"Lost The Wind's Warning": Ivor Gurney

Derek Mahon's "Leaves" (please see my post for October 24, 2010) brings to mind the following poem by Ivor Gurney -- the wind and the leaves, of course, but Time and Loss as well.  According to the editor of the collection in which the poem appears, it was "written on the back of an Oxford University Press letterhead dated 6 March 1929.  [It was] signed 'Valentine Fane' by Gurney; he frequently used such names on his later manuscripts."

                  The Wind

All night the fierce wind blew --
All night I knew
Time, like a dark wind, blowing
All days, all lives, all memories
Down empty endless skies --
A blind wind, strowing
Bright leaves of life's torn tree
through blank eternity:
Dreadfully swift, Time blew.
All night I knew
the outrush of its going.

At dawn a thin rain wept.
Worn out, I slept
And woke to a fair morning.
My days were amply long, and I content
In their accomplishment --
Lost the wind's warning.

Ivor Gurney, Selected Poems (edited by George Walter) (1996).

                                     A. J. Casson, "Pike Lake" (c. 1929)

Lake Superior: Janet Lewis and the Group Of Seven

My recent visit to Lake Superior put me in mind of the following poem by Janet Lewis, as well as of paintings of Lake Superior by artists in the Group of Seven.

              River

Remember for me the river,
Flowing wide and cold, from beyond Sugar Island,
Still and smooth, breathing sweetness
Into still air, moving under its surface
With all the power of creation.

Remember for me the scent of sweet-grass
In Ojibway baskets,
Of meadow turf, alive with insects.

Remember for me
Who will not be able to remember.
Remember the river.

The Selected Poems of Janet Lewis, edited by R. L. Barth (2000).  According to Mr. Barth, the river of the poem is the St. Mary's River, which "flows generally from Lake Superior to Lake Huron, for a space forming the international boundary between the U.S. and Canada."  

                             Lawren Harris, Above Lake Superior

                            Lawren Harris, Lake Superior, Sketch III

                               A. J. Casson, October, Lake Superior

                             Lawren Harris, Clouds, Lake Superior