see a strange myself in every different eye,
And in my own, for each man has his reckoning rod,
Creates, according to his glass, his earth and sky,
His biased history, his unfamiliar God.
And man will never understand the Whole
Until he transcends his mirror and sees with the eyes of the soul.
Airlie Close, Constantia, C.P.
THROUGH SILENCE
Sometimes I
think if we are very still
Within ourselves, emotionless and clear.
Converting all the being to an ear
Intent on listening ... had we this skill...
Then we might hear the breathing of the hill.
The breathing of the valley... we might hear
The subtle singing of the atmosphere
Interpreting inexorable Will.
Alas! Too close to the environing clod.
We cannot
even understand the trees
Who gossip day-long with the unseen breeze.
And yet I know Man will not always plod—
Some day our ears will be attuned to these
Now mute immutable syllables of God.
Tightrope Walkers
Come, beloved, let us stretch the cord
That lies across the vision of the word…
Tauter… tauter… tauter. Let us dare
To walk the tightrope of the quivering air,
Not looking down, but straight ahead to see
The distant goal of immortality
For you and me, and being one for me
And you. So gossamer the thread we tread
Suspended over such stupendous heights
Who knows what heights and depth? Or what the lights
That beckon us below, above, ahead!
And who shall say which light more dangerous is
To those who seek to bridge the earth’s abyss?
Attention falter not nor flesh distract –
We yet may cheat oblivion in this act.
“Veritas”
Constantia, C.P.
Time
The time that is and the time that was
And the time that is to be -
An ocean flowing incessantly
Around and in and over me.
Sometimes I feel that if I had a ski
Time would lift me and I would ride
A wave from crest to crest and reach the shore,
Exalted with the exhilaration
Of wind and tide.
But other times I have cried
That the Sea is dragging me down,
That I am overwhelmed by time
And like to drown
In the ocean that rolls relentlessly
Around and in and over me.
Time that is and time that was
And time that is to be.
And then I know what saints and sages
Meant who spoke of God as the Rock of Ages.
Dorothea Spears
Time for a Birth
Creation and destruction meet and merge
In every kingdom; life and death deploy
Their forces in the unrelenting urge
To make and mar; to fashion and destroy.
The synthesis that carries evolution
Through all the painful processes of growth
And birth and rebirth, seeking its solution,
Is under the dictatorship of both.
And so with man . . . if worlds emerge as willed
The old must be destroyed to shape the new
There must be some to demolish, some to build…
But the rhythm of time and place is sensed by few.
Yet here's the secret of evolving earth-
To know the time for a death and the time for a birth.
Time for a song
Today I will sing for the joy of the thing.
I’ll share the air with the bird on the wing . . .
I’ll share the sky with the clouds and the rain,
Knowing tomorrow will follow today;
That blue is hiding behind this gray.
I’ll share with earth the knowledge that Spring
Waits to be wakened to join in the lay,
Waits to be wakened, nor waits in vain.
When day’s too heavy and night too long
That is the time, my heart, for a song.
I’ll share humanity’s laughter and pain.
Dorothea Spears
31.5.1973
Time for rejoicing?
Why do you sit so silent in this breast
Oh Heart, with joyful Easter drawing near?
“Can mankind stand this searing searching test,”
Said Heart, “when this Gethsemane is here?”
New Calvaries are dark against the sky
And Judas, Pilates, Peters play their part
While you and I stand by and watch Him die
What room's for Easter in a fearful heart?
Dorothea Spears
Time for Song
Sing … I will sing for the joy of the thing,
Sharing the world with the bird on the wing;
Sharing the sky with the wind and the rain,
Knowing tomorrow will follow today,
That January is hiding May;
Sharing with earth the knowledge that spring
Waits to be wakened to join in the day
Waits to be wakened, not waits in vain;
Sharing all human joy and pain.
When day is too heavy and night too long
This is the time, my heart for a song.
B.F.H 19.1.73
Time Knows
One who has encountered it will not forget
The Mona Lisa smile upon the face of Time,
Whatever sun may rise or set,
That says "I know . . . I know
Mocking.. wise.
