DOI article:
Moore, Thomas Sturge: Apuleius Meditates a transmutation
DOI article:De la Mare, Walter: Snow
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.29343#0031
APULEIUS MEDITATES A
TRANSMUTATION
N old tale tells how
Gorgo’s gaze distilled
Horror to petrify men’s
mobile limbs:
Endymion’s moonlit
beauty never dims,
Elard-frozen as the fond
chaste goddess willed:
Niobe, by her ceaseless weeping chilled,
Drips a white rock: and when stone Memnon
hymns
The dawn, camped travellers whom the desert
rims
Rise from the sand they slept on and are
thrilled.
I, having wandered through the pines alone,
And felt their hush up from dark ages roll
Like last faint echoes of a lion’s roar,
Or storm that ripples out on a smooth shore,
Quaffing their vivid silence with my soul
Have longed to change me then and there to
stone.
Ah! what were all my writings worth to that?
Though my discourse be now Rome’s choicest
food!
If, tranced in such deep wonder as begat
Its own continuance, this body stood
Wearing that sovran spell upon its face
Long as these leagues of pine shall front the
sea!
Ah! then fine city souls, who seek the place,
Would meet their mood more strongly felt in
me!
Yes, man’s best thought yearns on enduring
form;
Would seize and hold that swift eluder Time,
Supreme Proteus, and shepherd of the swarm
Of all who were. Like chiselling sublime
My impress on men’s minds might thus surpass
That of the weird tale of my ‘Golden Ass.’
T. STURGE MOORE
SNOW
NOWING; snowing;
Lo w, bet ween earth and sky,
A wintry vvind is blowing,
Scattering with its sigh
Petals from trees that shine,
Like invisible glass, when
the moon
In the void of night on high
Paces the orchards divine.
Snowing; snowing;
Oh me, how still, and how fair
The air, with flakes interflowing,
The fields crystal and bare,
When the brawling brooks are dumb,
And the parched trees matted with frost,
And the birds in wilderness stare
Dazzled and numb.
Snowing; snowing; snowing;
Moments of time through space
Into hours, centuries growing:
Till the world’s marred lovely face,
Wearied of change and chance,
Radiant in innocence dream—
And, lulled by an infinite grace,
She rest in eternal trance.
WALTER DE LA MARE
27
TRANSMUTATION
N old tale tells how
Gorgo’s gaze distilled
Horror to petrify men’s
mobile limbs:
Endymion’s moonlit
beauty never dims,
Elard-frozen as the fond
chaste goddess willed:
Niobe, by her ceaseless weeping chilled,
Drips a white rock: and when stone Memnon
hymns
The dawn, camped travellers whom the desert
rims
Rise from the sand they slept on and are
thrilled.
I, having wandered through the pines alone,
And felt their hush up from dark ages roll
Like last faint echoes of a lion’s roar,
Or storm that ripples out on a smooth shore,
Quaffing their vivid silence with my soul
Have longed to change me then and there to
stone.
Ah! what were all my writings worth to that?
Though my discourse be now Rome’s choicest
food!
If, tranced in such deep wonder as begat
Its own continuance, this body stood
Wearing that sovran spell upon its face
Long as these leagues of pine shall front the
sea!
Ah! then fine city souls, who seek the place,
Would meet their mood more strongly felt in
me!
Yes, man’s best thought yearns on enduring
form;
Would seize and hold that swift eluder Time,
Supreme Proteus, and shepherd of the swarm
Of all who were. Like chiselling sublime
My impress on men’s minds might thus surpass
That of the weird tale of my ‘Golden Ass.’
T. STURGE MOORE
SNOW
NOWING; snowing;
Lo w, bet ween earth and sky,
A wintry vvind is blowing,
Scattering with its sigh
Petals from trees that shine,
Like invisible glass, when
the moon
In the void of night on high
Paces the orchards divine.
Snowing; snowing;
Oh me, how still, and how fair
The air, with flakes interflowing,
The fields crystal and bare,
When the brawling brooks are dumb,
And the parched trees matted with frost,
And the birds in wilderness stare
Dazzled and numb.
Snowing; snowing; snowing;
Moments of time through space
Into hours, centuries growing:
Till the world’s marred lovely face,
Wearied of change and chance,
Radiant in innocence dream—
And, lulled by an infinite grace,
She rest in eternal trance.
WALTER DE LA MARE
27