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passion once broken through you as a?prism?Breaks light into jewels; and dead breasts whiter
For your wrath; and yes, I opine?They anoint their brows with your blood, as a perfect?chrism.
On your body, the beaten anvil,?Was hammered out?That moon-like sword the ascendant dead unsheathe?Against us; sword that no man will
Put to rout;?Sword that severs the question from us who breathe.
Surely you've trodden straight
To the very door.?You have surely achieved your fate;?And the perfect dead are elate
To have won once more.
Now to the dead you are giving
Your last allegiance.?But what of us who are living?And fearful yet of believing
In your pitiless legions.
SHADES
SHALL I tell you, then, how it is?--?There came a cloven gleam?Like a tongue of darkened flame?To flicker in me.
And so I seem?To have you still the same?In one world with me.
In the flicker of a flower,?In a worm that is blind, yet strives,?In a mouse that pauses to listen
Glimmers our?Shadow; yet it deprives?Them none of their glisten.
In every shaken morsel?I see our shadow tremble?As if it rippled from out of us hand in hand.
As if it were part and parcel,?One shadow, and we need not dissemble?Our darkness: do you understand?
For I have told you plainly how it is.
BREAD UPON THE WATERS.
SO you are lost to me!?Ah you, you ear of corn straight lying,?What food is this for the darkly flying?Fowls of the Afterwards!
White bread afloat on the waters,?Cast out by the hand that scatters?Food untowards,
Will you come back when the tide turns??After many days? My heart yearns?To know.
Will you return after many days?To say your say as a traveller says,?More marvel than woe?
Drift then, for the sightless birds?And the fish in shadow-waved herds?To approach you.
Drift then, bread cast out;?Drift, lest I fall in doubt,?And reproach you.
For you are lost to me!
RUINATION
THE sun is bleeding its fires upon the mist?That huddles in grey heaps coiling and holding?back.?Like cliffs abutting in shadow a drear grey sea?Some street-ends thrust forward their stack.
On the misty waste-lands, away from the flushing grey?Of the morning the elms are loftily dimmed, and tall?As if moving in air towards us, tall angels?Of darkness advancing steadily over us all.
RONDEAU OF A CONSCIENTIOUS?OBJECTOR.
THE hours have tumbled their leaden, monotonous?sands?And piled them up in a dull grey heap in the?West.?I carry my patience sullenly through the waste lands;?To-morrow will pour them all back, the dull hours I?detest.
I force my cart through the sodden filth that is pressed?Into ooze, and the sombre dirt spouts up at my hands?As I make my way in twilight now to rest.?The hours have tumbled their leaden, monotonous?sands.
A twisted thorn-tree still in the evening stands?Defending the memory of leaves and the happy round?nest.?But mud has flooded the homes of these weary lands?And piled them up in a dull grey heap in the West.
All day has the clank of iron on iron distressed?The nerve-bare place. Now a little silence expands?And a gasp of relief. But the soul is still compressed:?I carry my patience sullenly through the waste lands.
The hours have ceased to fall, and a star commands?Shadows to cover our stricken manhood, and blest?Sleep to make us forget: but he understands:?To-morrow will pour them all back, the dull hours?I detest.
TOMMIES IN THE TRAIN
THE SUN SHINES,?The coltsfoot flowers along the railway banks?Shine like flat coin which Jove in thanks?Strews each side the lines.
A steeple?In purple elms, daffodils?Sparkle beneath; luminous hills?Beyond--and no people.
England, Oh Dana??To this spring of cosmic gold?That falls on your lap of mould!?What then are we?
What are we?Clay-coloured, who roll in fatigue?As the train falls league by league?From our destiny?
A hand is over my face,?A cold hand. I peep between the fingers?To watch the world that lingers?Behind, yet keeps pace.
Always there, as I peep?Between the fingers that cover my face!?Which then is it that falls from its place?And rolls down the steep?
Is it the train?That falls like meteorite?Backward into space, to alight?Never again?
Or is it the illusory world?That falls from reality?As we look? Or are we?Like a thunderbolt hurled?
One or another?Is lost, since we fall apart?Endlessly, in one motion depart?From each other.
WAR-BABY
THE CHILD like mustard-seed?Rolls out of the husk of death
Into the woman's fertile, fathomless lap.
Look, it has taken root!?See how it flourisheth.
See how it rises with magical, rosy sap!
As for our faith, it was there?When we did not know, did not care;
It fell from our husk like a little, hasty seed.
Sing, it is all we need.?Sing, for the little weed
Will flourish its branches in heaven when we?slumber beneath.
NOSTALGIA
THE WANING MOON looks upward; this
grey night?Slopes round the heavens in one smooth curve?Of easy sailing; odd red wicks serve?To show where the ships at sea move out of sight.
The place is palpable me, for here I was born?Of this self-same darkness. Yet the shadowy house
below?Is out of bounds, and only the old ghosts know?I have come, I feel them whimper in welcome, and
mourn.
My father suddenly died in the harvesting