Whichever way we turn, however go,
We glance across our shoulders into those inscrutable eyes
In fleeting greeting spanning the years
That lie ahead and the years that lie behind
According to our reckoning:
The sealed and unsealed days
That we call yesterday, today, tomorrow; forbidding, beckoning:
The sealed and unsealed ways
We know as present, future, past,
Designed for indivisibility at last
A still serenity upon the brow
Of an eternal now
Beyond the consciousness of separative mind.
Inscrutable Time, I cross myself, and bow.
But someday, seeking, I shall find
At the end of some interminable mile
The secret symbol of your enigmatic smile.
36.10.1961
Time To Be Still
Shall I never have time to be still again?
Down in the Woods there’s a whisper low
Where the pine trees talk of the long ago,
And the sky squirrels chatter as they play.
But one must listen to the live-long day
To understand what the grey squirrels say;
And one must have leisure to lie at ease
To make a close acquaintance with trees.
Down in the Woods the wild things throng;
The forest is full of chatter and song –
But I am busy the whole day long;
Busy with helpless, trivial things
That must be done, though an angel sings.
Shall I never have time to be still again?
Down in the Woods, the quiet shade
The birds hold converse, all unafraid:
The rivulet gossips of grotte and nook
Where the mountain disas lean to look
At shy reflections in crystal brook –
But one must have time to lie and dream
To understand a bird or a stream.
Down in the Woods are visions new,
And Song and Story and Dreams -come -true
But I am busy the whole day through.
Old Duty forbids me to tarry there
And stops my ears with the fingers of care.
The forest calls, and calls, in vain-
Shall I never have time to be still again?
Time to Stare
O Time, stand still! The earth has grown so fair
I cannot compass it with mortal eyes.
The canvas is too crowded – seas and skies
And mountains, spring and autumn, everywhere
The beating heart of beauty is laid bare,
And I am breathless as each colour cries.
For every season, as the shuttle plies,
Is weaving wonder for the world to wear.
At every turn of the way I am aware
Of new dimensions, shaken by surprise
Of sudden suns that set new saps to rise …
Sometime, sometime perhaps I shall not care
The swiftness of the eager earth’s replies –
O Time, stand still, and let me stare and stare!
Veritas
Constantia, C.P.
Time Waits for None
The time will come, when Love no longer litters
Careless largess on Life's casual beaches,
And when the dew of dawn no longer glitters
Diamond-glinted on the rides and reaches,
On spider-spangled woods and ways that glisten
Sequin-sown against the shining days.
And there will be no time to stop and listen
(Could we hear) Aurora's paraphrase
Of Nature's hieroglyphs that would unfold
(Could we but read) the meaning of the earth,
The transmutation of our lead to gold,
The innerness of life and death and birth.
The time will come when unexultant age
With tired hands, will turn the unread page.
Dorothea Spears
6.2.1965
Time’s Slave
Time is a hard taskmaster.
The bright days come and go
And the woods are full of promise and dreams
That over flow
Like the Spring streams.
But I, at the tip of a whip
Flicked by unyielding Time
Dance to a sterner measure than this;
To a firmer rhyme
Than the wind’s kiss.
I think “Some day I’ll defy him.
This time”, but at heart I know
I haven’t the shining courage to linger
When Time says “Go!”
And snaps his finger.
Nor Time and his henchman, Duty,
Gather the purse-strings tight
And he who defies goes hungry.
And I,
Though the woods be bright
Rebel – and comply.
Timely Tempest
Blow, wind, blow! Drive. incessant rain, and test
The fatal false security of premature Spring that covers our impoverishment
With brief unready blossom.. Quicken, ere it is too late, our ancient zest
For justice − mitigate our cumulative thirst that hides beneath the surface with tempests heaven-sent.
We have need of a tempestuous gale
To blow the cobwebs from our self-indulgent soul,
To lash our latent longings to avail
And drive our dormant possibilities to that premeditated goal
For which we are created − the infinite well-being of the vast indivisible whole.
