The Five Books of Youth | Page 9

on tattered wings we fly
Upward
and expire.
And calm with night thou watchest till
Long after we are gone,
Not
knowing how we worshipped thee;
Serene, unfathomably still,

Gazing to the western hill
Where pales the moon's hushed mystery,

White in the white dawn.
Cambridge, 1915
BOOK III
EROS
I
Now the sick earth revives, and in the sun
The wet soil gives a
fragrance to the air;
The days of many colours are begun,
And early
promises of meadows fair
With starry petals, and of trees now bare

Soon to be lyric with the trilling choir,
And lovely with new leaves,
spread everywhere
A subtle flame that sets the heart on fire
With
thoughts of other springs and dreams of new desire.

The mind will never dwell within the present,
It weeps for vanished
years or hopes for new;
This morn of wakened warmth, so calm, so
pleasant,
So gaily gemmed with diadems of dew,
When buds swell
on the bough, and robins woo
Their loves with notes bell-like and
crystal-clear,
The spirit stirs from sleep, yet wonders, too,
Whence
comes the hint of sorrow or of fear
Making it move rebellious within
its narrow sphere.
This flash of sun, this flight of wings in riot,
This festival of sound, of
sight, of smell,
Wakes in the spirit a profound disquiet,
And
greeting seems the foreword of farewell.
Budding like all the world,
the soul would swell
Out of its withering mortality;
Flower
immortal, burst from its heavy shell,
Fly far with love beyond the
world and sea,
Out of the grasp of change, from time and twilight
free.
Could the unknowing gods, waked in compassion,
Eternalize the
splendour of this hour,
And from the world's frail garlands strongly
fashion
An ageless Paradise, celestial bower,
Where our
long-sundered souls could rise in power
To the complete fulfilment
of their dream,
And never know again that years devour
Petals and
light, bird-note and woodland theme,
And floods of young desire,
bright as a silver stream,
Should we be happy, thou and I together,
Lying in love eternally in
spring,
Watching the buds unfold that shall not wither,
Hearing the
birds calling and answering,
When the leaves stir and all the meadows ring?
Smelling the rich
earth steaming in the sun,
Feeling between caresses the light wing

Of the wind whose gracious flight is never done,--
Should we be
happy then? happy, elusive One?
But no, here in this fragile flesh abides
The secret of a measureless

delight,
Hidden in dying beauty there resides
Something undying,
something that takes its flight
When the dust turns to dust, and day to
night,
And spring to fall, whose joys in love redeem
Eternally, life's
changes and death's blight,
Even as these pale, tender petals seem
A
glimpse of infinite beauty, flashed in a passing dream.
Cambridge, 1916
II
The heavy bee burdened the golden clover
Droning away the
afternoon of summer,
Deep in the rippling grass I called to you

Under the sky's blue flame.
Then when the day was over,
When
petals fell fresh with the falling dew,
Stepped from the dusk a radiant
newcomer,
Fled by the waters of the sleeping river,
Swift to the
arms of your impatient lover,
Gladly you came.
And the long wind
in the cedars will sing of this for ever.
Thin rain of the saddest of Septembers
Bent the tall grasses of the
sloping meadows,
But spring was with me in your slender form,

And the frail joy of spring.
Although the chilly embers
Of summer
vanished into the gathering storm
And the wind clung to the
overhanging shadows,
Fair seemed the spirit's desperate endeavour,

(And even fair to the spirit that remembers)
Joy on the wing!

And the long wind in the cedars will sing of this for ever.
Years, and in slow lugubrious succession
Drop from the trees the
leaves' first yellowed leaders,
Autumn is in the air and in the past,

Desolate, utterly.
Sunlight and clouds in hesitant procession,

Laughter and tears, and winter at the last.
There is a battle-music in
the cedars,
High on the hills of life the grasses shiver.
Hail, dead
reality and living vision,
Thrice hail in memory.
And the long wind
in the cedars will sing of this for ever.
Tours, 1918

III
Of days and nights under the living vine,
Memory singing from a tree
has given
The plan of my buried heaven,
That I may dig therein as
in a mine.
Did I call you, little Vigilant One, under the waning sun?
Did you
come barefooted through the dew,
Through the fine dew-drenched
grass when the colours faded
Out of the sky?
Who is that shadow
holding over you a veil of tempest woven, Shaded with streaks of cloud
and lightning on the edges?
Lean nearer, I fear him, and the sigh
Of
the rising wind worries the sedges,
And the cry
Of a white,
long-legged bird from the marsh
Cuts through the twilight with a
threat of night.
The receding voice is harsh
And echoes in my spirit.

Hark, do you hear it wailing against the hollow rocks of the hill, As
it takes its lonely outgoing towards the sea?
Lean nearer still.
Your
silence is an ecstasy of speech,
You are the only white

Unconquered by the overwhelming frown.
Who stands behind you so
impassively?
Bid him begone, or let me reach
And tear away his
veil. But he is gone.
Who