Valentine – 1949 Model
Valentines went out of date
With crinolines, they say;
And Cupid waxes pale of late
Who erstwhile was so gay,
And wanders all disconsolate
That he hath lost his sway.
The age of courtesy is by,
And wooing’s lost its art,
Since lovers have no time to sigh
Of Cupid and his dart.
But still I’ll sing my Lady’s eye
That hath transfixed my heart.
Then humour me, my dearest dear –
Complete my life’s design:
Accept this hand, this heart sincere,
That owns no breast but thine.
Consent in language chaste and clear
(Please not “Ok”, nor yet “No fear!”)
To be my Valentine.
“Oaklands”
Newlands Ave
Newlands C.P.
Valiant Heart
What shall I teach her, this little one
That comes from the vast Unknown
Into my heart and into my arms,
To be for a time mine own?
What shall I teach her? To laugh when she’s hurt,
To laugh when her body is aching;
When all her world turns upside down
To laugh when her heart is breaking.
Teach her to battle with a smile
‘Gainst overpowering odds.
Teach her to hide each quivering wound
From every eye save God’s
And whether she goes out fighting
Or draws her parting breath
Quietly, in contentment
Teach her to laugh at death.
Arm her with love and laughter
And send her into the fray
To win or lose – a valiant heart.
Teach her to laugh, I say.
Valley Lights
I look across the valley and I see the fairy lights,
-Dancing sprite
In the soft December nights.
Twinkle, twinkle,
Dance and glow!
High and low, high and low,
Round and round, and to and fro
Come and go!
Skipping in the valley till I seem to hear the tread,
Fairy led.
When the world is all abed.
Glisten, glisten,
Dance and shine!
Clear and fine, clear and fine,
Like the sparkle of old wine
From the vine!
Tripping through the valley with a merry elfin will:
-Never still
From the water to the hill.
Leaping, lambent,
Burning bright,
All delight! All Delight!
Through the silver scented night-
What a sight!
Values Change
Strange
How values change.
Once, an hour
Held unguessed power.
And end of day,
At dawn was leagues away.
A week… a month… a year…
Were unbridged chasms wide as fear.
But now
A single face
Can span all space.
I say goodbye…
And see …my eyes are dry,
Having made a friend of time
And learned the art of mime.
Strange
How values change.
Once, possession
Was obsession.
Should a rose
Its scent disclose
I’d snatch it in my hand.
But now I understand –
The rose that’s plucked with the fingers dies
But not that gathered with the eyes.
Strange
how values change
and re-arrange our lives.
Airlie Close
Constantia C.P.
VAN RIEBEECK A SONG OF TO-MORROW
I
Three
hundred years ago . . .
how short a span
As time is measured by the gods, and yet,
What water ’neath the bridge has flowed to
set
What ships of State a-float! The immortal Plan
In ever quickening tempo hurries Man
To new developments; nor will it let
The smallness of his little plans beget
The small result, the flash within the pan.
Van Riebeeck made a garden to supply
His ships with food, a “ Tavern of the Sea ” . . .
Think you he visioned what now meets the eye ?
And we who celebrate, think you that we
Can predicate what centuries will buy,
Or pierce the future, any more than he?
n
Upon the new line of the shore we stand
By Man designed, and modelled to his scheme,
Where sail long since has given place to steam
And steam to motor. Palaces are planned
To cany men today from land to land.
Think you that in Van Riebeeck’s wildest dream
He visioned how the Seven Seas would teem
With traffic, led by Time’s prevailing hand ?
How far .. . how infinitely far away . . .
How exiled from mankind this tiny post:
How walled by time and space this Table Bay!
Yet we who rehabilitate the ghost
Three hundred years have laid, in mime and play—
Can we a greater forward vision boast?
III
High over head where gulls were wont to soar
In undisputed sovereignty, and cry
Their raucous cries, new mammoth birds go by
That Man has fashioned, spuming sea and shore
With high disdain; and shaking to the core
The old illusions. Man has learned to fly
And proved the tale of distance is a lie,
And time an Old Wive’s tale, and space a door.
Three hundred years ago what man would dare
Predict that man would daily ply the skies?
He had been laughed to scorn, or sadder
fare!
As we laugh, now, at him who prophesies
The things to come, the mysteries waiting their
Discovery by men with eager eyes.
IV
Flick back the pages in the book of years . . .