God! Blow at our ears until we hear, our eyes until we see
The fatal limitations of our imbecility
Dorothea Spears
‘Tis Joy, Not Time Has Wings.
They tell me Time has wings. It is not so.
On leaden feet the lazy moments go,
Fly swifter, Time; fly swifter on your way!
The moments lag along and halt and yearn
For that which will not come, with eyes that burn.
Oh Time, fly on! Why stretch each night and
day?
With every moment I can but discern
That love is gone, and love will not return.
Fly then, dull Time! Since he comes not, why
stay?
I ask each moment to make haste, and lo.
My only answer is remorseless no-
Oh, heartless Time, to loiter thus and play!
But Time smiles sadly on his round, and slow,
“ ‘Tis Joy, not Time, has wings. Did you not
know?”
To A Fellow Exile
You’re hungry for good old New York,
Chicago, Washington
Or any place in God’s own land –
Here, shake: I’m with you, son.
- Broadway nights and Brooklyn Days
For hands that grip like steel.
And men that look you in the eyes
And say just what they feel-
I’ve journeyed right from East to West :-
I’m fain to go again –
From Boston to Seattle, and
From Oregon to Maine.
I’m longing for the “Automat”
The feel of cents and dimes;
For sandwich (Club) and chicken (Fried)
Ah, those were good times!
You’re hungry for the Stars and Stripes
And all it typifies:-
I’m with you heart and soul, my lad,
Here, shake. (Confound my eyes!)
To a Friend on her Coming of Age
There’s a world full of trouble and care around about you,
It gropes in the darkness of Fear,
But I know it would be more despondent without you,
And your irrepressible cheer.
And I dream that your Soul’s love shall never decay,
That year kindness will outlast this brief mortal stay.
It is Springtime and Nature’s no longer reposing
Her long Winter’s rest is now o’er,
And the bud’s shyly open, to see flowers disclosing
Their beauty for all to adore.
And ‘tis your springtime too, but the bud of your life
Needs must open upon a world’s malice and strife.
And yet hid ‘neath the leaf mould of sickness and sorrow,
The flowers of sweet nature still bloom,
And I pray that you find them, and happily borrow
A peace to dispel Earthly gloom
Better still, may you even be one of the flowers
To be only more fresh for disheartening showers!
To A friend seeking To Disparage
His Virtues
In my hands you hold my faith in all:
Should you fail me, faith in all would go,
So deep in you ‘tis set that, once uprooted,
In no new soil could it be forced to grow.
For I believe in you as I believe
In beauty, and in faith, and in hope and in love;
As I believe man still retains God’s image,
And as I hold the souls is homed above.
Then, as you value my immortal soul,
I pray that you will disappoint me not.
For with my faith in you goes all my faith,
And life sans faith would be a sorry lot.
Then seek not to destroy my idol, friend,
Lest I should be found faith-less in the end.
Dorothea Graham Botha
The Epworth Press
1925
To a Hot Bath
Beautiful you are. You fold
Me in your warm embrace;
You comfort me against your breast;
My limbs with peace enlace.
Whence comes your limpid water? From
The sun’s kiss on the sea,
Or gathered dews of morning, cool
With pure virginity?
Of from some ravenous mountain stream
That feeds on new-born snows,
Or from some tree-loved meadow brook-
Whence it comes? Whither it flows?
From heaven, surely: some bereaved
Soft cloud has wept in white.
Perhaps ‘twas rainbow filtered in
Its sudden earthward flight.
When comes the warmth that tempers you?
From toil of man and God –
A thousand years of sun and rain
Imprisoned in a sod.
How many fertile brains have wrought,
How many minds have planned
To bring your healing beauty forth
At touch of mortal hand?
Who perfected your shining taps?
Who thought your clever drain?
Who dreamed in some inspired delight,
Your gleaming porcelain?
Men in the desert dream of you
In fevered dreams. They miss
Your warm embrace on wearied limbs
More than a woman’s kiss.
Newlands C.P.
To A Philosophic Friend
(Who Urges Me to Deeper Thought in my Verse)
You write to imprison thought; I to escape it.
