De Nieuwe Gids. Jaargang 43

[p. 540]

Gedichten door J.L. Foxworthy.

Shelley.¹⁾

Most love their poets: but one Friend I knew
Loved nigh to ecstasy this Spirit pure
Of fire Promethean: a love to endure
Beyond all life, love to a Godhead due.
The portait there! enshrined in sadness rich,
With just at hand a letter proudly hung,
Writ by this deathless hand, featured among
A facade set in books: a sainted niche,
Hallowed beside an oracle of prayer.
Around there seemed to burn a rubrous light,
Imaging the portrait in a feeble gloom,
Which seemed to lean so sad unto the air,
Longing to whisper to this acolyte,
That all seemed sanctuary and not a room.

1) Written after seeing Mr. Kloos' study, Easter, 1927.

[p. 541]

Canals.

In Venice, under dreaming chimes,
And argent-tipped beneath the moons,
The waters of the still canals
Flood guilelessly to deep lagoons:
And wavelets cleaved to happy throng
Echo the singers in their song.

In Holland, at the hush of eve,
Deep-bosomed craft luff weather-wise
On placid gloss of old canals,
Pictured with sail-borne merchandise:
And solitary wind-mills creak
Their rakish limbs for shadows sleek.

In Glasgow, grimed with acrid stench,
And riven by fierce siren's rage,
A sodden, sluggish, dulled canal
Gluts its dead soul at anchorage,
Where moon and drab ship trumpery
Blotch this foul moat to misery.

[p. 542]

Haarlem.

Merchant ship in Medic sea,
Shouldering the moon-spangled wave,
Spreads wide phosphorescent foams
Seething to embered spume afar:
Glancing colours, shadowless,
Burn in the deep and effervesce.

Wide from a course of ribboned line
We cleave this panoply of bloom,
Spreading awash in level flow
Crocus, hyacinth and daffodil,
In rich hues numberless and rare,
As God had poured His colours there.