Creep back within the cast-off carapace
Of outgrown time, and posit infinite space
As three-dimensional, where Man appears
A figure lone, detached, enceinte with fears,
An alien atom in a hostile place:
Where centuries have passed and left no
trace—
Nor echo breaks the silence of the spheres.
Stand here as Riebeeck stood. Tradition’s shell
That fitted Man three hundred years ago
Has shrunk, as Man expands, and learns to spell
In alphabets Van Riebeeck could not know.
And we, who face tomorrow, can we tell
To what unknown dimension Man will grow?
V
The very contour of Van Riebeeck’s beach
Man has remodelled to his own design.
His telescopes unvisioned stars confine :
He holds the
planet in his arms, can reach
Antennae through the heavens and hold speech
With earth and sky: can spread his wings and dine
In London or New York, on Tokai wine:
Intuit that which Nature has to teach.
Impervious isolation built a wall
Around Van Riebeeck’s little band: a screen
Of silence closed them in its somber pall.
And in the endless months that lay between
There was no answer to their soundless call . . .
But Death and Famine entered, dark, unseen.
VI
For him Space had no windows. When his ship
The Dromdaris, flapped her wings and fled
She might have sailed to join the silent dead
For all that could be heard from her. No lip
Had conquered distance then: the iron grip
Of Silence closed when sight her way had sped.
Small wonder if he turned with heavy tread
To face the months till her returning trip.
Well might a lesser man have known despair,
By water moated, walled by wilderness;
A sky untenanted, and speechless air.
No seer amongst that solemn group could guess
That space had windows through which Man might stare
On all the world, and Silence tongues no less.
VII
And in Van Riebeeck’s garden-patches now
(Where cabbages and roses had their birth)
Strange crops of concrete of unwieldy girth
Grow steadily . . . and all day long the row
Of huge machinery . . . where once the plow
In silence broke the soil and delved the earth.
Now rise these giant harvests, vast in worth.
And Table Mountain broods with changeless brow.
If some bold traveller had told such tale
At meat within the fortress, plied with wine,
His craft had soon capsized in laughter’s gale!
So men today the new and strange decline.
So men today with ridicule impale
Their fellows who depart from known design.
VIII
Van Riebeeck’s
simple settlement has spread
Across a vast sub-continent, outgrown
The rigid plans of Company and Crown . . .
New impulses from many
sources sped
Converge where trails from far and wide have led.
The honest lines of Nature’s homespun gown
Give way to the habiliments of Town:
And men into the jaws of earth are fed.
Van Riebeeck
snugged his fort and bade his men
Go not too far afield, for danger lay
Beyond the known decreed by the Seven and Ten.
Are governments so different today ?
They would define our frontiers now as then,
But now, as then, they cannot bar our way.
IX
Now here we stand in 1952
And lightly make a mime of ancient days.
And heap on bygone figures fulsome praise
Yet little realise what these went through.
We reach out greedy hands into the Blue,
Accepting priceless gifts without amaze.
How many of us
can conceive the ways
They had to follow, in perspective true ?
We live within a
different world . . . We breathe
A different air, accepting as our right
Life’s luxuries. We ask, and we receive.
How far Mankind has travelled towards the Light!
Momentum gathers. . . . What will he achieve
Tomorrow, think you, faith becoming sight?
X
By what-has-been
the shape of things to come
Intelligence can mistily discern.
From what-has-been
Intelligence can learn
To solve, perhaps, the universal sum,
The parts that make a whole: by rule of thumb
Approximate his distances and earn
Some vision of what Man may be, in turn;
Deserve and win a proud enconium.
The potent possibilities that sleep
Within the womb of Time, defy the brain
To correlate; the harvests earth may reap.
New energies, new
forces may attain
Such cogency the Future well may sweep
Familiar landmarks from the earth amain.
VII
And in Van Riebeeck’s garden-patches now
(Where cabbages and roses had their birth)
Strange crops of concrete of unwieldy girth
Grow steadily . . . and all day long the row
Of huge machinery . . . where once the plow
In silence broke the soil and delved the earth.
Now rise these giant harvests, vast in worth.
And Table Mountain broods with changeless brow.
If some bold traveller had told such tale
At meat within the fortress, plied with wine,
His craft had soon capsized in laughter’s gale!
So men today the new and strange decline.
So men today with ridicule impale
Their fellows who depart from known design.
