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lair of sudden?Male and female darknesses?Has broken her spell.
AFTER THE OPERA
DOWN the stone stairs?Girls with their large eyes wide with tragedy?Lift looks of shocked and momentous emotion?up at me.?And I smile.
Ladies?Stepping like birds with their bright and pointed feet?Peer anxiously forth, as if for a boat to carry them out?of the wreckage,?And among the wreck of the theatre crowd?I stand and smile.
They take tragedy so becomingly.?Which pleases me.
But when I meet the weary eyes?The reddened aching eyes of the bar-man with thin?arms,?I am glad to go back to where I came from.
GOING BACK
THE NIGHT turns slowly round,?Swift trains go by in a rush of light;?Slow trains steal past.?This train beats anxiously, outward bound.
But I am not here.?I am away, beyond the scope of this turning;?There, where the pivot is, the axis?Of all this gear.
I, who sit in tears,?I, whose heart is torn with parting;?Who cannot bear to think back to the departure?platform;?My spirit hears
Voices of men?Sound of artillery, aeroplanes, presences,?And more than all, the dead-sure silence,?The pivot again.
There, at the axis?Pain, or love, or grief?Sleep on speed; in dead certainty;?Pure relief.
There, at the pivot?Time sleeps again.?No has-been, no here-after; only the perfected?Silence of men.
ON THE MARCH
WE are out on the open road.?Through the low west window a cold light?flows?On the floor where never my numb feet trode?Before; onward the strange road goes.
Soon the spaces of the western sky?With shutters of sombre cloud will close.?But we'll still be together, this road and I,?Together, wherever the long road goes.
The wind chases by us, and over the corn?Pale shadows flee from us as if from their foes.?Like a snake we thresh on the long, forlorn?Land, as onward the long road goes.
From the sky, the low, tired moon fades out;?Through the poplars the night-wind blows;?Pale, sleepy phantoms are tossed about?As the wind asks whither the wan road goes.
Away in the distance wakes a lamp.?Inscrutable small lights glitter in rows.?But they come no nearer, and still we tramp?Onward, wherever the strange road goes.
Beat after beat falls sombre and dull.?The wind is unchanging, not one of us knows?What will be in the final lull?When we find the place where this dead road goes.
For something must come, since we pass and pass?Along in the coiled, convulsive throes?Of this marching, along with the invisible grass?That goes wherever this old road goes.
Perhaps we shall come to oblivion.?Perhaps we shall march till our tired toes?Tread over the edge of the pit, and we're gone?Down the endless slope where the last road goes.
If so, let us forge ahead, straight on?If we're going to sleep the sleep with those?That fall forever, knowing none?Of this land whereon the wrong road goes.
BOMBARDMENT
THE TOWN has opened to the sun.?Like a flat red lily with a million petals?She unfolds, she comes undone.
A sharp sky brushes upon?The myriad glittering chimney-tips?As she gently exhales to the sun.
Hurrying creatures run?Down the labyrinth of the sinister flower.?What is it they shun?
A dark bird falls from the sun.?It curves in a rush to the heart of the vast?Flower: the day has begun.
WINTER-LULL
Because of the silent snow, we are all hushed
Into awe.?No sound of guns, nor overhead no rushed
Vibration to draw?Our attention out of the void wherein we are crushed.
A crow floats past on level wings
Noiselessly.?Uninterrupted silence swings
Invisibly, inaudibly?To and fro in our misgivings.
We do not look at each other, we hide
Our daunted eyes.?White earth, and ruins, ourselves, and nothing beside.
It all belies?Our existence; we wait, and are still denied.
We are folded together, men and the snowy ground
Into nullity.?There is silence, only the silence, never a sound
Nor a verity?To assist us; disastrously silence-bound!
THE ATTACK
WHEN we came out of the wood?Was a great light!?The night uprisen stood?In white.
I wondered, I looked around?It was so fair. The bright?Stubble upon the ground?Shone white
Like any field of snow;?Yet warm the chase?Of faint night-breaths did go?Across my face!
White-bodied and warm the night was,?Sweet-scented to hold in my throat.?White and alight the night was.?A pale stroke smote
The pulse through the whole bland being?Which was This and me;?A pulse that still went fleeing,?Yet did not flee.
After the terrible rage, the death,?This wonder stood glistening??All shapes of wonder, with suspended breath,?Arrested listening
In ecstatic reverie.?The whole, white Night!--?With wonder, every black tree?Blossomed outright.
I saw the transfiguration?And the present Host.?Transubstantiation?Of the Luminous Ghost.
OBSEQUIAL ODE
SURELY you've trodden straight?To the very door!?Surely you took your fate?Faultlessly. Now it's too late?To say more.
It is evident you were right,?That man has a course to go?A voyage to sail beyond the charted seas.?You have passed from out of sight
And my questions blow?Back from the straight horizon that ends all one sees.
Now like a vessel in port?You unlade your riches unto death,?And glad are the eager dead to receive you there.
Let the dead sort?Your cargo out, breath from breath?Let them disencumber your bounty, let them all share.
I imagine dead hands are brighter,?Their fingers in sunset shine?With jewels of