The Listeners | Page 5

Newt and Nightjar:?They take their shapes and creep,?Silent as churchyard lichen,?While she squats asleep.
All of these dead were stirring:?Each unto each did call,?'A Witch, a Witch is sleeping?Under the churchyard wall;
'A Witch, a Witch is sleeping....'?The shrillness ebbed away;?And up the way-worn moon clomb bright,?Hard on the track of day.
She shone, high, wan and silvery;?Day's colours paled and died:?And, save the mute and creeping worm,?Nought else was there beside.
Names may be writ; and mounds rise;?Purporting, Here be bones:?But empty is that churchyard?Of all save stones.
Owl and Newt and Nightjar,?Leveret, Bat and Mole?Haunt and call in the twilight,?Where she slept, poor soul.
ARABIA
Far are the shades of Arabia,?Where the Princes ride at noon,?'Mid the verdurous vales and thickets,?Under the ghost of the moon;?And so dark is that vaulted purple?Flowers in the forest rise?And toss into blossom 'gainst the phantom stars?Pale in the noonday skies.
Sweet is the music of Arabia?In my heart, when out of dreams?I still in the thin clear mirk of dawn?Descry her gliding streams;?Hear her strange lutes on the green banks?Ring loud with the grief and delight?Of the dim-silked, dark-haired Musicians?In the brooding silence of night.
They haunt me--her lutes and her forests;?No beauty on earth I see?But shadowed with that dream recalls?Her loveliness to me:?Still eyes look coldly upon me,?Cold voices whisper and say--?'He is crazed with the spell of far Arabia,?They have stolen his wits away.'
THE MOUNTAINS
Still, and blanched, and cold, and lone,?The icy hills far off from me?With frosty ulys overgrown?Stand in their sculptured secrecy.
No path of theirs the chamois fleet?Treads, with a nostril to the wind;?O'er their ice-marbled glaciers beat?No wings of eagles in my mind--
Yea, in my mind these mountains rise,?Their perils dyed with evening's rose;?And still my ghost sits at my eyes?And thirsts for their untroubled snows.
QUEEN DJENIRA
When Queen Djenira slumbers through?The sultry noon's repose,?From out her dreams, as soft she lies,?A faint thin music flows.
Her lovely hands lie narrow and pale?With gilded nails, her head?Couched in its banded nets of gold?Lies pillowed on her bed.
The little Nubian boys who fan?Her cheeks and tresses clear,?Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful voices?Seem afar to hear.
They slide their eyes, and nodding, say,?'Queen Djenira walks to-day?The courts of the lord Pthamasar?Where the sweet birds of Psuthys are.'
And those of earth about her porch?Of shadow cool and grey?Their sidelong beaks in silence lean,?And silent flit away.
NEVER-TO-BE
Down by the waters of the sea,?Reigns the King of Never-to-be.?His palace walls are black with night;?His torches star and moonès light,?And for his timepiece deep and grave?Beats on the green unhastening wave.
Windswept are his high corridors;?His pleasance the sea-mantled shores;?For sentinel a shadow stands?With hair in heaven, and cloudy hands;?And round his bed, king's guards to be,?Watch pines in iron solemnity.
His hound is mute; his steed at will?Roams pastures deep with asphodel;?His queen is to her slumber gone;?His courtiers mute lie, hewn in stone;?He hath forgot where he did hide?His sceptre in the mountain-side.
Grey-capped and muttering, mad is he--?The childless King of Never-to-be;?For all his people in the deep?Keep everlasting fast asleep;?And all his realm is foam and rain,?Whispering of what comes not again.
THE DARK CHATEAU
In dreams a dark chateau?Stands ever open to me,?In far ravines dream-waters flow,?Descending soundlessly;?Above its peaks the eagle floats,?Lone in a sunless sky;?Mute are the golden woodland throats?Of the birds flitting by.
No voice is audible. The wind?Sleeps in its peace.?No flower of the light can find?Refuge 'neath its trees;?Only the darkening ivy climbs?Mingled with wilding rose,?And cypress, morn and evening, time's?Black shadow throws.
All vacant, and unknown;?Only the dreamer steps?From stone to hollow stone,?Where the green moss sleeps,?Peers at the river in its deeps,?The eagle lone in the sky,?While the dew of evening drips,?Coldly and silently.
Would that I could press in!--?Into each secret room;?Would that my sleep-bright eyes could win?To the inner gloom;?Gaze from its high windows,?Far down its mouldering walls,?Where amber-clear still Lethe flows,?And foaming falls.
But ever as I gaze,?From slumber soft doth come?Some touch my stagnant sense to raise?To its old earthly home;?Fades then that sky serene;?And peak of ageless snow;?Fades to a paling dawn-lit green,?My dark chateau.
THE DWELLING-PLACE
Deep in a forest where the kestrel screamed,?Beside a lake of water, clear as glass,?The time-worn windows of a stone house gleamed,
Named only 'Alas.'
Yet happy as the wild birds in the glades?Of that green forest, thridding the still air?With low continued heedless serenades,
Its heedless people were.
The throbbing chords of violin and lute,?The lustre of lean tapers in dark eyes,?Fair colours, beauteous flowers, dainty fruit
Made earth seem Paradise
To them that dwelt within this lonely house:?Like children of the gods in lasting peace,?They ate, sang, danced, as if each day's carouse
Need never pause, nor cease.
Some might cry, Vanity! to a weeping lyre,?Some in that deep pool mock their longings vain,?Came yet at last long silence to the wire,
And dark did dark remain.
Some to the hunt would wend, with hound and horn,?And clash of silver,