Works

'Tis bitter-sweet, when winter nights are long,
To watch, beside the flames which smoke and twist,
The distant memories which slowly throng,
Brought by the chime soft-singing through the mist.
...

Flying his hair and his eyes averse,
Fleet are his feet and his heart apart.
How could our song his charms rehearse?
Fleet are his feet and his heart apart.

High on a down we found him last,...

I have loved to-night; from love's last bordering steep
I have fallen at last with joy and forgotten the shore;
I have known my love to-night as never before,...

BOOK I

Mother of Rome, delight of gods and men,
Beloved Venus, who under the fleeting stars
Fillest the freighted sea and earth's ripe fields,
O since through thee alone all forms of life...

I am a lake, altered by every wind.
The mild South breathes upon me, and I spread
A dance of merry ripples in the sun.
The West comes stormily and I am troubled,...

The lily of Malud is born in secret mud.
It is breathed like a word in a little dark ravine
Where no bird was ever heard and no beast was ever seen,
And the leaves are never stirred by the panther's velvet sheen....

I heard a voice that cried, "Make way for those who died!"
And all the coloured crowd like ghosts at morning fled;
And down the waiting road, rank after rank there strode,...

I

Beneath my skull-bone and my hair,
Covered like a poisonous well,
There is a land: if you looked there
What you saw you'd quail to tell.
You that sit there smiling, you...

(To Maurice Baring)

I waited for a miracle to-night.
Dim was the earth beneath a star-swept sky,
Her boughs were vague in that phantasmal light,
Her current rippled past invisibly....

O moon, O lamp of hill and secret dale!
Thou whom our fathers, ages out of mind,
Worshipped in thy blue heaven, whilst behind
Thy stars streamed after thee a glittering trail,
...

'Neath their black yews in solemn state
The owls are sitting in a row
Like foreign gods; and even so
Blink their red eyes; they meditate.

Quite motionless they hold them thus...

I

When the clouds hide the sun away
The tall slate roof is dull and grey,
And when the rain adown it streams
'Tis polished lead with pale-blue gleams.

When the clouds vanish and the rain...

(OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE, QUEEN'S, DECEMBER)

(To Hugh Brooks)

I

The walls make a funnel, packed full; the distant gate
Bars us from inaccessible light and peace....

This evening the Moon dreams more languidly,
Like a beauty who on mounded cushions rests,
And with her light hand fondles lingeringly,
Before she sleeps, the slope of her sweet breasts.
...

There was no song nor shout of joy
Nor beam of moon or sun,
When she came back from the voyage
Long ago begun;
But twilight on the waters
Was quiet and grey,...

Quieter than any twilight
Shed over earth's last deserts,
Quiet and vast and shadowless
Is that unfounded keep,
Higher than the roof of the night's high chamber
Deep as the shaft of sleep.
...

There were three hills that stood alone
With woods about their feet.
They dreamed quiet when the sun shone
And whispered when the rain beat.

They wore all three their coronals...

(W. H. S., Capt. [Acting Major] R.F.A.; killed April 12, 1917)

We sha'n't see Willy any more, Mamie,
He won't be coming any more:
He came back once and again and again,
But he won't get leave any more....

Musician, with the bent and brooding face,
White brow and thunderous eyes: you are not playing
Merely the music that dead hand did trace.

Musician, with the lifted resolute face,...

So proud your port, your arm so powerful,
With such a grip you grip the goddess' hair,
That one might take you, from your casual air,
For a young ruffian flinging down his trull.
...