Forty-Two Poems | Page 8

be, and whether in
great pain
I shall rise up and fight the air for breath
Or calmly wait
the bursting of my brain.

I am no coward who could seek in fear
A folklore solace or sweet
Indian tales:
I know dead men are deaf and cannot hear
The singing
of a thousand nightingales.
I know dead men are blind and cannot see
The friend that shuts in
horror their big eyes,
And they are witless--O I'd rather be
A living
mouse than dead as a man dies.
A WESTERN VOYAGE
My friend the Sun--like all my friends
Inconstant, lovely, far away -
Is out, and bright, and condescends
To glory in our holiday.
A furious march with him I'll go
And race him in the Western train,
And wake the hills of long ago
And swim the Devon sea again.
I have done foolishly to head
The footway of the false moonbeams,
To light my lamp and call the
dead
And read their long black printed dreams.
I have done foolishly to dwell
With Fear upon her desert isle,
To take my shadowgraph to Hell,
And then to hope the shades would smile.
And since the light must fail me soon
(But faster, faster, Western train!)
Proud meadows of the afternoon,

I have remembered you again.
And I'll go seek through moor and dale
A flower that wastrel winds caress;
The bud is red and the leaves
pale,
The name of it Forgetfulness.
Then like the old and happy hills
With frozen veins and fires outrun,
I'll wait the day when darkness
kills
My brother and good friend, the Sun.
FOUNTAINS
Soft is the collied night, and cool
The wind about the garden pool.

Here will I dip my burning hand
And move an inch of drowsy sand,

And pray the dark reflected skies
To fasten with their seal mine
eyes.
A million million leagues away
Among the stars the goldfish
play,
And high above the shadowed stars
Wave and float the
nenuphars.
THE WELSH SEA
Far out across Carnarvon bay,
Beneath the evening waves,
The ancient dead begin their day
And stream among the graves.
Listen, for they of ghostly speech,
Who died when Christ was born,
May dance upon the golden beach
That once was golden corn.

And you may learn of Dyfed's reign,
And dream Nemedian tales
Of Kings who sailed in ships from Spain
And lent their swords to Wales.
Listen, for like a golden snake
The Ocean twists and stirs,
And whispers how the dead men wake
And call across the years.
OXFORD CANAL
When you have wearied of the valiant spires of this County Town, Of
its wide white streets and glistening museums, and black monastic
walls,
Of its red motors and lumbering trains, and self-sufficient
people, I will take you walking with me to a place you have not seen -
Half town and half country--the land of the Canal.
It is dearer to me
than the antique town: I love it more than the rounded hills:

Straightest, sublimest of rivers is the long Canal.
I have observed
great storms and trembled: I have wept for fear of the dark.
But
nothing makes me so afraid as the clear water of this idle canal on a
summer s noon.
Do you see the great telegraph poles down in the
water, how every wire is distinct?
If a body fell into the canal it
would rest entangled in those wires for ever, between earth and air.

For the water is as deep as the stars are high.
One day I was thinking
how if a man fell from that lofty pole He would rush through the water
toward me till his image was scattered by his splash,
When suddenly
a train rushed by: the brazen dome of the engine flashed: the long white
carriages roared;
The sun veiled himself for a moment, and the
signals loomed in fog; A savage woman screamed at me from a barge:
little children began to cry;
The untidy landscape rose to life: a
sawmill started;
A cart rattled down to the wharf, and workmen
clanged over the iron footbridge;
A beautiful old man nodded from
the first story window of a square red house,
And a pretty girl came

out to hang up clothes in a small delightful garden.
O strange motion
in the suburb of a county town: slow regular movement of the dance of
death!
Men and not phantoms are these that move in light.
Forgotten they live, and forgotten die.
HIALMAR SPEAKS TO THE RAVEN
from Leconte de Lisle
Night on the bloodstained snow: the wind is chill:
And there a
thousand tombless warriors lie,
Grasping their swords, wild-featured.
All are still.
Above them the black ravens wheel and cry.
A brilliant moon sends her cold light abroad:
Hialmar arises from the
reddened slain,
Heavily leaning on his broken sword,
And bleeding
from his side the battle-rain.
"Hail to you all: is there one breath still drawn
Among those fierce
and fearless lads who played
So merrily, and sang as sweet in the
dawn
As thrushes singing in the bramble shade?
"They