THE sun is shining in the August weather
 In the little room and, I suppose,
 Gilding the painted parrot on the wall,
 The truckle-bed, the table and the rose
 Of the poor carpet that we bought together.
 And from the street the muted voices call
 As though we saw, as though we heard it all.

VICTORY.

LET it be written down, while still the wound
 Festers and there is horror in the world
 At what was done and suffered, while unfurled
 The wings of death are dark upon the ground.
 Let it be written “Death we have not found
 The worst, though death is evil, nor the curled
 Fangs of disease, nor yet to ruin hurled
 The tracery of old cities, when no sound
Is in their broken streets. But there’s an ape
 Out of the slime into the spirit creeping,
 That twists mankind back, back into the shape
 That mumbles carrion. Here’s the cause for weeping.
 Prognathous chin, slant forehead, eyes that rust
 As their flame dies and smoulders into lust.”

CLEOPATRA.

WHY should I care for love? The urgent rose—
 What does she promise the heart and what fulfill?
 “Delight, delight” she whispers, and she goes ...
 But love the rose outbidding is falser still.
Why should I care for love? But hush, oh hush!
 What bird is singing in the dawn “Forget
 The spring,” and, you,—have you forgotten, thrush?...
 But love the thrush outsinging is falser yet.
Why should I care for love? Love does not care
 Whether you care or do not care, says she!
 But ask your lips how the rose smells in my hair,
 If the thrush beats at my heart—here—Anthony!

MEDUSA.

IN your black hair are there not nightingales
 Singing in the dark, and when you let it down
 Is there no stir in the air of tiniest sails
 That ever on lost seas of song were blown?
In your black hair the heart of Hyacinth
 Laments the daylight he shall see no more,
 And flowers are red as in the labyrinth
 The red eyes of the crazy Minotaur.
In your black hair, Medusa, there are snakes
 That twine themselves about Laocoon,
 How soft, how warm! and how the poor heart breaks
 Before they strike and turn it into stone.

THE JUNGLE.

TRUTH is the fourth dimension. By her grace
 Motion, the idiot of time and space,
 Grows reasonable, so that the spirit sees
 Behind the aimless drag of categories
 The moving centuries, whose gestures mirror
 And dissipate the cloudy shapes of error.
 O there’s the long way back, the dawns that scatter
 Like startled birds about the spirit, and chatter
 Of animal voices seeking lucid speech
 In colonies of darkness. Truth can stretch,
 Though motionless, and set a hatchet blazing
 A path through the jungle where an ape is gazing
 At the edge of a little light, with dripping muzzle,
 Black writhing palms, and eyes a drowsy puzzle
 Of fears and beastlike hopes. Then the light reaches
 His pelt and holds him fast. In vain he snatches
 At the sheltering trees, in vain the leafy dance
 Down the long avenues of ignorance.
 Knowledge and the pain of knowledge fly beside him,
 And, where the leaves are darkest, clutch and ride him
 Until he sloughs the shape of beast and can
 Stand in the dawn upon his feet a man.
But the jungle is not cleared, and still the shapes
 Of time and space and error move like apes.

THE PENCIL.

WITH this golden pencil—write
 “Written words must serve for sight.
 For the broken lights that stirred
 Wedded eyes the complete word.
Written words the trembling nerve
 Of the lover’s ear must serve.
 Laughter’s done and tears are over—
 Written words, instead, my lover.
Words that have no scent must tell
 How the secret jonquils smell
 In your hair, and words protest
 There are jonquils at your breast.
Written words the gift must waste,
 When the very air hath taste
 Of your lip, the sweets that part
 Love’s soft mouth and reach the heart.
Separable these await
 For the fifth to consummate,
 That are nothing, each alone,
 But all heaven joined in one.
This, being lost, had hurt too much,
 Here are words instead of touch.”
Therefore write and break the lead
 “Love that was alive is dead.”

COLUMBINE.

IF any ask, O tell them that the moon
 Was lit in heaven when Queen Ashtaroth
 Beat at her lamp and fell upon the swoon
 Of love that soars in fire to fall a moth.
If any ask, O tell them that for this
 Priam’s great city of Troy was sacrificed,
 For love that is as bitter as the kiss
 Of Judas the Iscariot, slaying Christ.
If any ask, O tell them it is well,
 Though love comes like the swallow and flies as soon:
 Who has not found his heaven in the Hell
 Of love unsatisfied beneath the moon?

THE CROWDER’S TUNE.

THE crowder’s tune
 Down a street in Babylon—
 His fiddle to the moon
 With notes like stars that one by one
 Glittered upon the empty street,
 Glittered and laughed and went
 (But there was a lisp of ghostly feet)
 To build a firmament.
“Who walks by night in Babylon?
 ‘I,’ said a lady, ‘because
 Of the wonderful thing I was,
 And the beautiful things all done,
 I walk in Babylon.’
Who seeks for a lady by night?
 ‘I,’ said a king, ‘My throne
 Is empty in Babylon.
 She fled from the light to the light,
 I seek for a lady by night.’
Who calls by night in Babylon?
 ‘They,’ answered love, ‘Yes over and over
 She calls to her God, but he to his lover,
 And each of them walks by night alone,
 And they will not meet in Babylon.’”
The crowder played
 His little tune, almost
 As though he were afraid
 Of some forgotten ghost
 Awakening,
 And crying on the string
 Of what was lost
 And would not come
 Again.
 He feared in vain.
 For the ghost, the ghost is dumb
 Of love that is past over,
 And the merciless laughter of the moon
 Pursues the ghostly lover,
 Till in the empty street
 There’s an end of the lisp of feet,
 And the crowder breaks his fiddle and the tune,
 And all the stars are gone
 In Babylon.

ENVOI.

PAST Buckhurst Hill the motor-bus
 Takes and shakes the three of us.
 When first we went, there were but two
 In Epping Forest, I and you.
That summer as I understand
 A forester from fairyland
 Set a notice up, “No road,”
 By the ways our feet had trod.
No one came and no one knew,
 When the spring returned and blue
 Flowers burned, how deep behind
 Burned the blossoms of the mind.
No one guessed and no one heard
 How beyond the singing bird,
 Some one sang in solitude
 In the wood within the wood.
No one watched the years go by
 (Not even you, not even I),
 In the wood alone apart
 Green and waiting in the heart.
Till last week the forester
 Heard a little footstep stir,
 Took his notice down and smiled
 At the coming of a child.
Conquering the solitude
 A child is laughing in the wood.
 Past Buckhurst Hill the motor-bus
 Takes us back the three of us.

Printed at The Vincent Works, Oxford.