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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=530254" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Aforetime</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Dear exile from the hurrying crowd,<br>At work I muse to you aloud;<br>Thought on my anvil softens, glows,<br>And I forget our art has foes;<br>For life, the mother of beauty, seems<br>A joyous sleep with waking dreams.<br>Then the toy armoury of the brain<br>Opining, judging, looks as vain<br>As trowels silver gilt for use<br>Of mayors and kings, who have to lay<br>Foundation stones in hope they may<br>Be honoured for walls others build.<br>I, in amicable muse,<br>With fathomless wonder only filled,<br>Whisper over to your ear<br>Listening two hundred odd miles north,<br>And give thought chase that, were you here,<br>Our talk would never run to earth.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Man can answer no momentous question:<br>Whence comes his spirit? Has it lived before?<br>Reason fails; hot springs of feeling spout<br>Their snowy columns high in the dim land<br>Of his surmise — violent divine decisions<br>That often rule him: and at times he views<br>Portraits of places he has never been to,<br>Yet more minute and vivid than remembrance,<br>Of boyhood homes, sail between sleep and waking<br>Like some mirage, refuting all experience<br>With topsy-turvy ships,<br>That steals by in dead calms through tropic haze:<br>And many a man in his climacteric years,<br>Thoughts and remembered words have roused from sleep<br>With knowledge that he lacked on lying down:<br>And I, lapped in a trance of reverie, doubt<br>Some spore of episodes<br>Anterior far beyond this body's birth,<br>Dispersed like puffs of dust impalpable,<br>Wind-carried round this globe for centuries,<br>May, breathed with common air, yet swim the blood,<br>And striking root in this or that brain, raise<br>Imaginations unaccountable;<br>One such seems half-implied in all I am,<br>And many times re-pondered shapes like this:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A child myself I watched a woman loll<br>Like to a clot of seaweed thrown ashore;<br>Heavy and limp as cloth soaked in black dye,<br>She glooms the noontide dazzle where a bay<br>Bites into vineyarded flats close-fenced by hills,<br>Over whose tops lap forests of cork and fir<br>And reach in places half down their rough slopes.<br>Lower, some few cleared fields square on the thickets<br>Of junipers and longer thorns than furze<br>So clumped that they are trackless even for goats<br>I know two things about that woman: first<br>She is a slave and I am free, and next<br>As mothers need their sons' love she needs mine.<br>Longings to utter fond compassionate sounds<br>Stir through me, checked by knowing wiser folk<br>Reprobate such indulgence. Ill at ease,<br>Mute, yet her captive, I thrust brown toes through<br>Loose sand no daily large tides overwhelm<br>To cake and roll it firm and smooth and clean<br>As the Atlantic remakes shores, you know.<br>But there, like trailing skirts, long flaws of wind<br>Obliterate the prints feet during calms<br>Track over and over its always lonely stretch,<br>Till some will have, it ghosts must rove at night;<br>For folk by day are rare, yet a still week<br>Leaves hardly ten yards anywhere uncrossed;<br>Tempest spreads all revirginate like snow,<br>Half burying dead wood snapped off from tossed trees,<br>Since right along the foreshore, out of reach<br>Of furious driven waves, three hundred pines<br>Straggle the marches between sand and soil.<br>Like maps of stone-walled fields their branching roots<br>Hold the silt still so that thin grass grows there,<br>Its blades whitened with travelling powdery drift<br>The besom of the lightest breeze sets stirring.<br>That woman's gaze toils worn from remote years,<br>Yet forward yearns through the bright spacious noon,<br>Beyond the farthest isle, whose filmy shape<br>Floats faint on the sea-line.<br>I, scooping grains up with the frail half-shell<br>Pale green and white-lined of sea-urchin, knew<br>What her eyes sought as often children know<br>Of grief or sin they could not name or think of<br>Yet sooth or shrink from, so I saw and longed<br>To heal her tender wound and yet said naught.<br>The energy of bygone joy and pain<br>Had left her listless figure charged with magic<br>That caught and held my idleness near hers.<br>Resentful of her power, my spirit chafed<br>Against its own deep pity, as though it were<br>Raised ghost and she the witch had bid it haunt me.<br>What's more I knew this slave by rights should glean<br>And faggot drift-wood, not lounge there and waste<br>My father's food dreaming his time away.<br>For then as now the common-minded rich<br>Grudged ease to those whose toil brought them in means<br>For every waste of life. At length I spoke,<br>Insulting both my inarticulate soul<br>And her with acted anger: 'Lazy wretch,<br>Is it for eyes like yours to watch the sea<br>As though you waited for a homing ship?