________________________________________________
Title: Ilgar's Song
Author: John Presland [
More Titles by Presland]
(From King Monmouth)
O love that dwells in the innermost heart of man
Secret and dark and still,
Like a bird in the core of a green mid-summer tree--
Height upon height and depth upon depth where never the eye can see
The brown bird, hidden and still.
O Love that is wild and eager, sun-lit and free
Like a seagull that turns in the sunlight above the sea;
Between the sea and the sky it flashes and turns,
And the sun on its wings is white,
While sharply and shrill by the headland the keen wind sings
Where the grass is salt and grey
With the beating winter spray,
And the seagull sweeps and soars on magnificent wings.
Love that is like a flame,
Held in the hollow hand,
So dear and precious a thing
As a light in a stranger land,
As a flickering candle to him who wanders by night.
Love that is wide as the dawn
To the eyes of night-bound men;
And the evil ghosts and the goblins it puts to flight,
And stealthy creatures of dark that rustle and creep,
And elfins and witches and all such devil's game
That cannot live in the light,
They squeak and gibber and cheep,
And vanish like shadows before the splendour of day.
Love that has wide, white wings like a flying swan
--Oh what a noble span,
From tip to tip they are more than the height of a man
And curved like the sails of a boat--
When over the evening river the wild swan flies
The curve of those wings is like the arch of the skies
Over the shielded earth.
Love is most like a bird,
For birds have least of the dust that gave them birth,
They soar and poise and float,
They wheel and swerve and skim,
And their wings are strong to the wind, and swift to the light,
And their voice is a promise of dawn while yet it is night,
And their song is a pæan of hope before it is spring,
And the song of the bird to his mate is lyrical love.
Love is secret and holy, a spiritual thing,
Dark and silent and still
In the heart of man, as a treasure is hid in a shrine.
Love is splendid and fierce, as the summer sun
Drenches the sea and the sky with its blaze and shine,
Till every pebble is hot to the touch of the hand,
And the air is a-shimmer with heat o'er the hazy land--
Yet Love is not any of these things, Love is of one
With the strange, half-guessed at, vast, creative plan
We cannot see with our eyes nor understand--
Yet is Love pitiful too, for Love is of man.
[The end]
John Presland's poem: Ilgar's Song
________________________________________________
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
