John Drinkwater Hear Poems
- 1. To My Son
(AGED SIXTEEN)
Dear boy unborn: the son but of my dream,
Promise of yet unrisen day,
... - 2. Southampton Bells
I
Long ago some builder thrust
Heavenward in Southampton town
... - 3. The Maid Of Naaman's Wife
That was the proud woman, Naaman's wife.
Basking at noon under the Syrian fans,
While Naaman, the leprous mighty captain,
Proud glowing flesh now silver-skinned and tainted,
... - 4. David And Jonathan
And Jonathan too had honour in his heart,
Jonathan who with an armour-bearer went
Alone by Michmash to the Philistines,
And met a spray of swords because of courage
... - 5. Burning Bush
From babyhood I have known the beauty of earth,
I learnt it, I think, in the strange months before birth,
I learnt it passing and passing by each moon
From the harvest month into my natal June.
... - 6. Persuasion
Then I asked: 'Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so?'
He replied: 'All Poets believe that it does, and in ages of imagination this firm persuasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of a firm persuasion of anything.'
... - 7. The Fires Of God
I
Time gathers to my name;
Along the ways wheredown my feet have passed
... - 8. The Midlands
Black in the summer night my Cotswold hill
Aslant my window sleeps, beneath a sky
Deep as the bedded violets that fill
March woods with dusky passion. As I lie
...
