 | Poems: "Vocation" and "Fairford Nightingales" |  |
316
POEMS
BY JOHN DRINKWATER
VOCATION
THIS be my pilgrimage and goal,
Daily to march and find
The secret phrases of the soul,
The evangels of the mind.
Daily to march and find
The secret phrases of the soul,
The evangels of the mind.
While easy tongues are lightly heard,
Let me with them be great
Who still upon the perfect word
As heavenly fowlers wait.
Let me with them be great
Who still upon the perfect word
As heavenly fowlers wait.
In taverns none will I be seen
But can my dæmon teach
My cloudy thought to wash all clean
In the bright sun of speech.
But can my dæmon teach
My cloudy thought to wash all clean
In the bright sun of speech.
FAIRFORD NIGHTINGALES
THE nightingales at Fairford sing
As though it were a common thing
To make the day melodious
With tones that use to visit us
Only when thrush and blackbird take
Their sleep nor know the moon's awake.
As though it were a common thing
To make the day melodious
With tones that use to visit us
Only when thrush and blackbird take
Their sleep nor know the moon's awake.
These nightingales they sing at noon,
Not lyric lone, but threading June
With songs of many nightingales,
Till the meridian summer pales,
And here by day that spectral will
Is spending its enchantment still.
Not lyric lone, but threading June
With songs of many nightingales,
Till the meridian summer pales,
And here by day that spectral will
Is spending its enchantment still.
Nor shyly in far woodland bowers,
But walled among the garden flowers,
The Fairford nightingales are free,
That so the fabled melody
Is from the haunted groves of Thrace
Falling on Fairford market-place.
But walled among the garden flowers,
The Fairford nightingales are free,
That so the fabled melody
Is from the haunted groves of Thrace
Falling on Fairford market-place.
O nightingales that leave the night
To join the melodists of light,
And leave your coppiced gloom to dare
The fellowship forsaken there,
Fresh hours, fresh leaves can dispossess
Nor spell your music's loneliness.
To join the melodists of light,
And leave your coppiced gloom to dare
The fellowship forsaken there,
Fresh hours, fresh leaves can dispossess
Nor spell your music's loneliness.
| Poems: "Vocation" and "Fairford Nightingales" | |