<br>My father might with reason spend his hours<br>Scanning the far horizon; for his Swan<br>Whose outward lading was full half a vintage<br>Is now months overdue.' She turned on me<br>Her languor knit and, through its homespun wrap,<br>Her muscular frame gave hints of rebel will,<br>While those great caves of night, her eyes, faced mine,<br>Dread with the silence of unuttered wrongs:<br>At last she spoke as one who must be heeded.<br>Truly I am not clear<br>Whether her meaning was conveyed in words<br>(She mingled accents of an eastern tongue<br>With deformed phrases of our native Latin)<br>Or whether thought from her gaze poured through mine.<br>The gravity of recollected life<br>Was hers, condensed and, like a vision, flashed<br>Suddenly on the guilty mind, a whole<br>Compact, no longer a mere tedious string<br>Of moments negligible, each so small<br>As they were lived, but stark like a slain man<br>Who would alive have been ourself with twice<br>The skill, the knowledge, the vitality<br>Actually ours. Yea, as a tree may view<br>With fingerless boughs and lorn pole impotent,<br>An elephant gorged upon its leaves depart,<br>Men often have reviewed an unwieldy past,<br>That like a feasted Mammoth, leisured and slow,<br>Turned its back on their warped bones. Even thus,<br>Momentous with reproach, her grave regard<br>Made me feel mean, cashiered of rank and right,<br>My limbs that twelve good years had nursed were numbed<br>And all their fidgety quicksilver grew stiff,<br>Novel and fevering hallucinations <br>Invaded my attention. So daylight<br>When shutters are thrown back spreads through a house;<br>As then the dreams and terrors of the night<br>Decamp, so from my mind were driven<br>All its own thoughts and feelings. Close she leant<br>Propped on a swarthy arm, while the other helped<br>With eloquent gesture potent as wizard wand,<br>Veil the world off as with an airy web,<br>Or flowing tent a-gleam with pictured folds.<br>These tauten and distend — one sea of wheat,<br>Islanded with black cities, borders now<br>The voluminous blue pavilion of day.<br>There-under to the nearest of those towns<br>This woman younger by ten years made haste<br>While at her side ran a small boy of six.<br>They neared the walls, half a huge double gate<br>Lay prostrate, though the other by stone hinges<br>Hung to its flanking tower. The path they followed<br>Threaded an old paved road whose flags were edged<br>With dry grass and dry weeds, even cactuses<br>Had pushed the stones up or found root in muck heaps:<br>The path struck up the slope of the fallen door,<br>Basalt like midnight, o'er which dusty feet<br>Had greyed a passage, for it rested on<br>Some débris fallen from the left-hand tower,<br>And from its upper edge rude blocks like steps<br>Led down into the straight main street, that ran<br>Past eyeless buildings mined as it were from coal,<br>And earthquake-raised to light. Palaces and<br>Roofless wide-flighted colonnaded temples,<br>The uncemented walls piled-plumb with blocks<br>Squared, polished, fitted with daemonic patience.<br>Each gaping threshold high again as need be<br>Waited a nine-foot lord to enter hall,<br>Where the least draughty corner sheltered now<br>Half-tented hut or improvised small home<br>For Arab, brown, light-footed and proud-necked<br>As was this woman with the compelling voice.<br>Their present hutched and hived within that past<br>As bees in the parchment chest of Samson's lion;<br>And all seem conscious that their life was sweet,<br>Like mice who clean their faces after meals<br>And have such grace of movement, when unscared,<br>As wins the admiration even of those<br>Whose stores they rob and soil. I saw her eyes<br>Young with contentment in her son<br>And smaller babe and in their handsome sire,<br>And knew that many a supper had been relished<br>With hearts as joyous as waited while she cooked<br>And served upon returning to their cot<br>In hall where once far other hearts caroused.<br>They and their tribe could never reap a tithe<br>Of the vast harvest rustling round those ruins,<br>And over which a half-moon soon set forth<br>From black hills mounded up both east and south,<br>While north-west her light played on distant summits;<br>All the huge interspace floored with standing corn<br>Which kings afar send soldiery to reap,<br>Who now, beside a long canal cut straight<br>In ancient days, have pitched their noisy camp<br>Which on that vast staid silence makes a bruise<br>Of blare and riot that its robust health<br>Will certainly heal in a brief lapse of time.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">One night, re-thought on after ten whole years,<br>Is like the condor high above the Andes,<br>A speck with difficulty found again<br>Once the attention quits it. And I next<br>Descried our woman under breathless noon,<br>Bathing in a clear lane of gliding water<br>Whose banks seem lonely as the path of light<br>Crossing mid ocean south of Capricorn.<br>Her son steals warily after a butterfly<br>And is as hushed with hope to capture it<br>As are the birds with heat. An insect hum<br>Circles the spot as round a cymbal's rim,<br>Long after it has clanged, tingles a throb<br>Which in a dream forgets the parent sound,<br>Oppressed by this protracted and awe-filled pause,<br>She hardly dares to wade the stream and moves<br>As though in dread to wake some sleeping god,<br>Yet still she nears and nears the further bank<br>Where there is shade under a shumac's eaves.