The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [93]
But now may cradle my final sleep.
80
I, a shepherd, in my shaky old age,
Lay aside my heavy crook,
But still have my pipe, and play;
For in my wizened body the voice remains.
But let no herdsman tell the wolves
Ravening on the mountain
How feeble I have grown in my old years.
81
Where will you find rest?
I think at the bend in the river
Where an old man wearing a straw hat and cape
Sits in his lonely boat and fishes.
It pleases us to see
Green willows, still water,
The sun in the east and the rain in the west,
Half bright, half cloudy,
Where the river bends.
That is where you may find rest.
82
The storm has ended. Now the eaves drip,
And the cicadas begin once more, tentatively,
One here, one there.
We sit in silence in the bower,
Holding hands wet with tears.
We cannot speak, thinking of the distance
You must go: a thousand miles,
Never to return.
When lovers endure forced partings
It is like the end of autumn, and deep frost.
Where will I wake tomorrow, knowing
That I will not sleep again unless drunk?
The morning breeze, the pale and empty moon,
Tell us that our love’s tender words
Have all been said.
83
Around the red pavilion,
Down the door-posts and the panels,
The dawn light runs like silver rain.
We were glad to meet,
We were sad to part.
The moon is always full when lovers part:
We see the sharp black shadow become two shadows,
Moving away from each other in the night garden.
I have not slept, but waited hoping for your return,
Sitting at the door while the night waned
And now the silver rain of dawn light shows
The empty garden, the presence of your absence.
84
I recall the time of heroes,
When he married his bride
With his fan and crimson scarf,
His gaily knotted cloak fluttering in the wind,
His laughter when the speech-makers told
How he burned the enemy ships to ash on the beach,
And collected the weapons of their dead as trophies.
You may laugh too at my obsessions and memories,
But I recall the time of heroes,
Before great deeds were buried under a mountain of days.
85
The whole world grows darker at the end of night.
The line of hills, the hedges and copses,
The rooftops and the wisps of smoke from their chimneys,
All grow darker at the end of night.
It is like the departure of youth and love:
Away go the shadowy shapes of the dead past,
Away the still-sharp memories and illusions:
All these things on which our nature leaned,
From which our hearts learned to learn.
What was bright and insistent and for ever
Has become impermanent and dim,
Turning darker at the end of night.
86
How well I remember the first time!
And said, if this is love, how hard it is to bear!
How badly it has led and governed me,
To what hard ground and briars, what thorns;
How laden with sorrows and sore lamentations,
How unresting, sleepless and sad.
Why were these sufferings blended with such hope,
Such sweet hope and tender desire?
Behind closed eyes exhausted by ever-waking
The bright image of the beloved still burns.
87
Beautiful beloved, who inspired everything I am,
Say what innocence, what remoteness, formed you?
In what cool shade born, by what murmurous stream
Raised and taught your arts?
I see the darting hummingbird in the garden you kept,
The golden firebird and the silver-quilled eagle
Waving in their plumes the light of tranquil afternoons
When you rested, your cheek on the moss pillow
And your hand on the book of sonnets written for you.
No one is like you, or has been;
In no valley where the beekeeper tends his hives.
On no plain where the farmer ploughs,
No upland meadow where the shepherd pipes,
No orchard or field of vines where the husbandman toils,
Has there ever been the like of you.
Beautiful beloved: the tune of the willow warbler
Marks your waking from slumber,
And the afternoon sun restrains his beams where they kiss your brow.
88
Under the sculptor’s hammer
The figure increases as the marble decreases.
That is a lesson.
Art arrives when there is