Your pen is your weapon: mine is a silver flute.
Words are your tools to seize on thought and shape it.
Words are the notes I play when the fiddle’s mute.
Words are the wings on which I soar to Heaven:
They are your armour, guarding you through Hell.
Beauty and rhythm to me are all life’s leaven –
You see? My opiate is rhyming. Well,
Where do we meet? I understand your striving,
But you won’t trust yourself to my silver wings;
And I will be no warder of words, friend,
Driving the thought to bay. No, mine is a muse that sings.
Go on with your philosophies, your trying
To conquer thought with the weapon that is your pen.
But mine is only a silver flute crying
From my heart to the lonely hearts of men.
To a Veld Flower
What would you say, oh fragile flower
So short thy life, so swift thine hour –
What would you say, you modest bloom
Whose cradle is so close to the tomb?
What is the message you would bring
Across the hills from the land of Spring?
This is the message I bring to thee,
Oh slow of heart, couldst thou but see –
This is the message for which I came,
Writ in letters of gold and flame.
That beauty and love can wake from a clod
When touched by the wonderful hand of God.
To Cage a Thought
O bird of thought that I have sought to hold,
Untamed one, come, till I have wrought a cage
Of words for you. I'll put it on a page
Of pure white paper like the sage of old.
Alas! I'm no artificer in gold
As he, nor lapidary; but engage
To fashion you a setting shall assuage
Captivity, and shelter from the cold.
thought uncaught that flutters to and fro
The unfenced boundaries of the brain at will,
Unseen by others, let me hold you fast
Till I have wrought a cage of words to show
Your form as I have seen it. Oh stay still
Till I have snared and shared your song at last!
Dorothea Spears
To Each His Own Concept Of Beauty
There is no definition of beauty, none
To satisfy the ever-questing heart.
Like God Himself, the attribute is one
Which can comprehend but in part.
Unfolding consciousness expands and goes
Through opening doors, each one of which reveals
New vistas, further doors. Experience knows
But cannot put in words the truth it feels.
The beauty of all beauty’s so intense.
So far beyond the limits of the mind;
Though the impact comes through every quickened sense
The ultimate beauty we can never find.
For be man great or small or young or old
His mind can only have it can hold.
“Veritas”
Constantia, C.P.
To Free France
One came to me and said
that France was dead.
I laughed and said “You lie.
France is immortal:
France cannot die!”
I weep for wounded France;
not hopelessly, as one who fears
that she will never more join the dance,
or that the heavy years
have conquered her eternal youth;
I weep, in truth,
But not as one bereaved. My tears
Are for the pain,
the mute, intolerable pain
of stricken France
bound to the conqueror’s wheel, bereft of shield,
with a broken lance.
But she will arise again.
Although betrayed within, without,
She will arise again, to flout
Her foe, and purge her of this stain.
Aye, weep for France, but not as for one dead:
For she will raise her head
Tomorrow, and triumphantly, cry
“France is immortal:
France cannot die!”
To Greece
When through the heaven Apollo drove the sun;
When Psyche with immortal Cupid wed,
And Diane from the Vale of Tempe led
Her love-lorn shepherd, fair Endymion:
When Venus queened, and Ariadne spun,
And Niobe her tears unceasing shed;
When deathless Echo from Narcissus fled –
A hero race beneath Olympus won
The god’s approval. But oblivion
Has long since buried them, the savants said;
That heroes and the gods alike were dead,
The glory that was Greece forever done.
But once again the gods have oped heav’n’s portals
To claim heroic Greece for the immortals.
To Live My Life Again
“Ah, to live my life again!” I cried.
There entered and stood quietly by my side
A spirit form: he looked at me and smiled
Tenderly, as at a wayward child.
“I’ll grant your wish,” he said, “but first be sure
Of your desire before I close the door
And shut away the years that you have known;
The lessons you have learned, the things you own.”
He paused, and made to wave a golden bar
That would erase the years, the things that are,
And give me life a-new to make or mar.
