Water Colours

The trembling water glimpsed 
      through dark tangle
Of late-month April’s
      delicatest  thorn,
One moment put the cuckoo-
       flower to scorn
Where its head hangs by
      sedges, 
Severn bank-full.
But dark water has a hundred 
       fires on it;
As the sky changes it changes 
      and ranges through
Sky colours and thorn
      colours, and more would do,
Were not the blossom truth so 
      quick on it,
And beauty brief in action as 
      first dew.

  IvorGurney 
 

Index

What things I have missed today,
     I know very well,
But the seeing of them 
      each new time is miracle.
Nothing between Bredon and 
      Dursley has
Any day yesterday’s precise 
      unpraisèd grace.
The changed light, 
      or curve changed mistily,
Coppice, now bold cut, 
      yesterday’s mystery.
A sense of mornings, once seen, 
      for ever gone,
Its own for ever: alive, dead, 
      and my possession.

      Ivor Gurney

                        Up There

On Cotswold edge there is a field and that
Grows thick with corn and speedwell and the mat
Of thistles, of the tall kind; Rome lived there,
Some hurt centurion got his grant or tenure,
Built farm with fowls and pigsties and wood-piles,
Waited for service custom between whiles.
The farmer ploughs up coins in the wet-earth time,
He sees them on the topple of crests gleam,
Or run down furrow; and halts and does let them lie
Like a small black island in brown immensity,
Till his wonder is ceased, 
      and his great hand picks up  the penny.
Red pottery easy discovered, no searching needed…
One wonders what farms were like, 
      no searching needed,
As now the single kite hovering still
By the coppice there, level with the flat of the hill.

                   Ivor Gurney

 
 
 

Index

 To me the A Major Concerto* has been dearer
 Than ever before, because I saw one weave
 Wonderful patterns of bright green, never clearer
 Of April; whose hand nothing at all did deceive
 Of laying right
 The stakes bright
 Green lopped-off spear-shaped, 
         and stuck notched, crooked-up;
Wonder was quickened at workman’s craftsmanship
But clumsy were the efforts of my stiff body
To help him in the laying of bramble, ready
Of mind, but clumsy of muscle in helping; rip
Of clothes unheeded, torn hands. 
        And his quick moving
Was never broken by any danger, his loving
Use of the bill or scythe was most deft, and clear—
Had my piano-playing or counterpoint
Been so without fear
Then indeed fame had been mine 
        of most bright outshining;
But never had I known singer or piano-player
So quick and sure in movement as this hedge-layer
This gap-mender, of quiet courage unhastening.

                   Ivor Gurney

* Mozart: Piano Concerto No.23 in A major, K.488

The miles go sliding by
Under my steady feet,
That mark a leisurely
And still unbroken beat,
Through coppices that hear
Awhile, then lie as still
As though no traveller
Ever had climbed their hill.

My comrades are the small
Or dumb or singing birds,
Squirrels, field things all
And placid drowsing herds.
Companions that I must
Greet for a while, then leave
Scattering the forward dust
From dawn to late of eve.

Ivor Gurney 

Index

What Malvern is the day is, 
       and its touchstone –
Grey velvet, or moon-marked; 
       rich, or bare as bone;
One looks towards Malvern 
       and is made one with the whole;
The world swings round him 
       as the Bear to the Pole.

Men have crossed seas to know 
       how Paul’s tops Fleet,
That as music has rapt them 
       in the mere street,
While none or few care 
       how the curved giants stand,
(Those upheaved strengths!) 
       on the meadow and plough-land.

       Ivor Gurney
 

 

The Ivor Gurney Society announces the printing of greeting cards, 
dedicated to illustrating the beauty of the Gloucestershire countryside 
that Gurney loved so much. 

Each card has on its face beautiful full-colour photograph by Archie Miles, 
an appropriate Gurney poem on the inside-left, 
and a blank inside-right for individual messages; 
they measure 8"x6" and are supplied complete with envelopes.

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Sunrise across the River Severn | Crisp winter morning in Foxholes Wood | Traditional hedge laying
View down the Painswick Valley | Stanway | Early morning view along the Malvern Hills
Poems: Water Colours | Yesterday Lost | Up There | Hedger
Walking Song | The Touchstone – Watching Malvern
More Poems | More Photos | Greeting Cards Overview

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Society is charging £4.70 per set of six, or £8.80 per two sets, 

including postage and packing in the UK.

The cost for non-members of the Society is £5.00 per set plus p&p.

    

U.S.A. orders: Members, $11.50 (includes postage and packing)
Non-members, $12.50  (includes p&p)
For each additional set add $1 per set to cover mailing.
For details where to send your U.S. $, write Pamela Blevins, pblevins@erols.com.