Classes at Shalwa Woods

His voice was a call to the Transcendent’s sphere

Whose secret touch upon our mortal lives

Keeps ever new the thrill that made the world,

Remoulds an ancient sweetness to new shapes

And guards intact unchanged by death and Time

The answer of our hearts to Nature’s charm

And keeps for ever new, yet still the same,

The throb that ever wakes to the old delight

And beauty and rapture and the joy to live. ||93.24||

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His coming brought the magic and the spell,

At his touch life’s tired heart grew glad and young;

He made joy a willing prisoner in her breast. ||93.25||

Shakespeare

His grasp was a young god’s upon earth’s limbs:

Changed by the passion of his divine outbreak

He made her body beautiful with his kiss. ||93.26||

Shakespeare

Impatient for felicity he came,

High-fluting with the coïl’s happy voice,

His peacock turban trailing on the trees;

His breath was a warm summons to delight,

The dense voluptuous azure was his gaze. ||93.27||

Shakespeare

A soft celestial urge surprised the blood

Rich with the instinct of God’s sensuous joys;

Revealed in beauty, a cadence was abroad

Insistent on the rapture-thrill in life:

Immortal movements touched the fleeting hours. ||93.28||

Shakespeare

A godlike packed intensity of sense

Made it a passionate pleasure even to breathe;

All sights and voices wove a single charm. ||93.29||

Shakespeare

The life of the enchanted globe became

A storm of sweetness and of light and song,

A revel of colour and of ecstasy,

A hymn of rays, a litany of cries:

A strain of choral priestly music sang

And, swung on the swaying censer of the trees,

A sacrifice of perfume filled the hours. ||93.30||

Shakespeare

Asocas burned in crimson spots of flame,

Pure like the breath of an unstained desire

White jasmines haunted the enamoured air,

Pale mango-blossoms fed the liquid voice

Of the love-maddened coïl, and the brown bee

Muttered in fragrance mid the honey-buds. ||93.31||

Shakespeare

The sunlight was a great god’s golden smile. ||93.32||

Shakespeare

All Nature was at beauty’s festival. ||93.33||

Shakespeare

Shakespeare

When daisies pied, and violets blue,

And lady-smocks all silver-white,

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue

Do paint the meadows with delight,

The cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men, for thus sings he:

“Cuckoo!

Cuckoo, cuckoo!” O word of fear,

Unpleasing to a married ear.

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When daisies pied, and violets blue,

And lady-smocks all silver-white,

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue

Do paint the meadows with delight,

The cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men, for thus sings he:

“Cuckoo!

Cuckoo, cuckoo!” O word of fear,

Unpleasing to a married ear.

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When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,

And merry larks are ploughmen’s clocks,

When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,

And maidens bleach their summer smocks,

The cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men, for thus sings he:

“Cuckoo!

Cuckoo, cuckoo!” O word of fear,

Unpleasing to a married ear.

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From you have I been absent in the spring

When proud-pied April, dress’d in all his trim,

Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,

That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with him.

Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell

Of different flowers in odour and in hue,

Could make me any summer’s story tell,

Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:

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Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,

Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;

They were but sweet, but figures of delight,

Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.

Yet seem’d it winter still, and you away,

As with your shadow I with these did play.

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