“No, stay,” I said, “be not so hasty, friend.
Though I be old and getting towards the end,
Some things I’d like to ask before I go
Back that long lane. For instance, I would like to know
I have some friends whose love I treasure much –
Can you assure me in the new life such?
This love that sends a shining ray of sun
Right through the years – can I have such an one?”
The spirit smiled, and shook his head.
“I can assure you nothing, friend.” He said.
“I’m sorry, but I dare not risk these things,
Not even for the chance to reign with kings:
But can’t you just erase a year or two?
I’ve done some foolish things, as men will do.
I’ve made mistakes and – yes, I’ve sinned -I’ll say
It plainly without gloss. Come, take away
these years of which I stand in shame, and let
them be forgotten as I would forget.”
The spirit smiled again. The “Name the year,”
He sighed, “the memory that most you fear.”
I thought of that old sin that left its mark
Forever on my heart, and of that dark
Tempestuous time of doubt that tore my soul;
Of many foolish acts. I viewed the whole
Of all my faulty life, and sighed again,
Because I could not sacrifice one sin, one pain.
I could not spare one single sad mistake,
Or give up any throbbing old heartache.
For every doubt and sin some lesson taught,
And every grief and pain some peace had wrought.
Yes, every struggle, failing at the time,
Had worked somehow to ends that were sublime.
And so I cried, “Go! Take your wand of gold,
But leave my years to me, and I’ll stay old!”
To Mary Turner and Foster Bailey on their departure
From Cape Town
To have you here, to have been one with you
For even these few minute of this day
Of life – it has been good. Tomorrow, too,
We know that we shall meet upon the Way
Somewhere, somehow, smiling, knowing then
That we have met before and shall meet again.
Then go in God with peace… and if we do
Or do not meet again in form today
It matters little. Knowing this is true
“Goodbye” seems such a futile thing to say:
So I’ll not say it… just “may joy increase
In you and us”, and “Go in God with peace.”
To See the Real
The literal mind's too little, too confined
To see behind the symbol to the real.
Our sated words are weighted to conceal
From superficial sight . . . so sure, so blind
So short it must define the undefined
And indefinable. It must reveal
The unrevealable the heart can feel
But never formulate to fit the mind.
Why must we strive to shackle, pinion, bind
The wing whose power to lift the form to light
Can function only in unfettered flight?
Dear God: Preserve us from the literal mind
That must translate the senses into sight
And weigh the world in words, assayed and signed.
Dorothea Spears.
To Spring
Spring is comin’; Can yo’ feel it
In the very atmosphere
In the sort o’ lazy sunshine,
An’ the clouds at seem so near?
All the birds is singin’ an’ the
Vi’lets bloomin’ ever’where:
Elixer o’ life, it seems like
Is a floatin’ in the air.
Tree is putting on their spring duds;
Women folk too. I see
Ev’ry kind o’ fangled bonnets;
New, or least pertend to be:
Coats o’ ev’ry kind o’ colours;
Mustard, Copenhagen blue;
Green, or any other shadin’;
Just be sure it’s bright ‘ll do.
Dandelions all aroun’ us
Yaller-headed, happy things;
Seem t’ make this whole place gladder
With the brightness that they brings.
Winders in the schoolhouse open;
Balmy breezes driftin’ through;
Makes me feel sort o’ sadness
As my thoughts fly off t’ you.
An’ sometimes it makes me joyous,
An’ I want t’ yawn an’ stretch,
An’ go wallowin’ in grasses.
Feel like a teacher is a wretch
T’ keep us in a day like this un,
When the sky, an’ birds an’ trees
Are a callin’ us t’ come out
An’ be comp’ny for the bees.
Spring’s an awful funny season
Don’ know how t’ take it, quite:
Sometimes make yo’ feel so lonesome:
Other times yo’ heart’s s’ light,
Feel like you could fly away off
If yo’ had but half the chance;
An’ sometimes yo’ can’t describe it,
Seems the whole world’s in a trance.
