The Last Chrysanthemum

Why should this flower delay so long 

To show its tremulous plumes? 

Now is the time of plaintive robin-song, 

When flowers are in their tombs. 

Through the slow summer, when the sun 

Called to each frond and whorl 

That all he could for flowers was being done, 

Why did it not uncurl? 

It must have felt that fervid call 

Although it took no heed, 

Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall, 

And saps all retrocede. 

Too late its beauty, lonely thing, 

The season's shine is spent, 

Nothing remains for it but shivering 

In tempests turbulent. 

Had it a reason for delay, 

Dreaming in witlessness 

That for a bloom so delicately gay 

Winter would stay its stress? 

I talk as if the thing were born 

With sense to work its mind; 

Yet it is but one mask of many worn 

By the Great Face behind. 

-o0o-

This poem concludes the series here. The blog continues tomorrow in

Johns Mixed Bag Blog

johnsmixedbagblog.blogspot.com

Midnight on the Great Western

In the third-class seat sat the journeying boy,

And the roof-lamp's oily flame

Played down on his listless form and face,

Bewrapt past knowing to what he was going,

Or whence he came.

In the band of his hat the journeying boy

Had a ticket stuck; and a string

Around his neck bore the key of his box,

That twinkled gleams of the lamp's sad beams

Like a living thing.

What past can be yours, O journeying boy

Towards a world unknown,

Who calmly, as if incurious quite

On all at stake, can undertake

This plunge alone?

Knows your soul a sphere, O journeying boy,

Our rude realms far above,

Whence with spacious vision you mark and mete

This region of sin that you find you in,

But are not of? 

-o0o-

Blog Changes

On Friday 21st December my four blogs will combine to form
JOHNS MIXED BAG BLOG
and the final posts on Now that what I call art, The Thomas Hardy Poetry Path, My Poetry Digest and Every Day a Discovery on the Net will be on Thursday 20th December
The new blog can be seen at
JOHNS MIXED BAG BLOG
johnsmixedbagblog.blogspot.com

The Five Students

The sparrow dips in his wheel-rut bath,

   The sun grows passionate-eyed,

And boils the dew to smoke by the paddock-path;

   As strenuously we stride, —

Five of us; dark He, fair He, dark She, fair She, I,

  All beating by.

The air is shaken, the high-road hot,

   Shadowless swoons the day,

The greens are sobered and cattle at rest; but not

   We on our urgent way, —

Four of us; fair She, dark She, fair He, I, are there,

   But one - elsewhere.

Autumn moulds the hard fruit mellow,

   And forward still we press

Through moors, briar-meshed plantations, clay-pits yellow,

As in the spring hours - yes,

Three of us; fair He, fair She, I, as heretofore,

   But - fallen one more.

The leaf drops: earthworms draw it in

   At night-time noiselessly,

The fingers of birch and beech are skeleton-thin

   And yet on the beat are we, —

Two of us; fair She, I. But no more left to go

   The track we know.

Icicles tag the church-aisle leads,

   The flag-rope gibbers hoarse,

The home-bound foot-folk wrap their snow-flaked heads,

   Yet I still stalk the course —

One of us -  Dark and fair He, dark and fair She - gone:

   The rest - anon.

-o0o-

The Blinded Bird

So zestfully canst thou sing?

And all this indignity,

With God's consent, on thee!

Blinded ere yet a-wing

By the red-hot needle thou,

I stand and wonder how

So zestfully thou canst sing!

Resenting not such wrong,

Thy grievous pain forgot,

Eternal dark thy lot,

Groping thy whole life long;

After that stab of fire;

Enjailed in pitiless wire;

Resenting not such wrong!

Who hath charity? This bird.

Who suffereth long and is kind,

Is not provoked, though blind

And alive ensepulchred?

Who hopeth, endureth all things?

Who thinketh no evil, but sings?

Who is divine? This bird.

-o0o-

The Frozen Greenhouse

"There was a frost

Last night!" she said,

"And the stove was forgot

When we went to bed,

And the greenhouse plants

are frozen dead!"

By the breakfast blaze

Blank-faced spoke she,

Her scared young look

Seeming to be

The very symbol

Of tragedy.

The frost is fiercer

Than then today,

As I pass the place

Of her once dismay,

But the greenhouse stands

Warm, tight, and gay,

While she who grieved

At the sad lot

Of her pretty plants -

Cold, iced, forgot -

Herself is colder,

And knows it not.

-o0o-

Her Father

I met her, as we had privily planned,

Where passing feet beat busily:

She whispered: "Father is at hand!

       He wished to walk with me."

His presence as he joined us there

Banished our words of warmth away;

We felt, with cloudings of despair,

       What Love must lose that day.

Her crimson lips remained unkissed,

Our fingers kept no tender hold,

His lack of feeling made the tryst

       Embarrassed, stiff, and cold.

A cynic ghost then rose and said,

"But is his love for her so small

That, nigh to yours, it may be read

       As of no worth at all?

"You love her for her pink and white;

But what when their fresh splendours close?

His love will last her in despite

       Of Time, and wrack, and foes."

-o0o-

The Superceded

As newer comers crowd the fore, 

   We drop behind. 

- We who have laboured long and sore 

   Times out of mind, 

And keen are yet, must not regret 

   To drop behind. 

Yet there are of us some who grieve 

   To go behind; 

Staunch, strenuous souls who scarce believe 

   Their fires declined, 

And know none cares, remembers, spares 

   Who go behind. 

 'Tis not that we have unforetold 

   The drop behind; 

We feel the new must oust the old 

   In every kind; 

But yet we think, must we, must WE, 

   Too, drop behind? 

-o0o-