A Cluster of Grapes | Page 7

Introversion
99
Ichthus
100
MARGARET L. WOODS:
Poems, Collected Edition (John Lane),
1913.
Songs
102
The Changeling
103
Æ
RECONCILIATION
I begin through the grass once again to be bound to the Lord; I can see,

through a face that has faded, the face full of rest Of the earth, of the
mother, my heart with her heart in accord, As I lie mid the cool green
tresses that mantle her breast I begin with the grass once again to be
bound to the Lord.
By the hand of a child I am led to the throne of the King
For a touch
that now fevers me not is forgotten and far,
And His infinite sceptred
hands that sway us can bring
Me in dreams from the laugh of a child
to the song of a star. On the laugh of a child I am borne to the joy of the
King.
THE MAN TO THE ANGEL
I have wept a million tears:
Pure and proud one, where are thine,

What the gain though all thy years
In unbroken beauty shine?
All your beauty cannot win
Truth we learn in pain and sighs:
You
can never enter in
To the circle of the wise.
They are but the slaves of light
Who have never known the gloom,

And between the dark and bright
Willed in freedom their own doom.
Think not in your pureness there,
That our pain but follows sin:

There are fires for those who dare
Seek the throne of might to win.
Pure one, from your pride refrain:
Dark and lost amid the strife
I am
myriad years of pain
Nearer to the fount of life.
When defiance fierce is thrown
At the god to whom you bow,
Rest
the lips of the Unknown
Tenderest upon my brow.
BABYLON
The blue dusk ran between the streets: my love was winged within my
mind, It left to-day and yesterday and thrice a thousand years behind.
To-day was past and dead for me, for from to-day my feet had run

Through thrice a thousand years to walk the ways of ancient Babylon.
On temple top and palace roof the burnished gold flung back the rays
Of a red sunset that was dead and lost beyond a million days. The
tower of heaven turns darker blue, a starry sparkle now begins; The
mystery and magnificence, the myriad beauty and the sins Come back
to me. I walk beneath the shadowy multitude of towers; Within the
gloom the fountain jets its pallid mist in lily flowers. The waters lull me
and the scent of many gardens, and I hear Familiar voices, and the
voice I love is whispering in my ear. Oh real as in dream all this; and
then a hand on mine is laid: The wave of phantom time withdraws; and
that young Babylonian maid, One drop of beauty left behind from all
the flowing of that tide, Is looking with the self-same eyes, and here in
Ireland by my side. Oh light our life in Babylon, but Babylon has taken
wings,
While we are in the calm and proud procession of eternal
things.
ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON
MAKING HASTE
"Soon!" says the Snowdrop, and smiles at the motherly earth,
"Soon!--for the Spring with her languors comes stealthily on Snow was
my cradle, and chill winds sang at my birth;
Winter is over--and I
must make haste to be gone!"
"Soon," says the Swallow, and dips to the wind-ruffled stream, "Grain
is all garnered--the Summer is over and done;
Bleak to the eastward
the icy battalions gleam,
Summer is over--and I must make haste