Egbert Martin
El Guayanés-británico Egbert Martin (c. 1861-1890), que escribió bajo el seudónimo de "Leo", fue "el primer poeta antillano nativo... lisiado a una edad temprana, Martin superó las privaciones de la existencia colonial y publicar, en Londres, en 1883, su poética Works, un volumen sustancial que admiraba Lord Tennyson.
En 1886, apareció Leo's Local Lyrics, el primer volumen de poesía que se publicará en la colonia, su colección de cuentos cortos, Scriptology, fue publicado en 1885.
Himno Nacional
Y, cual ave en su amplio nido
cuando se dispone al descanso,
que repliegue el Reino Unido
sus alas extendidas como fuerte remanso
sobre su multitud de colonias
y, por largo tiempo, las guarde, proteja
y de todos sus enemigos defienda.
Mientras que hasta los confines del Imperio
el Sol hará su ronda,
iluminando sereno
una vasta concordia
que abarca de un mar a otro
libre gobierno y súbditos libres:
Dios salve a la Reina
Traducción de Carlos Roberto Ramírez Fuentes
National Anthem
And, Iike a bird at rest
In her own ample nest,
Let Britain close
Far-reaching wings and strong
O'er her colonial throng,
Guard, keep and shield them long
From all their foes.
While o'er the Empire's bound
The Sun shall skirt his round,
Shining sereneOn one broad amity
Holding from sea to sea
Free rule and subjects free:
God save the Queen
Thanksgiving
Up comes the sun,
And lifts the vapours wide,
As the bridegroom lifts the veil
To kiss his blushing bride.
From wold, and wood,
A whisper of content rolls by,
Through the umbrageous° brotherhood, shady
Beneath the purple sky.
Alone, and sad,
I catch the pleasant light,
And bless the Lord, in looking,
For the refreshing sight.
Looking Back
It is good, on gaining every station
In life’s progressive day,
To pause a little while in contemplation,
And mark the travelled way;
Look backward o’er the pathway in the distance,
And view each stumbling stone;
To gather fresh experience for resistance
Of griefs we knew alone.
’Tis looking back that gives the future colour,
Because, in life, we find
The past analogizes all the future
Upon the plastic mind;
Foreshadowing what “will be”, as what “had been”,
A mingled repetition
Of words and deeds, events, and many a scene,
And fantasy and vision.
Like Ezekiel’s dry bones in the valley
These scattered thoughts will meet
Each joint to each, and build to rare perfection
Their histories complete —
Their histories, that after careful reading
May cause the reflective heart
A secret pang, or bitter pain and bleeding,
Or joyous tears to start.
It is good to use experience rightly,
To guard ourselves withal;
And not to pass o’er circumstances lightly,
Forget them as they fall.
Life is too serious for a vapid wasting,
Too deep for hurried speed;
Too much prophetic of an after lasting
Effect from word and deed.
Sky Pictures
One sweep of blue
Framing many a picture rare;
Fantastic clouds of varied hue,
Devices quaint and queer.
Pillared columns,
Antique works of art and skill,
Piles of continents infused
With deep and hill.
Bastions fringed with fire,
Hooded heads of agèd men
Roll serenely onward, higher,
And lose their shape again.
Purple minarets,
Relieved in coloured gold,
Cloaks of sombre, sober grey
In sparkling borders rolled.
Ruined towers
Lift their battered arches wide,
As if to free the passage for
A rich, prismatic tide.
Slender spires cleave,
And twinkling flash and gleam.
Who may deny the thought,
This is a waking dream?
A dream indeed!
Where light is weaved in skeins,
Then twined in thick and braided cords,
And then in widest veins;
Where change is king,
And works its own infinite will,
To bless the charmed eyes that gaze
With pictures, pictured sweeter still.
Who lifts his sight,
And looks no farther than the sky,
Discerning not the Deity,
Deserves our fervent pity.
One sweep of blue,
Fashioned to a million ends,
Must be the great provision
Of the master-mind it blends.
The Unfolding Rose
I saw a rose unfold,
Leaf by leaf, leaf by leaf,
Its tints of yellow gold
In exquisite relief.
