New Poems | Page 5

away on our sight.
And still by the rotten?Row of shattered feet,?Outcasts keep guard.?Forgotten,?Forgetting, till fate shall delete?One from the ward.
The factories on the Surrey side?Are beautifully laid in black on a gold-grey sky.?The river's invisible tide?Threads and thrills like ore that is wealth to the eye.
And great gold midges?Cross the chasm?At the bridges?Above intertwined plasm.
WINTER IN THE BOULEVARD
THE frost has settled down upon the trees?And ruthlessly strangled off the fantasies?Of leaves that have gone unnoticed, swept like old?Romantic stories now no more to be told.
The trees down the boulevard stand naked in
thought,?Their abundant summery wordage silenced, caught?In the grim undertow; naked the trees confront?Implacable winter's long, cross-questioning brunt.
Has some hand balanced more leaves in the depths
of the twigs??Some dim little efforts placed in the threads of the
birch?--?It is only the sparrows, like dead black leaves on
the sprigs,?Sitting huddled against the cerulean, one flesh with
their perch.
The clear, cold sky coldly bethinks itself.?Like vivid thought the air spins bright, and all?Trees, birds, and earth, arrested in the after-thought?Awaiting the sentence out from the welkin brought.
SCHOOL ON THE OUTSKIRTS
How different, in the middle of snows, the great
school rises red!?A red rock silent and shadowless, clung round
with clusters of shouting lads,?Some few dark-cleaving the doorway, souls that
cling as the souls of the dead?In stupor persist at the gates of life, obstinate
dark monads.
This new red rock in a waste of white rises against
the day?With shelter now, and with blandishment, since
the winds have had their way?And laid the desert horrific of silence and snow on
the world of mankind,?School now is the rock in this weary land the winter
burns and makes blind.
SICKNESS
WAVING slowly before me, pushed into the dark,?Unseen my hands explore the silence, drawing the
bark?Of my body slowly behind.
Nothing to meet my fingers but the fleece of night?Invisible blinding my face and my eyes! What if
in their flight?My hands should touch the door!
What if I suddenly stumble, and push the door?Open, and a great grey dawn swirls over my feet,
before?I can draw back!
What if unwitting I set the door of eternity wide?And am swept away in the horrible dawn, am gone
down the tide?Of eternal hereafter!
Catch my hands, my darling, between your breasts.?Take them away from their venture, before fate
wrests?The meaning out of them.
EVERLASTING FLOWERS
WHO do you think stands watching?The snow-tops shining rosy?In heaven, now that the darkness?Takes all but the tallest posy?
Who then sees the two-winged?Boat down there, all alone?And asleep on the snow's last shadow,?Like a moth on a stone?
The olive-leaves, light as gad-flies,?Have all gone dark, gone black.?And now in the dark my soul to you?Turns back.
To you, my little darling,?To you, out of Italy.?For what is loveliness, my love,?Save you have it with me!
So, there's an oxen wagon?Comes darkly into sight:?A man with a lantern, swinging?A little light.
What does he see, my darling?Here by the darkened lake??Here, in the sloping shadow?The mountains make?
He says not a word, but passes,?Staring at what he sees.?What ghost of us both do you think he saw?Under the olive trees?
All the things that are lovely--?The things you never knew--?I wanted to gather them one by one?And bring them to you.
But never now, my darling?Can I gather the mountain-tips?From the twilight like half-shut lilies?To hold to your lips.
And never the two-winged vessel?That sleeps below on the lake?Can I catch like a moth between my hands?For you to take.
But hush, I am not regretting:?It is far more perfect now.?I'll whisper the ghostly truth to the world?And tell them how
I know you here in the darkness,?How you sit in the throne of my eyes?At peace, and look out of the windows?In glad surprise.
THE NORTH COUNTRY
IN another country, black poplars shake themselves
over a pond,?And rooks and the rising smoke-waves scatter and
wheel from the works beyond;?The air is dark with north and with sulphur, the
grass is a darker green,?And people darkly invested with purple move
palpable through the scene.
Soundlessly down across the counties, out of the
resonant gloom?That wraps the north in stupor and purple travels
the deep, slow boom?Of the man-life north-imprisoned, shut in the hum
of the purpled steel?As it spins to sleep on its motion, drugged dense in
the sleep of the wheel.
Out of the sleep, from the gloom of motion, soundlessly,
somnambule?Moans and booms the soul of a people imprisoned,
asleep in the rule?Of the strong machine that runs mesmeric, booming
the spell of its word?Upon them and moving them helpless, mechanic,
their will to its will deferred.
Yet all the while comes the droning inaudible, out
of the violet air,?The moaning of sleep-bound beings in travail that
toil and are will-less there?In the spell-bound north, convulsive now with a
dream near morning, strong?With violent achings heaving to burst the sleep
that is now not long.
BITTERNESS OF DEATH
I
AH, stern, cold man,?How can you lie so relentless hard?While I wash you with weeping water!?Do you set your face against the daughter?Of life? Can you never discard?Your curt pride's ban?
You masquerader!?How can you shame to