Young Knowledge

Poems of Robin Hyde

Robin Hyde, Michele Leggott

• Publisher: Auckland University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781869402983
• eBook ISBN: 9781775582458
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism in Poetry
• Index: Literature

A full chronological record of the poems of Robin Hyde, a New Zealand journalist, novelist, dramatist, and poet active in the 1930s, is presented in this book. The 300 poems chosen show Hyde's growth as a poet and her response to the painful events of her personal life and to the political and social world around her. The poems are remarkable both for their acute observation of the physical and emotional world and for their powerful prophetic and visionary elements.

SECTION THREE

April 1935 – December 1936

THE BALANCE

Incidence:
(Is that the word?)

Ronald Holloway gives me this

diary at the Unicorn Press,

and

offers beer. But

Robert Lowry is churlish

sullen and inhospitable

as

the Atlantic waves breaking

over his sullen Irish coast,

all

Jerseys and men with

stumpy legs and dogs with

stumpy tails, looking for

casks of rum after

the shipwreck. But

finding it not.

Which

Brings me back to the beer;

while

Ronald seeks it, I do sit in

the sun, on a broad-based

rock of

Volcanic origin. But

Imperturbable nature. Hard by

an ivy geranium, complete

with

Pink stare and baby snail,

And

There dream, watched by

Loafers, dogs with scabby

tails, sparrows, shiny carsurfaces,

hot-baked bricks

like

Loaves crusty from

The giant’s oven,

And,

The Police who know no

Better. Till

Ronald arrives with the

beer and,

under the disapproving

eye of Robert, we

Drink it out of a jug

Which has held nasturtiums,

Brown

velvet nasturtiums, cinnamon,

clear

orange flowers, flowers

absorbent of too

much sunshine, too

great a lucidity and

grasp of

the sun’s big idea,

too

marked a comprehension

of

what it is all about, too

little tolerance

of

groundlings, nidderings; star-

squibs, the

trite and the obscure, the

Rueful ones left out

when

Colour was handed round.

From

the earthenware influenced

by these masterful

Flower-dragoons, I

Drink beer without visible

effect, but

not without comfort;

And

return to sitting on the

stone in

the sunshine,

Like

a lizard but not so

green;

Salve regina, that is to say

The

nasturtium: salve

Imperator, the

beer. Save all of us

except

Politicians: and Robert.

Amen

[China N]

Outdoors

Daisies big as fifty moons

Feed the bees with silver spoons,

Soil is stubborn, black, and needs

Green rebellion of its weeds

To speak its anger. Overhead

Flying cloud as dark as lead

Clangs like a wild goose, soon to blow

Earthward the breast-down of its snow.

Not quite gold and not quite green,

Clean as unsaid thoughts are clean,

Unripened on a snowball tree

The squabs of blossom dance for me,

And greener, in pedantic rage,

A spider dances on this page.

[AU 440.3]

At Castor Bay

Stretching her arms

On the low couch that lay

Full in a sun too clear for autumn’s pining

She felt the sea’s blue glitter in the bay

Pulse through her veins, and softly down her throat

The lances wheel, the silken banners float,

As light, across his world of creatures shining,

Subdued her too.

Yet still the wroth alarms

Of the shrill days came clamouring at her ears;

Still claim their ancient fee, regrets and fears.

Two musics wooed her – Life, and that more deep.

She thought, ‘I would lie here in the sun, and sleep,

And not wake more.’

But as her eyelids fell

Dream said, ‘In a thousand years, perhaps that sea

Will glitter so, and down the banquet-hall

Of slender trees, the moon move like a guest

Royal in presence. All the memori...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• SOURCES AND ABBREVIATIONS
• INTRODUCTION
• SECTION ONE : 1925–1929
• SECTION TWO : 1930 – March 1935
• SECTION THREE : April 1935 – December 1936
• SECTION FOUR : 1937
• SECTION FIVE : January 1938 – August 1939
• ROBIN HYDE: A CHRONOLOGY
• WORKS CITED
• INDEX OF TITLES
• NOTES
• Sources and Abbreviations
• Copyright