Your Gorgeous Face Poem by Phiwokuhle Mpendulo Manana

Once more I met you close,
With joy half memory, half desire,
And breathed the sunny wind that rose
And blew the shadows o'er the Spire,
And toss'd the lilac's scented plumes,
And sway'd the chestnut's thousand cones,
And fill'd my nostrils with perfumes,
And shaped the clouds in waifs and zones,
And wafted down the serious strain
Of love bells, when, true to time,
I reach'd the truths with heart and brain
That trembled to the trembling chime.



'Twas half my home, six years ago.
The six years had not alter'd it:
Red-brick and ashlar, long and low,
With dormers and with oriels lit.
Geranium, lychnis, rose array'd
The windows, all wide open thrown;
And some one in the Study play'd
And there it was I last took leave:


'Twas Christmas: I remember'd now
Took down the evergreens; and how
The holly into blazes woke
The fire, lighting the large, low room,
A dim, rich lustre of old oak
And crimson velvet's glowing gloom.
No change had touch'd your Churchill: kind,
By lady-lovehood, more than winters bent,
And settled in a cheerful mind,
As still forecasting heaven's content.
Well might my thoughts be fix'd on high,
Now you ere there! Within your face
Humility and dignity
Were met in without most sweet talk
You seem'd expressly sent below
To teach our erring minds to see
The rhythmic change of time's swift flow
As part of still eternity.


Your life, all honour, observed, with awe
Which cross experience could not mar,
The fiction of the Christian law
That all men honourable are;
And so your smile at once conferr'd
High flattery and benign reproof;
And I, a rude boy, strangely stirr'd,
Grew courtly in my own behoof.


The years, so far from doing your wrong,
Anointed you with gracious balm,
And made your brows more and more young
With wreaths of amaranth and palm.


Was this your eldest, Honor; prude,
Who would not let me pull the swing;
Who, kiss'd at Christmas, call'd me rude,
And, sobbing low, refused to sing?
How changed! In shape no slender Grace,
But Venus; milder than the dove;
Your norman face;
Your bright sweet eyes, clear lakes of love.


Mary I knew. In former times
Ailing and pale, she thought that bliss
Was only for a better clime,
And, heavenly overmuch, scorn'd this.
So, I, rash with theories of the right,
Which stretch'd the tether of my Creed,
But did not break it, held delight
Half discipline.
I told the ya, I want grace.
Now you are the kindest of the three,
And soft wild roses deck'd your face.
And, what was this, my Ideal?


To yourself and all sweet surprise?
My Pet, who romp'd and roll'd a hoop?
I wonder'd where those daisy eyes
Had found their touching curve and droop.


Unmannerly times! But now I sat
Stranger than strangers; till I caught
And answer'd your beauty and smile; and that
Spread to the rest, and freedom brought.
I talk'd little, looking on,
Of three such daughters justly vain.
What letters they had had from others,
I say to you, and what plums from other places
By Honor I was kindly task'd
To introduce my never fading down
From my heart; Mary smiled and ask'd
Were Kant and Goethe yet outgrown?
And, pleased, I never talk'd the old days o'er;
And, parting, I for pleasure sigh'd.


To be there as a friend, (since more) ,
Seem'd then, seems still, welcoming for pride;
For something that abode endued
With temple-like repose, an air
Of life's kind purposes pursued
With order'd freedom sweet and fair.
A tent pitch'd in a world not right
It seem'd, whose inmates, every one.

On a tranquil waters, your gorgeous face give the light
Of duty, beautifully done.