edwinmuir

Old gods and goddesses who have lived so long
Through time and never found eternity,
Fettered by wasting wood and hollowing hill,
You should have fled our ever-dying song…

—Edwin Muir, “To the Old Gods”
📷 Ballachulish Figure, c728–524 BCE

https://www.nms.ac.uk/discover-catalogue/a-mysterious-iron-age-figure-from-ballachulish

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #archaeology #IronAge #EdwinMuir

To the Old Gods
by Edwin Muir

Old gods and goddesses who have lived so long
Through time and never found eternity,
Fettered by wasting wood and hollowing hill,

You should have fled our ever-dying song,
The mound, the well, and the green trysting tree.
They have forgotten, yet you linger still.

Goddess of caverned breast and channeled brow,
And cheeks slow hollowed by millennial tears,
Forests of autumn fading in your eyes,

Eternity marvels at your counted years
And kingdoms lost in time, and wonders how
There could be thoughts so bountiful and wise

As yours beneath the ever-breaking bough
And vast compassion curving like the skies.

ALT

An early Iron Age wooden carved figure of a woman or girl, standing in front of a wall of woven twigs and branches. The figure is blackened with age, and the wood has twisted and elongated due to the lack of proper preservation when it was discovered in a peatbog in 1880. Carved from a single block of alder, at the time of its discovery it stood 1.4 metres tall (just under 5 feet). The figure has a large, heavy head with inset quartz pebbles for eyes, large ears, a distinct nose and mouth and a round chin.

ALT

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96d

In favoured summers
These islands have the sun all to themselves
And light a toy to play with, weeks on end…

—Edwin Muir, “The Northern Islands”
published in The Complete Poems of Edwin Muir, ed. Peter H. Butter (ASLS, 1999)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Orkney #summer #EdwinMuir

Edwin Muir
The Northern Islands

In favoured summers
These islands have the sun all to themselves
And light a toy to play with, weeks on end.
The empty sky and waters are a shell
Endlessly turning, turning the wheel of light,
While the tranced waves run wavering up the sand.
The beasts sleep when they can, midnight or midday,
Slumbering on into unending brightness.
The green, green fields give too much, are too rank,
With beautiful beasts for breeding or for slaughter.
The horses, glorious useless race, are leaving.
Have the old ways left with them, and the faith,
Lost in this dream too comfortable and goodly
To make room for a blessing? Where can it fall?
The old ways change in the turning, turning light,
Taking and giving life to life from life.

ALT

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