Gordon Bottomley (1874-1948)
From Poems at White Night (1899)
- "The Chamber Concert" of Giorgione
- Lethe
- For a Virgin and Child by Sandro Botticelli
- A Lady of Paris Bordone
- A Survival
- A Wife's Farewell
- The Last Night
- To Omar Khayyám
- Japanese Colour-Prints
- Romeo to Rosaline
- Juliet to Rosaline
- The Double-Goer
- To Autumn
- Our Lady of Consolation
"The Chamber Concert" of Giorgione
- In this suave pause of music the rich air
- Throbs with a breathless deep expectancy
- Of mingling momently with melody,
- Dark wine in water reeling rosy-rare.
- Beneath the hands of the enraptured player
- The cadence of rithmic silence pulses by,
- Till viol and voice, light birds soft-poised to fly,
- Tremble to life, like wind-touched sunlit hair.
- As a cool charm of tinkling water calls
- From some old shady garden in hot noons,
- The clavichord's slow-plashing intervals
- Through the hushed chamber drop their moon-clear tones;
- Their calm of music down the long years falls,
- The golden voice of silence in crystal swoons.
Lethe
A Picture by Frederick Sandys
- Your immemorial stream is as your eyes,
- Languid to stillness, deep and dark as death:
- Its inner waters nothing wakeneth—
- No thrill of sorrow shatters in any wise
- Their heavy-lidded quiet; memories
- Swoon and are lost therein; all perisheth,
- Save the delight of death, without a breath
- To trouble those pools wherein oblivion lies.
- Rich is your ceaseless poppy-harvesting,
- As on your unremembered path you stray,
- Meet flowers for the sorry garlanding
- Of Proserpine reft from the world away
- (Ease and forgetting do such coronals bring,
- In their imperious odour's dreamy sway).
For a Virgin and Child by Sandro Botticelli
- Mysterious mother, what intensitude
- Of vision makes you minister heedlessly
- To this your Child? Do shadows prophesy
- Sorrows for Him on some incredible rood;
- Or on your exaltation do you brood,
- Blessed above women, seeking to clarify
- Heaven's inmost aureole, and satisfy
- Your wonderings upon God's womanhood?
- Many, ah! many mothers, worn with care
- Have wept for unrecorded Calvaries:
- Can any passion or tears or sobbing prayer
- Shake you, or will you watch His agonies,
- Sitting, as when you knew His messenger,
- With implicate hands, inviolable eyes?
A Lady of Paris Bordone
- Didst say Genoa? Ah, well, perchance 'tis true.
- I never dreamed that any Genoese
- Had such stern eyes, like steadfast haughty seas,
- Assured of sovranty. Canst say she knew
- Nought of that glowing city where surely grew
- This tolerant calm, this strong inviolate ease,
- This proud epitome of Veronese
- And sister of Titian's girl whom Palma drew?
- Although her bodice fails her noble breasts
- She grudged no silks to swell her ducal gown.
- Her maritime and many-nationed mart
- Had store of pearls to string the coil that rests
- Pale in her hair, or darkly trickles down
- Her bosom whose limpid veil droops wide apart.
A Survival
- Rare Lionardo's fair dead Florentine
- Still mid her faery rocks doth darkly smile
- The ages down, whilst many an ancient wile
- Lights up her eyes, like sunlight in old wine.
- She glows in that faint land of strange design
- Sole-set, like some ensorcelled languid isle
- In evil fairness mid a sea of guile,
- With pitiless features calmed to seem benign.
- One smiles on me in stillness yesterday
- As Lisa smiles upon me from the past,
- Until this later world seemed spent and grey.
- "Ah, lady," whispered I, "didst ever taste
- Thy painter's lips? What love-words did he say?
- Know'st though no songs of thine encomiast?"
A Wife's Farewell
- You are soon tired indeed, to let me go
- Ere girlhood's light has faded in my eyes—
- Nay, I forget what makes me sadly wise—
- I think you never loved me as I loved you.
- See, take your ring, for token that we two
- Unsay our troths and part, and simply part,
- As though we never whispered, heart near heart,
- In ignorance, so many lives ago.
- We cannot be more strange than we have been,
- More lonely, or more hopeless, or more dead,
- By night and night-like day so wearily.
- Will you know her better than you knew me,
- I wonder; when, as I did, she shall lean
- Out from my chair, near you to rest her head.
The Last Night
- Charmian:—
- The queen's dark laugh is dreadful as the night.
- Iras:—
- As dark as fortune in these latter days.
- Charmian:—
- Fortune? my fate, that hurries us to our place...
- Iras:—
- By this mad feast, the funeral of delight.
- Charmian:—
- The queen's shrill laugh sounds like a spent wind's flight.
- Iras:—
- Her hopeless revels dazzle and amaze:
- Charmian:—
- As when a dying flame through night doth blaze:
- Iras:—
- Ay, ere it sinks in the black infinite.