Dorothea Johnson
To the Memory of A.J.H
An English Gentleman
No need of stone to keep his memory young,
Of edifice or tree,
He made his mark his fellowmen among,
In hearts of you and me.
Old Time can pass as speedy as he will,
But still we shall revere
That noble life. Tho’ years may pass, we still
Remember him – sincere!
Sincere was he in all he undertook,
And upright to the end.
His work is such that made his Maker look,
And Heavenly Blessing send.
No fame or wealth hid his ambition need –
No pomp or high degree.
But poor men weep, rememb’ring how he’d plead
That they might happier be.
How bitter can a life of man be spent,
Than lifting up his friend?
And often has his kindly hand had been lent
He gave it – to the end.
To the Weather
(With abject apologies to Shelley.)
Hail to thee, blithe Weather!
Spring thou’rt called in vain –
That from Heaven or near it
Pourest forth thy pain
In profuse showers of unpremeditated rain.
Raining still and raining
From some cloud it flowest;
Gala hearts a-paining
As full well thou knowest,
Yet blowing still dost rain, and raining ever blowest.
Waking or asleep
Still the rain doth teem,
Still the heavens weep
While of Spring we dream;
Oh how could’st thou produce this ne’er abating stream?
We look before and after
And pine for what is not:
Every roof and rafter
With thy rain is fraught
Our holidays are full of colds that we have caught.
Tell us, prithee, whither
As you plan the thing,
Inconsiderate Weather,
We may yet see Spring –
The World should carol then, as now I’m trying to sing.
To Whom It May Concern − Whatever His
Colour or Creed or Nationality
"Who shall say what is good for My people? Who?
Where is such a bold, presumptuous man
As thinks that he and he alone can span
The Mind of God and wield it − is it you?
Two thousand years ago My Word broke through
The hard hypocrisy that sought to ban
Inconsequential nothings, and to plan
The elevation of a chosen few.
It gave you Love to be the key, not hate;
Proclaimed the Sabbath made for man and not
The man for Sabbath; the goal not self, but others.
I gave you Oneness. And you separate
My word in little bits. Have you forgot
That in My Father's sight His sons are brothers?” −
Dorothea Spears
To –
I have steeled my heart against you, dearest friend,
Lest I should be betrayed by my desire
Into believing death is not the end;
To finding warmth before a painted fire:
For fear my very need of you should lend
Verisimilitude to dreams and sire
A mort of ego phantoms that pretend
To come from you, and every one a liar.
So should you still be You now you have shed
The body that I loved, and should you seek
To pass the threshold once again, and speak,
You will not find it easy; for this head,
Knowing the heart to be too fond and weak,
Proclaims there is no traffic with the dead.
Today
Why should I not rejoice today?
Having been born with a heart that sings;
Having been born with a heart with wings;
Why should I cage them and clip them and say
“Life is too serious, now, to be gay”?
What though I know that to-morrow brings
Death and disaster and desolate things;
What, though words and weather betray -
Should I not gather the flowers by the way?
What if tomorrow the world at my feet
Crumbles to dust - is today the less sweet?
The moon and the stars and the sun and the play
Of light and shadow, the laughter of May;
A song in the heart and a lilt in the feet -
What if tomorrow be liar and cheat?
Thanks be to God for today, for today!
Dorothea Spears
Tokai
Deep in the forest towering trees have rings
About their boles. Some eager morning I,
Seeking a freedom where the forest sings,
Will find an empty place against the sky.
And all the squirrels, and feathered folk with wings
Will cry to see the monarchs humbled lie,
Who must have seen so many lofty things
Standing so firmly tall, so finely high.
Let me not mourn them. Progress is patterned there.
Rather let me joy that I have known
This leafy sky, this vastly pillared air,
These shady ways to share: have made mine own
The friendship of the forest; been aware
Of life and death, and found it very fair.