First from the bud uncurled
A tiny velvet wing,
Like a fairy banner furled
Upon a silken string.
Then slowly came the rest
In order’s quiet walk;
Till in perfection drest
The rose adorned its stalk.
How like the soul, I thought,
Might this unfolding seem;
Through quiet stages wrought
Unto the perfect beam;
The light that owes its birth,
All brilliant and divine,
Unto the shores of earth,
At first to faintly shine;
Till crust by crust of age
Unfolds its gradual way
Upon the upward stage
To full and perfect day.
Disappointment
I found a little bud one day,
A floweret wondrous fair;
Far brighter than a diamond’s ray,
And unto me more rare.
I hid it where we hide fair things,
Beside a thankful heart;
And thought to taste the joy that springs
From such a simple art.
But ‘tween the velvet leaves there lay
A viper hidden low,
That did mine ecstacy repay
With an envenomed blow:
A blow that, in its wealth of pain,
The while it did endure,
Exceeded all the pleasure-gain
I haply knew before.
With hasty hand I tore the flower
And flung it from its place;
And since that agonizing hour,
For me it lost all grace.
Anon I thought, in pensive mood,
How, ‘midst a gem so fair,
In hidden ambuscade there should
Repose a viper’s lair.
The River
The river is cool as it gladdens along,
Gladdens along with a bubbling song;
’Tis dark but its dimples are bright as they mould,
For a shower of sunbeams transforms them to gold;
Transforms them to brilliants that glow, flash, and quiver,
Along in the song of the gladdening river.
There where the oar falls a soft surf of white
Lifts, bursts,and sparkles in opals of light,
Where dips the sea-bird, the volatile spray
Cleaves to its lithe wings, then glimmers away.
Where the swift keel passes glidingly on,
Great lines of amber appear then are gone,
Rise, fall, rise, darkle, rise, sparkle, and fall,
Oh! a bright spell of beauty is over it all.
The river in childhood was ever to me
A mystery whereby no greater could be.
How wild was my joy as the swift current swirled,
‘Twixt its own and the wind’s power adversely hurled;
While the crest and the hollow of each sporting wave
Seemed a hill curving into a watery cave.
How great was my wonder — how often I’d try
To solve the great puzzle while still flowing by,
The waters would rise, overlap, and then cover,
Like great curls of gold rolling over and over.
To fancy the sky dropping curtains of blue,
Seemed shutting in distance the river from view.
And dreams that defy every measure of truth,
When fairly at play in the green heart of youth,
Would weave beyond there, where the azure was bent,
A heaven of love and a world of content.
Oh! river so rapidly glinting along,
Along in thy rapture of sparkle and song
Flows out with its waves and its caves flowing wide,
Those dreams have flown outward and left me today,
As barren as yon sterile granite-stone gray;
While I long with a longing, which God only knows,
To have my life flow as thy far water flows,
Beyond the dim curtains that shut from my sight
Those worlds where the duty of life lives in light;
To be spent, and to end all the sighing and grieving
In a land ‘yond the blue where no thoughts are deceiving.
A Shaded Spot
The sunlight fiercely burns
From ‘mid the vivid whiteness of our tropic day;
And every flower and leaf its parched bosom turns,
In languid mood away.
The palm-frond’s graceful spray
Droops moveless, ruffled by no breath of air,
There is a sense of rest, but such as flare
In flames that dazzle with a steady glare.
The heavy plantain-leaves,
Broad-fashioned, throw their shadows on the dusty ground,
And from each hanging ridge the rustic cottage eaves
Also in shade are bound.
No bird voice trills a sound.
Heat; clear white heat, that seems to rest with weight,
Falls on the window panes, upon the roofs of slate,
And sparkles on the low, white palings of each gate.
Here is a shaded spot;
A little calm, cool island in a world of light.
Now may the weary “eyelids close in rest”, and blot
The silent swirl from sight;
While half a-doze, sweet thoughts in flight
Pass and repass, like mental music flowing,
Or echoes that rise and fall, now coming and now going
Over the border-land, between knowing and unknowing.
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