<br>The brilliant surface cut her right in two,<br>And the reflection of her bronzed torso<br>Hid all beneath the polished gliding mirror;<br>How her face listened to that sleep divine<br>Whose audible breath was tuned to dreams of bliss!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Sudden, as though the woof of heaven were torn,<br>A strident shout rang from some neighbour shrubs<br>Three Nubian soldiers ran upon her with<br>Delighted oily faces. Screaming first<br>Commands to her small son to make for home,<br>She laboured to recross the current as when<br>In nightmares the scared soul expects to die<br>Tortured by mutiny in limbs like lead,<br>But as the playful lion of the sea<br>Climbs the rock ledges hard by Fingal's cave<br>To throw himself down into deep green baths,<br>While others barking follow his vigorous lead,<br>The foremost Abyssinian threw his weight<br>Before her with a splash that hid them both,<br>As the explosion of light-filled liquid parcels<br>Shot forth in all directions. In his arms<br>She re-appeared, a tragic terrified face<br>Beside his coarse one laughing with success.<br>Squeezing her with a pantomime of love,<br>He turns to follow an arrow with his eyes<br>That his companion, still upon the bank,<br>Has aimed towards her son's small head that bobbed<br>Like a black cork across the basking corn.<br>But from the level of the sunk stream bed<br>Neither he nor she could see the target aimed at,<br>Yet in the pause they heard the poor child scream;<br>A second arrow, second scream; she fought,<br>But soon like bundle bound, hung o'er his shoulder,<br>Helpless as a mouse in cat's mouth carried off<br>In search of quiet, there to play with it.<br>Those arrows missed? — or did they not? The child<br>Shrieked twice, yet scarcely like a wounded thing<br>She thought and hoped and still but thinks and hopes.<br>Where is that boy? Where is her husband now?<br>While she submitted body to force and soul<br>To the great shuddering violence of despair<br>How had their life progressed in that far place?<br>Compassion fused my consciousness with hers<br>And second-sighted eloquence arose<br>To claim my mind for rostrum,<br>But obstinately tranced<br>My eyes clung to their vision;<br>For regions to explore allure the boy<br>No stretch of thought or sea of feeling tempts.<br>Entranced, the mind I then had, haunted<br>Those basalt ruins. High on sable towers<br>Some silky patriarchal goat appears<br>And ponders silent streets, or suddenly<br>Some nanny, her huge bag swollen with milk,<br>Trots out on galleries that unfenced run<br>Round vacant courts, there, stopped by plaintive kids,<br>Lets them complete their meal. While always, always, <br>Throughout, those mazed, sullen and sun-soaked walls,<br>The steady, healthy wind,<br>Which often blows for weeks without a lull<br>Across that upland plain,<br>Flutes staidly. Moaning<br>Continuously as seas<br>Or forests before storm,<br>And, gathering moment,<br>Articulated by her woe, begins<br>With second-sighted eloquence<br>To wail through me,<br>Nigh as unheeded,<br>As though it still had been<br>Meaningless wind.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For ah! the heart is cowed<br>And dares not use her strength,<br>Hears the kind impulse plead<br>Against the common avaricious fear,<br>Grants it but life, though sovereignty was due<br>Or doles it sway but one day out of seven<br>Or one a year.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So, so, and ever, so<br>In the close-curtained court<br>Those causes are deferred<br>Which most import;<br>These wait man's leisure.<br>These daily matters elbow;<br>Merely because<br>His panic meanness<br>Jibs blindly ere it hear<br>What wisdom has prepared,<br>Bolts headlong ere it see<br>Her face unfold its smile.<br>Man after man, race after race<br>Drops jaded by the iterancy<br>Of petty fear.<br>Even as horses on the green steppes grazing,<br>Hundreds scattered through lonely peacefulness,<br>If shadow of cloud or red fox breaking earth<br>Delude but one with dream of a stealthy foe,<br>All are stampeded.<br>Their frantic torrent draws in,<br>With dire attraction, cumulative force,<br>Stragglers grazing miles from where it started;<br>On it thunders quite devoid of meaning.<br>The tender private soul<br>Thus takes contagion from the sordid crowd,<br>And shying at mere dread of loss,<br>Loses the whole of life.<br>Thus, in the vortex of a base turmoil,<br>Those myriad million energies wear down<br>That might have raised mankind<br>To live the life of gods.<br>Had but my soul been his,<br>As his was mine,<br>Those wind-resembling accents<br>Had found fit auditor.<br>Their second-sighted eloquence,<br>Welcomed with acclamation,<br>Had fired action.