VIII
Van Riebeeck’s
simple settlement has spread
Across a vast sub-continent, outgrown
The rigid plans of Company and Crown . . .
New impulses from
many sources sped
Converge where trails from far and wide have led.
The honest lines of Nature’s homespun gown
Give way to the habiliments of Town:
And men into the jaws of earth are fed.
Van Riebeeck
snugged his fort and bade his men
Go not too far afield, for danger lay
Beyond the known decreed by the Seven and Ten.
Are governments so different today ?
They would define our frontiers now as then,
But now, as then, they cannot bar our way.
IX
Now here we stand in 1952
And lightly make a mime of ancient days.
And heap on bygone figures fulsome praise
Yet little realise what these went through.
We reach out greedy hands into the Blue,
Accepting priceless gifts without amaze.
How many of us
can conceive the ways
They had to follow, in perspective true ?
We live within a
different world . . . We breathe
A different air, accepting as our right
Life’s luxuries. We ask, and we receive.
How far Mankind has travelled towards the Light!
Momentum gathers. . . . What will he achieve
Tomorrow, think you, faith becoming sight?
X
By what-has-been
the shape of things to come
Intelligence can mistily discern.
From what-has-been
Intelligence can learn
To solve, perhaps, the universal sum,
The parts that make a whole: by rule of thumb
Approximate his distances and earn
Some vision of what Man may be, in turn;
Deserve and win a proud enconium.
The potent possibilities that sleep
Within the womb of Time, defy the brain
To correlate; the harvests earth may reap.
New energies, new
forces may attain
Such cogency the Future well may sweep
Familiar landmarks from the earth amain.
XI
The day will come when all the world shall be
One world in truth. We journey towards the goal
Externally, but greed and fear control
Our hearts and minds, and blind our eyes to see.
We lose our vision of Infinity
Where Man should function as a living soul,
A vital part of the eternal Whole—
One God, one world, and one humanity.
Not in a day can
such an end be won
But we can set our feet with stubborn tread
Towards the goal: we can pursue the Sun;
Refuse the paths that have so oft misled,
Surmount the past, with eager vision run
To meet the tercentenary ahead!
XII
This latest letter
in the alphabet
Of evolution may provide the key
That will decipher much now mystery
Before the present century has set.
This Nuclear energy that Man has let
At liberty has power to set him free
Or to destroy him : none can choose but he.
The issue waits—Man has not chosen yet.
And all the while
God whispers in his ear,
Reveals a secret here, a secret there.
To minds of men that are attuned to hear.
So vast the Mind
of God that Man must dare
To scrap all pettiness and blinding fear
If he would see, and understand, and share.
XIII
Dividing walls are an anachronism.
Who strengthens such
will find his labour vain.
Such separation as he may attain
—Though it require a greater cataclysm
Than Man has known to abrogate the schism—
Will be destroyed. For Man cannot profane
Indefinitely what the Gods ordain,
Nor build to fit a pigmy egotism.
Within Tomorrow’s
building nothing mean
Nor cramped nor small nor separate shall last:
To work for self alone shall be obscene.
Mankind must learn
from, and reject, the Past,
Devise an architecture strong, serene,
And as the Mind of God untrammeled, vast.
XIV
“We build a Nation.” It is not enough—
We build a world!
Let us be very sure
That what we build is founded and secure :
The Architect has
drawn the Plan in rough—
This portion that we build of local stuff,
It must be built to line, immense, mature,
To fit the While, and worthy to endure.
Lest we should earn the Architect’s rebuff.
So many builders,
but One Master Plan
Worked out through aeons and designed to scale,
To which creation moves since Time began.
“ We build a Nation ’’ . . . but we build
to fail
Unless we fit our building to the span
Of God’s design. No other shall prevail.
XV
God’s challenge meet, South Africa—to face
Tomorrow’s world, to build to such a size
As fits evolving Man. Cast off the ties.
The small expediencies that check the pace
Of evolution in the human race:
Cast off the hates and fears that dim the
eyes.
Then Man will see to build the Paradise
Designed by God, and take his rightful place.
Let no unvisioned edifice betray
Our penury of spirit, to our shame:
The Future, not
the Past, dictate cur way.
There is no Nation big enough to claim
The limit of Man’s loyalty today—
The world’s his province, son of God his name!
Vespers
The wind moves softly through the garden
Bringing the twilight to the trees.
This is the hour of Vespers: Mother Nature
Is on her knees.