Dorothea Spears
Tom-Boy October
Tom-boy October’s come Southward again,
Ruffling the minds of conventional men;
Rude and unruly, the wind in her hair,
Smiling and pouting and devil-may-care…
Tom-boy October! And all down the street
The trees lean to greet her, and rushes the sweet
Scent of the syringa, of broom and of rose:
Tall yellow irises stand on their toes,
And myriads of gay young sweet peas scale the wall
To welcome October; the Foxgloves stand tall;
Seedlings leap up overnight, lest they miss
The thrill of the hoyden, October’s, rough kiss.
Back with the wind from the East and the South
She races, an impudent smile on her mouth scuttles
Laugh with her, then when the wind races by
And clouds are like a snowstorm storming the sky
This is no time to be prudent and sober –
Back to the South has come tom-boy October!
Too Deep for Tears
There are thoughts which lie too deep for words;
And griefs too hard to be dissolved in 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. We do not weep.
So we bury thought – but the heart knows
And is appalled, watching the doors close.
To think a single gene of colour can seal
So many doors forever! Can this be real?
Airlie Close
Constantia C.P
Too Near the Sun?
Now one can travel anywhere by air
Within the day, the world has grown so small
That he who has the ready wherewithal
Can wrap it round him like a cloak. And wear
It with a swagger. If he has the fare,
And the key to open the door of each national wall.
However tall, any man can call
What tune he will, and sit in any chair.
Now distance is outdated. Day and night
Have lost their meaning. Autumn and the Spring
Are interchangeable. Dark and light
Are relative, and weight has found a wing.
0 Icarus - the triumph of this flight
(But Icarus . . . why remember such a thing?)
-Dorothea Spears.
Too tired
Do not bring me beauty now,
Nor music. I have had my fill
Of feeling. All I ask for now,
Is to be utterly still.
Dorothea Spears
Tot Siens
(For Sirkar)
We always parted on a note of laughter,
You and I, nor ever said goodbye
With Sorrow for the empty morrow after.
Knowing the mime of time and the face of space
For the ephemeral images they are
We held division in derision. Why
Should I now cry, that you have hitched a star
And cut a chord that prisoned you in place
And journeyed suddenly, swiftly, may be far?
But yesterday we said, nodding the head
“We live on Eternity now” and laughed to feel
The truth that we had taught and thought and read
Was here and now and definite and real.
. . .
The word of your death is music in the air
That’s bare of your flesh, but full of the song of you.
I will not weep, my friend. See, I sing, too.
And touch the hem of the robe of light you wear.
Train Journey
Travelling by train, great swathes
Of landscape obtrude the imagination
Until the eye, normally obsessed by print,
Is forced instead to rest upon the view,
Those muddy browns and greys and the bright
Splash of that incredibly fresh green
Which is the English spring personified.
Long lilting lines of hills
Gentle in the distance, ribbons
Of red brick make criss-cross patterns
And gap-toothed hedge
Straggles across the foreground
Like a frame uncertain of its purpose.
I think of last evening and the room
We sat in, peopled with landscapes
And one lovely nude, walking away,
The full-length figure of a girl
In flesh tones vibrant and compassionate.
I think of how a man’s life danced
Upon the screen, and I remember
Earlier in the week, walking
In Lowry landscapes in the street,
His stick-like figures crowding on the mind.
A man obsessed by loneliness, he painted crowds
That scurried to and fro and left him there
A lone observer of their eccentricity.
I watch my fellow travellers and my thoughts run on
Into the landscape.
Transformation
Lucky are we who catch the moment of bliss
That flashes like a flame between time and time,
The turning point men nearly always miss
Between that and this, the changing of the chime;
The day between the days of winter and spring,
The moment between The moment of: sleeping and waking
Before we lose the nebulous feel of the thing,
The brief perfection between the dream and the making.
I intercepted one this very day -
An oak that was a winter filigree
Of interlacing branches stood by the way
When leaves were only a mist in the mind of the tree -
Yet that green aura enfolded it like a flame,
I stood entranced, and a season went and came.
Dorothea Spears
Transition ?
There was a time, before it was the fashion
To discount rhyme and virtue, and depart
From old accepted disciplines of passion
And old established disciplines of Art.
A time when wrong was wrong and white was white
And men could understand a play, a song,
A picture: black was black and right was right
God was God, and love was high and long.
