: The Old Way by Marlowe Stephen - Science fiction; Asteroids Fiction; Asteroid belt Fiction

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ENVOY

PRAELUDIUM

In sumptuous chords, and strange, Through rich yet poignant harmonies: Subtle and strong browns, reds Magnificent with death and the pride of death, Thin, clamant greens And delicate yellows that exhaust The exquisite chromatics of decay: From ruining gardens, from reluctant woods-- Dear, multitudinously reluctant woods!-- And sering margents, forced To be lean and bare and perished grace by grace, And flower by flower discharmed, Comes, to a purpose none, Not even the Scorner, which is the Fool, can blink, The dead-march of the year.

Dead things and dying! Now the long-laboured soul Listens, and pines. But never a note of hope Sounds: whether in those high, Transcending unisons of resignation That speed the sovran sun, As he goes southing, weakening, minishing, Almighty in obedience; or in those Small, sorrowful colloquies Of bronze and russet and gold, Colour with colour, dying things with dead, That break along this visual orchestra: As in that other one, the audible, Horn answers horn, hautboy and violin Talk, and the 'cello calls the clarionet And flute, and the poor heart is glad. There is no hope in these--only despair.

Then, destiny in act, ensues That most tremendous passage in the score: When hangman rains and winds have wrought Their worst, and, the brave lights gone down, The low strings, the brute brass, the sullen drums Sob, grovel, and curse themselves Silent. . . . But on the spirit of Man And on the heart of the World there falls A strange, half-desperate peace: A war-worn, militant, gray jubilance In the unkind, implacable tyranny Of Winter, the obscene, Old, crapulous Regent, who in his loins-- O, who but feels he carries in his loins The wild, sweet-blooded, wonderful harlot, Spring?

Low--low Over a perishing after-glow, A thin, red shred of moon Trailed. In the windless air The poplars all ranked lean and chill. The smell of winter loitered there, And the Year's heart felt still. Yet not so far away Seemed the mad Spring, But that, as lovers will, I let my laughing heart go play, As it had been a fond maid's frolicking; And, turning thrice the gold I'd got, In the good gloom Solemnly wished me--what? What, and with whom?

Moon of half-candied meres And flurrying, fading snows; Moon of unkindly rains, Wild skies, and troubled vanes; When the Norther snarls and bites, And the lone moon walks a-cold, And the lawns grizzle o' nights, And wet fogs search the fold: Here in this heart of mine A dream that warms like wine, A dream one other knows, Moon of the roaring weirs And the sip-sopping close, February Fill-Dyke, Shapes like a royal rose-- A red, red rose!

O, but the distance clears! O, but the daylight grows! Soon shall the pied wind-flowers Babble of greening hours, Primrose and daffodil Yearn to a fathering sun, The lark have all his will, The thrush be never done, And April, May, and June Go to the same blythe tune As this blythe dream of mine! Moon when the crocus peers, Moon when the violet blows, February Fair-Maid, Haste, and let come the rose-- Let come the rose!

The night dislimns, and breaks Like snows slow thawn; An evil wind awakes On lea and lawn; The low East quakes; and hark! Out of the kindless dark, A fierce, protesting lark, High in the horror of dawn!

A shivering streak of light, A scurry of rain: Bleak day from bleaker night Creeps pinched and fain; The old gloom thins and dies, And in the wretched skies A new gloom, sick to rise, Sprawls, like a thing in pain.

And yet, what matter--say!-- The shuddering trees, The Easter-stricken day, The sodden leas? The good bird, wing and wing With Time, finds heart to sing, As he were hastening The swallow o'er the seas.

It came with the year's first crocus In a world of winds and snows-- Because it would, because it must, Because of life and time and lust; And a year's first crocus served my turn As well as the year's first rose.

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