The Five Books of Youth | Page 4

could not stir. As from a cage
I watched that spectral dim cortege

Moving inexorable and slow
Against the ashen afterglow.
Now
caught the moon their robes in white,
Now strode they sable through
the night,
Across the grass they came and grew
Whiter, statelier, as
they drew
Beneath the shadow of the wall;
Then one by one the
three stepped through
The garden door, and stood a while
Beside
the pool, their image spread
Sombre, and menacing, and tall.

Sombre as Priam's dreadful daughter,
Menacing as a murderer's smile,

Tall as 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