New Poems | Page 2

IN MARCH
THE clouds are pushing in grey reluctance slowly
northward to you,?While north of them all, at the farthest ends,
stands one bright-bosomed, aglance?With fire as it guards the wild north cloud-coasts,
red-fire seas running through?The rocks where ravens flying to windward melt
as a well-shot lance.
You should be out by the orchard, where violets
secretly darken the earth,?Or there in the woods of the twilight, with
northern wind-flowers shaken astir.?Think of me here in the library, trying and trying
a song that is worth?Tears and swords to my heart, arrows no armour
will turn or deter.
You tell me the lambs have come, they lie like
daisies white in the grass?Of the dark-green hills; new calves in shed;
peewits turn after the plough--?It is well for you. For me the navvies work in the
road where I pass?And I want to smite in anger the barren rock of
each waterless brow.
Like the sough of a wind that is caught up high in
the mesh of the budding trees,?A sudden car goes sweeping past, and I strain my
soul to hear?The voice of the furtive triumphant engine as it
rushes past like a breeze,?To hear on its mocking triumphance unwitting
the after-echo of fear.
SUBURBS ON A HAZY DAY
O STIFFLY shapen houses that change not,?What conjuror's cloth was thrown across you,
and raised?To show you thus transfigured, changed,?Your stuff all gone, your menace almost rased?
Such resolute shapes, so harshly set?In hollow blocks and cubes deformed, and heaped?In void and null profusion, how is this??In what strong _aqua regia_ now are you steeped?
That you lose the brick-stuff out of you?And hover like a presentment, fading faint?And vanquished, evaporate away?To leave but only the merest possible taint!
HYDE PARK AT NIGHT, BEFORE?THE WAR
_Clerks_.
WE have shut the doors behind us, and the velvet
flowers of night?Lean about us scattering their pollen grains of
golden light.
Now at last we lift our faces, and our faces come
aflower?To the night that takes us willing, liberates us to the
hour.
Now at last the ink and dudgeon passes from our
fervent eyes?And out of the chambered weariness wanders a
spirit abroad on its enterprise.
Not too near and not too far?Out of the stress of the crowd?Music screams as elephants scream?When they lift their trunks and scream aloud?For joy of the night when masters are
Asleep and adream.
So here I hide in the Shalimar?With a wanton princess slender and proud,?And we swoon with kisses, swoon till we seem?Two streaming peacocks gone in a cloud?Of golden dust, with star after star
On our stream.
GIPSY
I, THE man with the red scarf,
Will give thee what I have, this last week's earnings.
Take them, and buy thee a silver ring
And wed me, to ease my yearnings.
For the rest, when thou art wedded
I'll wet my brow for thee?With sweat, I'll enter a house for thy sake,
Thou shalt shut doors on me.
TWO-FOLD
How gorgeous that shock of red lilies, and larkspur
cleaving?All with a flash of blue!--when will she be leaving?Her room, where the night still hangs like a halffolded
bat,?And passion unbearable seethes in the darkness, like
must in a vat.
UNDER THE OAK
You, if you were sensible,?When I tell you the stars flash signals, each one
dreadful,?You would not turn and answer me?"The night is wonderful."
Even you, if you knew?How this darkness soaks me through and through,
and infuses?Unholy fear in my vapour, you would pause to distinguish
What hurts, from what amuses.
For I tell you?Beneath this powerful tree, my whole soul's fluid?Oozes away from me as a sacrifice steam?At the knife of a Druid.
Again I tell you, I bleed, I am bound with withies,?My life runs out.?I tell you my blood runs out on the floor of this oak,?Gout upon gout.
Above me springs the blood-born mistletoe?In the shady smoke.?But who are you, twittering to and fro?Beneath the oak?
What thing better are you, what worse??What have you to do with the mysteries?Of this ancient place, of my ancient curse??What place have you in my histories?
SIGH NO MORE
THE cuckoo and the coo-dove's ceaseless calling,
Calling,?Of a meaningless monotony is palling?All my morning's pleasure in the sun-fleck-scattered
wood.?May-blossom and blue bird's-eye flowers falling,
Falling?In a litter through the elm-tree shade are scrawling?Messages of true-love down the dust of the highroad.
I do not like to hear the gentle grieving,
Grieving?Of the she-dove in the blossom, still believing?Love will yet again return to her and make all good.
When I know that there must ever be deceiving,
Deceiving?Of the mournful constant heart, that while she's
weaving?Her woes, her lover woos and sings within another
wood.
Oh, boisterous the cuckoo shouts, forestalling,
Stalling?A progress down the intricate enthralling?By-paths where the wanton-headed flowers doff
their hood.
And like a laughter leads me onward, heaving,
Heaving?A sigh among the shadows, thus retrieving?A decent short regret for that which once was very
good.
LOVE STORM
MANY roses in the wind?Are tapping at the window-sash.?A hawk is in the sky; his wings?Slowly begin to plash.
The roses with the west wind rapping?Are torn away, and a splash?Of red goes down the billowing air.
Still hangs the hawk, with the whole sky moving?Past him--only a wing-beat proving?The