The Five Books of Youth | Page 4

the fingers of the dead,?Stood they beside the quiet water.
The moon went out in a golden blur,?And the small stars followed after her,?But when the fireflies cleft the air?I saw those three forms standing there,?Until the night cooled, and the trees?Shook in the strong hands of the breeze,?And then I heard their footsteps press?The muffled grass beyond the door,?And so went forth for ever more,?My three Fates to the wilderness.
Pomfret, 1919
XI - THE MAKER RESTS
I have worked too long and my hands are tired,?Said the maker;?From the earliest dawn unto deepest nightfall?Have I laboured.
From the earliest dawn before any spirit?Stirred from sleeping,?When no single note from the frozen forest?Wakened music,
Unto nightfall and the new moon rising?When the silence?From the valleys rose in a faint blue spiral,?Have I laboured.
I created dawn and the new moon rising?Out of silence;?I have worked too long and my hands are tired,?Said the maker.
I shall fold my hands; I shall rest till sunrise,?Said the maker;?In the shade of hills and the calm of starlight?Shall I slumber.
O my night is sweet with a distant music!?I shall hear?The responding waves and the wind's slight murmur?While I slumber.
O my night is fair with amazing colour!?I shall dream?Of the blue-white stars and the glimmering forest?While I slumber.
O my night is rich with unfolding flowers!?I shall breathe?All the scattered smells of the field and garden?While I slumber...
I will rise, O Night, I will make new beauty,?Said the maker,?I will make more songs, more stars, more flowers,?Said the Lord.
Cambridge, 1920
XII - THE PILGRIMAGE
Beside a deep and mossy well?In the dark starless night I lay;?And dropping water like a bell,?Like a bell ringing far away,?Struck liquid notes in monotone,--?An echo of a distant bell?Tolling the knell of yesterday.?Deep down beneath the mossy ground?The liquid notes in monotone?Kept dropping, dropping endlessly,?And as I listened, over me?Crept like a mist a filmy spell;?My spirit's waving wings were bound,?And dreams came that were not my own.?Half-sleeping, half-awake, I heard?The drowsy chirp of a forest bird,?And the wind came up and the grasses stirred?And the curtaining woods that cluster round?That resonantly-echoing well?Shook all their leaves with silver sound?Like voices murmuring in a shell.?Was it the past that lived again?In that nocturnal murmuring,?Waking a hidden voice to sing?Deep in my heart of other times?Whose memory long entombed had lain?Covered with all the dust of the years?...?Falling in splashing tears?The wet notes drop in liquid chimes,?And the white fingers of the breeze?Gather a song from the melodious trees....
There is a hand whiter than pearl?That plucks a lute's monotonous strings;?O starlight phantom of a girl?What lyric soul around thee sings,?And what divine companionship?Taught that entwining music to thy fingers,?And that unearthly music to thy lips??She pauses, and the echo lingers?Hovering like wings upon the air.?I see more clearly now, her hair?Ripples like a black water-fall?About the pallor of her face.?She sits beside a mossy well?Amid some dim marmoreal place,?Some fragrant Moorish hall?Set all about with arabesques of stone?And intricate mosaics of gem and shell.?She sings again, she plays a monotone,?Perpetual rhythm like a far-off bell,?And someone dances, in a dancing river?The white ecstatic limbs flutter and quiver?Against the shadow. In the odorous flowers?That grow about the well, still forms are lying,?A group of statues, an eternal throng,?Watching the dance and listening to the song;?So shall they lie, innumerable hours,?Silent and motionless for ever.?The wind comes up, the flowers shiver,?The dancer vanishes, the songs are dying;?Night sickens into day.?The wind comes up and blows the dust away....
Between two clouds a sullen flame?Expands, and lo, the crescent moon?Rides like a warrior through the sky.?Thus long ago the warning came?When midnight towns lay all in swoon,?That the great gods were coming nigh?To crush the rebellious earth.?Now beneath the crescent moon?No spirits stir, no wind makes mirth,?Only a rhythmic monotone?Of waters dropping in a well....
But who is this so broken with distress?That steals like mist into my loneliness??Why art thou weeping there, disconsolate child??Thy tears fall like the waters of a well,?And drip in silver notes upon the sands.?What is thy sorrow? Ah, what man can tell?The shapeless fancies that unwelcome dwell?Within thy brain, the spectres, dark and wild?That haunt the spirit of a child??Mayhap thou weepest for the embattled lands,?The bloody ruin of decaying realms?That a war overwhelms?And buries deep in the dust of history??He raises his wet eyes and looks at me,?His boyish face full of a yearning,?An ancient pain,?As of a ghost long dead who yearns to live again,?And answers, "In myself, thy thoughts returning?To other times shall slumber in the past,?And be a child again, and die at last?In the protecting arms of our great Mother?Who bore us both, O well-beloved brother.?Thou in thy sorry dreams, I in my childish grief,?Thy heart in tears, mine eyes amazed with tears,?Thy sorrow rich with the repining years,?My sorrow frail as childhood, and