Then humankind was made of heart and soul
As well as mind and body. Then his reach,
When life had an acknowledged end, a goal,
Exceeded his grasp and gave a guide to each.
Perhaps it's time to turn another page
And learn new lessons for a new age?
Dorothea Spears
Trees
Let me have trees about me, steadfast trees
With honest root deep delving bouldered earth
Facing unflinchingly to the centuries,
Noble of stature, generous of girth:
Trees that have seen men born and die, and strange
Things come to pass; Trees that are unafraid,
That stand unchanging through the years of change
By the threats of Cronus undismayed.
Such are my oaks; so old, and far more wise
Than man, disdaining not the lowly turf
Yet reaching certain arms into the skies
To greet the sun as comrade, not as serf:
Born to the sod, but by the stars inspired;
By Gaea nursed, but by Apollo sired.
Tribute To Greatness
(Jan Christiaan Smuts)
I
‘Tis not for what you’ve done, but what you are
I make my proud obeisance at your shine-
That you dared to harness a star
And plough your furrow to the Great Design.
From your defeat you had the strength to snatch
The greater victory; forgetting spite
To clear your soul of prejudice and catch
The vision leading to the greater height.
Misunderstood by those whom you would serve
Who could not see beyond the present’s dole,
You tuned to listen every quivering nerve
The mighty heart-beat of the Perfect Whole.
You don’t belong to us: your tent’s unfurled
In Africa – your domicile’s the world!
II
You are too big for ordinary men
Impelled by ordinary hates and fears
To Understand. You view the ultimate Then,
The goal across the intervening years.
You saw, beyond the borders of the State
(Those artificial barriers that blind
Small men) the working of evolving Fate,
The mighty empire of fulfilled Mankind.
Give me to stand a moment at your side
The while I trumpet Man to rise above
His race and creed and caste, and view the wide
And selfless realm of Universal Love,
With you, forerunner of the Age-To-Be-
The great Dominion of Humanity.
May 24th, 1950.
Tryst
When I am free from flesh, my dear, as you,
I know where we shall go, what we shall do.
Wherever there’s a garden or a tree
Surpassing fair there you and I shall be.
Wherever a small stream chatters through a dale
There you and I shall listen to its tale.
Where larches sway, and dog-eared violets peep
Our long-awaited tryst at last we’ll keep,
Nor watch earth-bound the singing skylark rise
But soar beside him in the vibrant skies!
Or on that mountain pathway that we know,
On which we used to loiter, long ago,
We’ll tread again the heather hand in hand
Needing no words, at last, to understand,
Knowing all beauty in the world to be
Our heritage – when I from flesh am free –
Standing as once we stood in mute delight
Against the sudden splendour of the height!
Airlie Close, Willow Road, Constantia C.P. RSA
Twilight Song
Suddenly, out of the twilight
A bird burst into song
And flooded the darkened sky-light
With sun for a moment long.
Then silence again, and darkness –
But where the song had been
Had gone the fear, the starkness,
And peace came trembling in.
‘Two Is Company’
What time o’ the day is the sweetest-
The sunrise, with glowings of gold?
To wait while the sun shreds the cloudings
And watch all its beauties unfold?
What time o’ the day is the sweetest?-
The sunset, with delicate hues;
Till colours of brilliancy, fading
Leave only the darkest of blues?
What time o’ the day is the sweetest?-
Nor sunrise nor sunset for me
Is sweetest. Just give me the moonlight –
And suitable company.
Dorothea Graham Botha
The Epworth Press
1925
Two Men
One man there was whom Death had marked his own,
Reprieved by Life to give a vision shape –
The welding of the desert and the sown
From central Africa to southern Cape.
As cells combine to form a greater whole
Of interacting parts, it was his theme
To build one empire with one mighty soul.
He left to us his riches, and his dream.
Another envisioned an exclusive State
Speaking a separate language, set apart
From other men, to mould and dominate
Its little world, with proud unbending heart.
In us today their spirits still contend –
Synthesize
To build apart; or to unite and blend.