The Five Books of Youth | Page 8

the first strange
happiness of pain,
And the low voices of October moods.
Now
comes the night, the meadow yields
Unto the sky a damp and pungent
breath;
The quiet air of the New England town
Seems confident
that everyone is home
Safe by his fire.
The frosty stars look down

Near, near above the kind familiar trees
In whose dry branches
roam
The gentle spirits of the darkling breeze.
Deep in its caverned
heart the forest sings
Of mysteries unknown and vanished lore;
Old
wisdom; dead desire;
Dreams of the past, of immemorial springs....


The wind is rising cold from the river: close the door.
Tours, 1918

XIV
O lovely shepherd Corydon, how far
Thou wanderest from thine
Ionian hills;
Now the first star
Rains pallid tears where the lost
lands are,
And the red sunset fills
The cleft horizon with a flaming
wine.
The grave significance of falling leaves
Soon shall make desolate thy
singing heart,
When the cold wind grieves,
And the cold dews rot
the standing sheaves,--
Return, O Thou that art
The hope of spring
in these lost lands of mine.
Chalons-sur-Marne, 1917
XV
O little shepherd boy, what sobs are those
That shake your slender
shoulders, what despair
Has run her fingers through your rumpled
hair,
And laid you prone beneath a weight of woes?
The trees upon
the hill will soon be bare,
A yellow blight is on the garden close,

But you, you need not mourn the vanished rose,
For many springs
will find you just as fair.
Weep not for summer, she is past all weeping,
Fear not the winter,
she in turn will pass,
And with the spring love waits for you,
perchance,
When, with the morn, faint wings stir from their sleeping,

And the first petals scatter on the grass,
Under the orchards and the
vines of France.
Recicourt, 1917
XVI
The dull-eyed girl in bronze implores Apollo
To warm these dying
satyrs and to raise
Their withered wreaths that rot in every hollow

Or smoulder redly in the pungent haze.
The shining reapers, gone

these many days,
Have left their fields disconsolate and sear,
Like
bony sand uncovered to the gaze,
In this, the ebb-tide of the year.
My wisest comrade turns into a swallow
And flashes southward as
the thickets blaze
In awful splendour; I, who cannot follow,

Confront the skies' unmitigated greys.
The cynic faun whom I have
known betrays
A dangerous mood at night, and seems austere

Beneath the autumn noon's distempered rays,
In this, the ebb-tide of
the year.
Ice quenches all reflection in the shallow
Lagoon whose trampled
margin still displays
Upheaval where the centaurs used to wallow;

And where my favourite unicorns would graze,
A few wild ducks
scream lamentable lays
Of shrill derision desperate with fear,
Bleak
note on note, phrase on discordant phrase,
In this, the ebb-tide of the
year.
Poor girl, how soon our garden world decays,
Our metals tarnish, our
loves disappear;
Dull-eyed we haunt these unfrequented ways,
In
this, the ebb-tide of the year.
Cambridge, 1920
XVII
The winter night is hard as glass;
The frozen stars hang stilly down;

I sit inside while people pass
From the dead-hearted town.
The tavern hearth is deep and wide,
The flames caress my glowing
skin;
The icicles hang cold outside,
But I sit warm within.
The faces pass in blurring white
Outside the frosted window, lifting

Eyes against my cheerful night,
From their night of dreadful
drifting.
Sharp breaths blow fast in a smoky gale,
Rags wander through the

dull lamp light;
O my veins run gold with Christmas ale,
And the
tavern fire is bright.
The midnight sky is clear as glass,
The stars hang frozen on the town,

I watch the dying people pass,
And I wrap me warm in my gown.
Brussels, 1919
XVIII
Chords, tremendous chords,
Over the stricken plain,
The night is
calling her ancient lords
Back to their own again.
Vast, unhappy song,
From incalculable space,
Calling the
heavy-browed, the strong,
Out of their resting-place.
Far from the lighted town,
Over the snow and ice,
Their dreadful
feet go up and down
Seeking a sacrifice.
And can you find a way
Where They will not come after?
The vast
chords hesitate and sway
Into a sudden laughter.
Sheffield, 1917
XIX
I have known the lure of cities and the bright gleam
of golden things,
Spires, towers, bridges, rivers, and the crowd that
flows as a river,
Lights in the midnight streets under the rain,
and the stings
Of joys that make the spirit reel and shiver.
But I see bleak moors and marshes and sparse grasses,
And frozen
stalks against the snow;
Dead forests, ragged pines and dark morasses

Under the shadows of the mountains where no men go.
The crags

untenanted and spacious cry aloud as clear
As the drear cry of a lost
eagle over uncharted lands,
No thought that man has ever framed in
words is spoken here, And the language of the wind, no man
understands.
Only the sifting wind through the grasses, and the hissing sleet, And the
shadow of the changeless rocks over the frozen wold, Only the cold,

And the fierce night striding down with silent feet.
Chambery, 1918
XX
We wove a fillet for thy head,
And from a flaming lyre
Struck a
song that shall not die
Until the echoing stars be dead,
Until the
world's last word be said,
Until