- Charmian:—
- Such pleasure is the gods' contemptuous grant.
- Iras:—
- And pleasure's term by it shall quicklier come.
- Charmian:—
- Hark, mid sad mirth that lull, significant:
- Iras:—
- And, like a dirge, the music's faltering strain.
- Charmian:—
- Soon shall the music, like the rest, fall dumb:
- Iras:—
- And desolate Memphian silences remain.
To Omar Khayyám
- Omar, the roses blossom by your grave,
- And as the cool night-winds their petals lave
- I hear your roses singing in the dark,
- Dove-murmuring this fragmentary stave,
- "Our life is from the earth that once was you;
- Perchance in us your soul doth surge anew,
- O poet; but we fall and leave no mark;
- And only fatten earth, as you did too.
- All ends in death, which is the seed of life,
- For earth again shall make your roses rife:
- Mourn not the fleeting flower, a transient spark
- Flung from the immanent fire's unending strife."
- The dream-winds swoon; the roses sing no more,
- Omar, above your grave in Naishapûr.
Japanese Colour-Prints
- They sell them by the Odéon in Paris yonder,
- These scattered petals of that rich bloom Japan.
- Deep jewels are crushed to stain each porcelain plan,
- Great unfamiliar flowers are torn asunder,
- High-tinted and bright-pollened, a sunrise splendour,
- To paint these men fantastic, serious, wan,
- Exotic drowsy women of sash and fan,
- And ivory girls with almond eyes of wonder.
- Here's one. A lady walks grey meads somewhere
- In rosy skirts that curl extravagantly
- And a green robe where clematis seems to die—
- Some Primavera-vision gone astray.
- Neath pink pale curds of May-bloom in the air
- Sleep unimportant legends rose and grey.
Romeo to Rosaline
- Since, in the ashen nunnery of your heart,
- You shun the love your glories must excite,
- Then choose some white-walled convent's better part,
- And shine, the moon of its unthankful night.
- There, in your cold entrancing holiness,
- I'll love you still, all signt of you denied;
- There, for my sake, harsh macerations press
- Close to the bone, and die beatified—
- For then those sweets that bind me to the earth
- Shall charm my thoughts to heavenly excellence:
- To reach the measure of your high-purposed worth
- And know your bosom's paradisal sense,
- I'll kiss your image, with exaltation faint,
- And kneel before you for my patron saint.
Juliet to Rosaline
- Sweet coz, I thank you for your prudish vow
- And its oppressive honourable weight,
- That bade you flout the youth whose costly show
- Of love might make even you importunate.
- In the walled garden of my vestal thoughts
- I loitered coldly happy, purely pale,
- When lo, carnation-bearing love's mad notes
- Came thrush-clear past a whitethorn's truthless veil.
- I take your leavings gladly, having learned
- That Christ's feast-scraps are savoured as His feast:
- Fair saintly coward, she who never burned
- With earthly passion knows of heaven the least—
- I'll not despise your poor virginity
- That spites itself and so enriches me.
The Double-Goer
- He wanders down the winding woodland ways,
- Half-faltering in the green dusk's doubtful shiver,
- Until at last by some forgotten river
- He meets a woman with his own sad face,
- Sharpened, as if by death; clad in a grace
- Of garments ashen-green, leaf-tremulous:
- His imaged eyes are lingering-amorous
- Yet tear-worn, as with writhen mouth he says:
- "I meet my soul a-walking here beneath
- This dim oppression of stifling greenery—
- For to my desolate lovelessness it seems
- The soul of man is fashioned womanly—
- And nought is in her aspect, core o' my dreams,
- Save sweet, sinister promises of death."
To Autumn
- Quiet transmuter of Spring's vernant wealth
- To slight, down-fluttering flakes of crispèd gold,
- Linger awhile amid such glowing spilth,
- In shivering woodland, over windy wold;
- Ere, like a woman sad past hope of tears,
- Who wends along the dull and weary way
- That opens through her few remaining years,
- Wimpled and clad in weed of cheerless grey,
- Thou lapse, mist-girt, from day to short-lived day,
- Sped by the rain-filled blast's chill clammy breath,
- O'er plashy roads reddened with leafy clay
- Till Winter crowns the enfeebled year with death—
- Then, down the vista of the departed years,
- Join shadowy seasons shedding unheeded tears.
Our Lady of Consolation
- We seek you in the garden, to and fro,
- Thinking how often 'twas your loved abode;
- We gather heartsease from the seed you sowed,
- And every blossom seems a gift from you.
- Then we remember your hushed bed, and go
- Where rosemary and roses round you strewed
- Droop tenderly, as though for sorrow bowed,
- While dreams of girlhood smooth your white worn brow.
- O lately lost and always unforgot,
- Come oft unseen and sit with us again
- And soothe us with your old benignity.
- We cannot think you share not in our lot,
- For here your heart was when you were not nigh,
- And all our hearts are with you now as then.