<br>But that was ages since: he was not then<br>What now I am,<br>Who have no longer<br>The opportunity then mine, then missed, — <br>Who still am dazed and troubled<br>Surmising others mine, others missed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Passionate, never-wearied voice,<br>Tombed in thy brittle shell, <br>This human heart<br>Thou croonest age on age,<br>'Give and ask not,<br>Help and blame not,'<br>Heeded less than large and mottled cowry<br>The which at least some child may hold to ear<br>All smiles to listen.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thou findest parables;<br>With fond imagination<br>Adorning truth<br>For the successive<br>Unpersuaded<br>Generations.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> This boy, myself that was,<br>Musing visions by that woman raised,<br>Watched that land she came from, towned with ruins<br>Send mile-long files of laden camels out<br>With grain to hostile cities, — <br>Knew too the blue entrancing plain of waters<br>Teemed with fresh shoals, buoyed up indifferently,<br>Fisher — trader — pirate bark, — <br>Even the straight thought whispered at his ear,<br>'Thy lips might join with hers as with some cousin's,<br>Here, now, at noon,<br>Hugging her bereavéd sadness close,<br>And still, to-night, with equal satisfaction,<br>Thy mother's blind contentment with her son.'<br>While half-seduced, half-chafed, his mind was shaken<br>As with conflicting gusts a choppy sea,<br>His eyes, still greedy of their visions,<br>Fastened a swarthy town enisled in wheat,<br>And to the ebon threshold of each house,<br>Conjured forth the man that each was planned for:<br>Great creatures smiling with his father's smile,<br>Muscular, wealthy and self-satisfied,<br>Wearing loud-coloured raiment, earrings, chains,<br>Armlet and buckle, all of clanking gold.<br>His spirit drank from theirs great draughts of pride<br>And read their minds more clearly than his own;<br>All, with one counsel like a chorus, dinned<br>His soul that then was mine,<br>With truths well-proved in action.<br>'Love is chaos,<br>For order's sake<br>Whatever must be, should be,'<br>Roared those bulls of Bashan.<br>Then their proud chant argued,<br>'How should this woman know<br>Her little lad again,<br>Who either now is bones<br>Under the fertile field,<br>Or well nigh a grown man?<br>Say they should cross at market<br>Both slaves would pass on, not a start the wiser.<br>What is she then to him<br>Or he to her<br>After these years?<br>To drag a life that might have been but is not<br>With toil of mind and heart,<br>Through dreary year on year,<br>Neglecting for its sake the life that is,<br>Spells folly and ingratitude to those<br>Who treat their slaves well.<br>Thy father's household and thyself should be<br>More to her now than those who may be dead,<br>The place she lives in dearer<br>Than any unattainable far land<br>Where she is more forgotten than old dreams. <br>Why make the day of evil worse<br>By dwelling on it after it has past?<br>Near things alone are real,<br>Now is the whole of time:<br>Places beyond the horizon are but pictures;<br>Memory cheats the eye with an illusion!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Your thoughts are sound, bold builders,<br>I am my father's son.<br>Behold this home-shore, these our hills, this bay,<br>And this our slave! — <br>Up, work, look sharp about it!'<br>Bounding a foot and fast retiring from her,<br>I stoop for stones strewn thick about the sand,<br>Aim them, fling them,<br>And, as my idle arm resumes the knack,<br>Score a hit and laugh<br>To see her stumble hurt, behind the pine trunks.<br>'Unless you work, I throw again,<br>To it and steady at it.<br>Mark me, drab, we Camilli<br>Mean what we say.'<br>Stone after stone still flies,<br>But aimed to knock chips from the pine-boles now;<br>For she is busy gathering sticks, increasing<br>Her distance as she may. The noon is sultry,<br>Heated and clammy, I,<br>Towards the live waves turning, slip my tunic,<br>Then run in naked.<br>Cooled and soothed by swimming,<br>Both mind and heart from their late tumult tuned<br>To placid acquiescent health,<br>I float, suspended in the limpid water,<br>Passive, rhythmically governed;<br>So tranced worlds travel the dark shoreless ether.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Where should this stream of pictures tend?'<br>No, Bottomley, you will not ask;<br>To you I am quite free to send<br>The unexpected, unexplained,<br>You will not take me thus to task.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So they be painted well, they live;<br>If ill, they yet may cling to fame<br>Associated with your name.<br>In which case you, and not I, give<br>That we are both contented with.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Thomas+Sturge+Moore">Thomas Sturge Moore</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=530254" data-title="Aforetime de Thomas Sturge Moore" data-description="Dear exile from the hurrying crowd,
At work I muse to you aloud;
Thought on my anvil softens, glows,
And I forget our art has foes;
For life, the mother of beauty, seems
A joyous sleep with waking dreams.
Then the toy armoury of the brain
Opining,..."></div>
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