Versamelde gedigte

Spring

O, fling in ecstasy,

In wide-spread wafts of pure ethereal scent,

Thy perfume forth, O Spring.

Flush with thy fragrance saddle and slope, and fling

Back to the beauty of the sun-tired sea

The spicy odours tropic isles have spent

Upon the passing trade-wind as it went,

Laden with frankincense and cassia and myrrh

And aromatic dust and white melati reek

That forest glades have lent

As incense to the whispering winds that stir

The quivering fern-fronds garlanding the creek.

Environ veld and vlei,

Upreaching tor, and terraced range of hill,

And the gaunt, gravelled way

That northwards meets the fissured Karroo clay,

And the broad uplands where the gerbilles tread

Upon the gold the gnarled mimosas spread.

With all thy glorious wealth of perfume fling

Thy soul itself in ecstasy, O Spring.

Here is thy treasure-palace, full, complete,

Unpadlocked for the passer-by to peer

Upon its wonders, marvellously ranged,

And by the air's faint undulations changed

Perpetually to meet

Each change of subtle scent that seems

To re-awake the cadence of old dreams

With recollections dear

Of loved ones lost, and faint, remembered faces,

And long-forgotten places

Where once perchance our former souls did sense

That perfume's immanence,

And linked it with an episodal trace

Of pleasure that it would retain

(If it but could) in conscious mind's embrace

To make its own again.

[p. 440]

 

Here are thy stores: the variegated show

 

Of sorrel, imbricated in the bud,

 

And chaliced-patent in the passionate glow

 

Of noonday sun; the crimson bell-flowered heath,

 

Half hiding with its floral hoard the faint

 

Dew-dusted drosera that grows beneath;

 

The water hawthorn, fragrant in the mud

 

Of shallow pools; the velvet polished paint

 

Of geissorhiza's gaudy cups of wine;

 

The ewa-trewa's waxen purity;

 

The scarlet climber seeking space to twine

 

Its tendrils to the blue translucency

 

Of fairy sun-friends welcoming their friend;

 

The adenandra's clustered blooms that bend -

 

Shepherd's delight - to hide their virgin blush;

 

The aristea's lapis lazuli,

 

More perfect blue than new-born baby's eye;

 

The freesia's cream, the babianas fair;

 

The blinding beauty of the keurboom bush

 

Tremulous in lilac as the lazy air

 

Fondles its standards with a faint caress;

 

The blue plumbago that the gardener tames

 

To dull domestic hedges; the wild sage

 

Exulting in luxurious excess

 

Of odoriferous plenty; orange flames

 

Flaunting in upland pastures where the rage

 

Of southern seas is saddened to a moan;

 

The pungent agathosma that exhales

 

Its welcome when the sudden dawn ascends

 

And the rich ruby pales

 

In eastern skies; the midday flower that blends

 

Unblossomed with the desert's monotone,

 

And blossoming reveals

 

Its secret in a blaze of prodigal hues

 

Of crimsons, chromes and blues,

 

That mocks the sun and steals

 

Gold from its gleam and radiance from its rays;

 

The leaguered daisies lapped in white

 

Starring the long, untrodden ways,

 

And the meek modest evening-flowers that scent the starlit night.

 

 

 

Cull from the confluent colours of thy veld,

 

O Spring, the best,

 

More fair than those the setting sun e'er held

 

Flaming in flashing beauty in the west,

 

When the gradations of its gamut ran

 

From cloud to cloud, nor lingered on one spot,

 

Ranging from where the cobalt blue began

 

To where it paled to purest peridot,

 

Flecked, like the marble of amandoline,

[p. 441]

 

Or like a lilied lakelet when the light

 

Sheds chequered gold through crevices of green

 

Upon its surface of warm azurite.

 

Glean from the glad conglomerate wealth outspread,

 

O Spring, to-day,

 

From all the fragrance that the wind has shed,

 

From all these flowers display,

 

Yea, from the infinite complex of its all,

 

Take of its best, and more -

 

The beauty of its embryo germinal,

 

The very essence of its kernel's core.

 

For only that, the true superlative

 

Of innate beauty, satisfies the soul,

 

That satisfied, can give

 

The incarnate mind the power to love the perfect whole.