No birdsong shivers the tender silence.
No irreverent breeze
Disturbs the worshipping world, where flowers hymn
Their litanies.
A reverent earth is bowed to its Maker’s will:
This is the hour of vespers… hush… be still…
“Dawn”
Silwood Road
Rondebosch, Cape.
Vigilance asleep
This is our tragedy; that we forget;
That we become conditioned to the thing?
We knew as evil once, and so abet
The evil, unaware to what we cling.
Constant repetition dulls the edge
Of our discrimination; constant use
Insidious, subtle, drives more deep the wedge
To prise our wise and proven principles loose.
Repeated repetition lulls to sleep
The unsuspecting conscience. We accept
The fait accompli and neglect to keep
Inviolate the faith we should have kept.
This is our tragedy, that we recant
Unconsciously, who should be adamant.
Dorothea Spears
Vignettes
Rain
Rain on the grass – pearls in a setting of jade:
Rain in the garden: pools where the pixies wade:
Rain in flower cups for the fairies’ tea,
Rain in the ground for the roots of the thirsty tree,
To melt the frozen breasts where snow has lain
And kiss dead lips to life -thank God for rain!
Spring Cameo
I think of no more beautiful thing
In all this beautiful world
That the tender green of the oaks in Spring
With their baby leaves uncurled.
In Spring
A petulant sort of a day, all smiles and tears
And undecided if to laugh or cry,
When every pool a looking glass appears
To mirror changefully the moody sky.
At Sunset
The daintest, paintiest, powder puffs
Of pink, from a cloak of blue,
And a paling, trailing wisp of scarf
In an airier fairier hue
The angels dropped at the gates of Heaven
(I saw them!) as they went through.
Violence in the air
When violence is plotted in the high
And secret places of whatever land
Be sure the wind hears; although the hand
Is hushed against the mouth be sure the sky
Knows, and those eavesdropping clouds that ply
The ether and disclose to sea and sand.
For force premeditated, violence planned
Pervades our air and pulls the pattern awry.
Have you not felt it in yourself, the swift
Upsurge of anger, the impatient word
That suddenly assails, you know not why,
The even tenor of your day to rift
Relationships? Beware the vast unheard
Enveloping violence that prods ‘reply'
Dorothea Spears
VIOLETS, DIAMOND DEWED.
Violets, diamond dewed,
In
the sweet of the morn’s vague mist;
Lifting your heads to the skies.
As my babe lifts his face to be kissed—
His breath is as sweet as your own;
And I see with a dawning surprise.
Oh, violets, diamond dewed.
You have stolen my baby’s deep eyes!
Vision
For just a breath to glimpse the pattern whole,
To stretch the mortal senses high enough
To catch the writing on the timeless scroll
And feel the texture of the ageless stuff
Of life, transcend the individual goal!
His little limitations blind and bind
The earthy, sensible, assiduous mole
That, burrowing in the manner of his kind,
Destroys the beauty alien to his role
Nor ever guesses, in his daily round,
The pattern of a garden or a soul
Above the little world that he has found.
Oh soul, stretch up and touch divinity
And glimpse the pattern of infinity!
Voilets
Along the path in my garden grow
The flowers that I love the best;
And when I am tired of the world of men
I go to them for rest.
Their fragrance folds me in gracious arms,
And holds me in sweet embrace;
Their dark-blue eyes of faith look up
Like children to my face.
There’s comfort here in my violets
That rise like thoughts from the sod;
For everyone is a messenger
Of love from the heart of God.
DGB
Voortrekker Mother’s Farewell
All is still beneath the distant dome
Of heaven, save the circling watch-fires burning
And the uneasy sound of the cattle turning…
It is the last night in the gabled home.
At dawn the trek begins and all is ready.
Strong men, with labour wearied, soundly sleep;
Only the Hottentots their vigil keep.
The breathing of night is hushed and steady.
All sleep – save one. A shadow through the night
She moves, with bated breath and silent tread,
To that enclosure where the wall gleams white:
In memory she fondles each loved head
That she has borne and lost…
Tread not so light,
Mother, your farewells cannot wake the dead.
Vulnerable
Irremediable pain is never personal, I think.
We learn to rise above our suffering. But do we ever learn
Not to be hurt by the pain of those we love?
Not to be shaken to the core by the trusting eyes
of a hurt dog that looks at us and cries?
Dorothea Spears