Alcyone | Page 8

till it withered joint by joint,

The shadow on the dial pass
From point to point.
He saw the midnight bright and bare
Fill with its quietude of stars

The silence that no human prayer
Attains or mars.
He heard the hours divide, and still
The sentry on the outer wall

Make the night wearier with his shrill
Monotonous call.
He watched the lizard where it lay,
Impassive as the watcher's face;

And only once in the long day
It changed its place.
Sometimes with clank of hoofs and cries
The noon through all its
trance was stirred;
The poet sat with half-shut eyes,
Nor saw, nor heard.
And once across the heated close
Light laughter in a silver shower

Fell from fair lips: the poet rose
And cursed the hour.

Men paled and sickened; half in fear,
There came to him at dusk of
eve
One who but murmured in his ear
And plucked his sleeve:
'The king is filled with irks, distressed,
And bids thee hasten to his
side;
For thou alone canst give him rest.'
The poet cried:
'Go, show the king this broken lute!
Even as it is, so am I!
The tree
is perished to its root,
The fountain dry.
'What seeks he of the leafless tree,
The broken lute, the empty spring?

Yea, tho' he give his crown to me,
I cannot sing!'
II
That night there came from either hand
A sense of change upon the
land;
A brooding stillness rustled through
With creeping winds that
hardly blew;
A shadow from the looming west,
A stir of leaves, a
dim unrest;
It seemed as if a spell had broke.
And then the poet turned and woke
As from the darkness of a dream,

And with a smile divine supreme
Drew up his mantle fold on fold,

And strung his lute with strings of gold,
And bound the sandals to
his feet,
And strode into the darkling street.
Through crowds of murmuring men he hied,
With working lips and
swinging stride,
And gleaming eyes and brow bent down;
Out of
the great gate of the town
He hastened ever and passed on,
And ere
the darkness came, was gone,
A mote beyond the western swell.

And then the storm arose and fell
From wheeling shadows black with
rain
That drowned the hills and strode the plain;
Round the grim
mountain-heads it passed,
Down whistling valleys blast on blast,

Surged in upon the snapping trees,
And swept the shuddering
villages.
That night, when the fierce hours grew long,
Once more the monarch,
old and grey,
Called for the poet and his song,
And called in vain.
But far away,
By the wild mountain-gorges, stirred,
The shepherds
in their watches heard,
Above the torrent's charge and clang,
The
cleaving chant of one that sang.
A THUNDERSTORM
A moment the wild swallows like a flight
Of withered gust-caught
leaves, serenely high,
Toss in the windrack up the muttering sky.

The leaves hang still. Above the weird twilight,
The hurrying centres
of the storm unite
And spreading with huge trunk and rolling fringe,

Each wheeled upon its own tremendous hinge
Tower darkening on.
And now from heaven's height
With the long roar of elm-trees swept
and swayed,
And pelted waters, on the vanished plain
Plunges the
blast. Behind the wild white flash
That splits abroad the pealing
thunder-crash,
Over bleared fields and gardens disarrayed,
Column
on column comes the drenching rain.
THE CITY
Canst thou not rest, O city,
That liest so wide and fair;
Shall never
an hour bring pity,
Nor end be found for care?
Thy walls are high in heaven,
Thy streets are gay and wide,

Beneath thy towers at even
The dreamy waters glide.
Thou art fair as the hills at morning,
And the sunshine loveth thee,

But its light is a gloom of warning
On a soul no longer free.

The curses of gold are about thee,
And thy sorrow deepeneth still;

One madness within and without thee,
One battle blind and shrill.
I see the crowds for ever
Go by with hurrying feet;
Through doors
that darken never
I hear the engines beat.
Through days and nights that follow
The hidden mill-wheel strains;

In the midnight's windy hollow
I hear the roar of trains.
And still the day fulfilleth,
And still the night goes round,
And the
guest-hall boometh and shrilleth,
With the dance's mocking sound.
In chambers of gold elysian,
The cymbals clash and clang,
But the
days are gone like a vision
When the people wrought and sang.
And toil hath fear for neighbour,
Where singing lips are dumb,
And
life is one long labour,
Till death or freedom come.
Ah! the crowds that for ever are flowing--
They neither laugh nor
weep--
I see them coming and going,
Like things that move in
sleep:
Grey sires and burdened brothers,
The old, the young, the fair,
Wan
cheeks of pallid mothers,
And the girls with golden hair.
Care sits in many a fashion,
Grown grey on many a head,
And lips
are turned to ashen
Whose years have right to red.
Canst thou not rest, O city,
That liest so wide, so fair;
Shalt never
an hour bring pity,
Nor end be found for care?
SAPPHICS
Clothed in splendour, beautifully sad and silent,
Comes the autumn
over the woods and highlands,
Golden, rose-red, full of divine
remembrance,

Full of foreboding.
Soon the maples, soon will the glowing birches,
Stripped