Poems for our time

It has been a strange season.  We are in the midst of Easter joy with its certainty of hope, yet in a time where little seems certain.  Some among us face challenging illness or conditions, some have died, and at the same time, it is a time of graduations, spring’s new life, new hopes, and new beginnings.  And in our scriptures we hear of a Good Shepherd, guiding us to eternities.

All this brings to mind poems by Fredegond Cecily Shove, who lived in England from 1899 to 1949, and published these two poems, which together with two other poems, were set to music as four piece song cycle by Ralph Vaughan Williams.  They are lovely to sing and to hear, a quick search on YouTube will let you hear them too, and perhaps to sing along.

Four Nights

O when I shut my eyes in spring

A choir of heaven's swans I see,

They sail on lakes of blue, and sing

Or shelter in a willow tree:

They sing of peace in heart and mind

Such as on earth you may not find.

When I lie down in summertime

I still can hear the scythes that smite

the ripened flowers in their prime,

And still can see the meadows white.

In summertime my rest is small,

If any rest I find at all.

In autumn, when my eyes I close

I see the yellow stars ablaze

Among the tangled winds that rose

At sunset in a circled maze;

Like armoured nights they ride the skies

And prick the closed lids of my eyes.

But when in wintertime I sleep

I nothing see, nor nothing hear;

The angels in my spirit keep

A silent watch, and being there

They cause my soul to lie as dead

A stream enchanted in her bed.

The New Ghost

And he cast it down, down, on the green grass,

Over the young crocuses, where the dew was.

He cast the garment of his flesh that was full of death,

And like a sword his spirit showed out of the cold sheath.

He went a pace or two, he went to meet his Lord

And, as I said, his spirit looked like a clean sword,

And seeing him the naked trees began shivering

And all the birds cried out aloud as it were late spring.

And the Lord came on, He came down, and saw

That a soul was waiting there for Him, one without flaw,

And they embraced in the churchyard where the robins play,

And the daffodils hang down their heads, as they burn away.

The Lord held his head fast, and you could see

That He kissed the unsheathed ghost that was gone free

As a hot sun, on a March day, kisses the cold ground;

And the spirit answered, for he knew well that his peace was found.

The spirit trembled, and sprang up at the Lord's word,

As on a wild April day, springs a small bird,

So the ghost's feet lifting him up, he kissed the Lord's cheek,

And for the greatness of their love neither of them could speak.

But the Lord went then, to show him the way,

Over the young crocuses, under the green may

That was not quite in flower yet, to a far distant land:

And the ghost followed like a naked cloud holding the sun's hand.

CJ+