MY love looks like a girl to-night, But she is old. The plaits that lie along her pillow Are not gold, But threaded with filigree, And uncanny cold. She looks like a young maiden, since her brow Is smooth and fair, Her cheeks are very smooth, her eyes are closed, She sleeps a rare Still […]

Too far away, oh love, I know, To save me from this haunted road, Whose lofty roses break and blow On a night-sky bent with a load Of lights: each solitary rose, Each arc-lamp golden does expose Ghost beyond ghost of a blossom, shows Night blenched with a thousand snows. Of hawthorn and of lilac […]

THE pine-trees bend to listen to the autumn wind as it mutters Something which sets the black poplars ashake with hysterical laughter; While slowly the house of day is closing its eastern shutters. Further down the valley the clustered tombstones recede, Winding about their dimness the mist’s grey cerements, after The street lamps in the […]

THE acrid scents of autumn, Reminiscent of slinking beasts, make me fear Everything, tear-trembling stars of autumn And the snore of the night in my ear. For suddenly, flush-fallen, All my life, in a rush Of shedding away, has left me Naked, exposed on the bush. I, on the bush of the globe, Like a […]

I LISTEN to the stillness of you, My dear, among it all; I feel your silence touch my words as I talk, And take them in thrall. My words fly off a forge The length of a spark; I see the night-sky easily sip them Up in the dark. The lark sings loud and glad, […]

SINCE you did depart Out of my reach, my darling, Into the hidden, I see each shadow start With recognition, and I Am wonder-ridden. I am dazed with the farewell, But I scarcely feel your loss. You left me a gift Of tongues, so the shadows tell Me things, and silences toss Me their drift. […]

A YELLOW leaf from the darkness Hops like a frog before me. Why should I start and stand still? I was watching the woman that bore me Stretched in the brindled darkness Of the sick-room, rigid with will To die: and the quick leaf tore me Back to this rainy swill Of leaves and lamps […]

THE sick grapes on the chair by the bed lie prone; at the window The tassel of the blind swings gently, tapping the pane, As a little wind comes in. The room is the hollow rind of a fruit, a gourd Scooped out and dry, where a spider, Folded in its legs as in a […]

How many times, like lotus lilies risen Upon the surface of a river, there Have risen floating on my blood the rare Soft glimmers of my hope escaped from prison. So I am clothed all over with the light And sensitive beautiful blossoming of passion; Till naked for her in the finest fashion The flowers […]

THE moon is broken in twain, and half a moon Before me lies on the still, pale floor of the sky; The other half of the broken coin of troth Is buried away in the dark, where the still dead lie. They buried her half in the grave when they laid her away; I had […]

A BIG bud of moon hangs out of the twilight, Star-spiders spinning their thread Hang high suspended, withouten respite Watching us overhead. Come then under the trees, where the leaf-cloths Curtain us in so dark That here we’re safe from even the ermin-moth’s Flitting remark. Here in this swarthy, secret tent, Where black boughs flap […]

WHEN along the pavement, Palpitating flames of life, People flicker round me, I forget my bereavement, The gap in the great constellation, The place where a star used to be. Nay, though the pole-star Is blown out like a candle, And all the heavens are wandering in disarray, Yet when pleiads of people are Deployed […]

MANY years have I still to burn, detained Like a candle flame on this body; but I enshrine A darkness within me, a presence which sleeps contained In my flame of living, her soul enfolded in mine. And through these years, while I burn on the fuel of life, What matter the stuff I lick […]

THIS spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green, Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes, Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes. I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze […]

HER tawny eyes are onyx of thoughtlessness, Hardened they are like gems in ancient modesty; Yea, and her mouth’s prudent and crude caress Means even less than her many words to me. Though her kiss betrays me also this, this only Consolation, that in her lips her blood at climax clips Two wild, dumb paws […]

HAD I but known yesterday, Helen, you could discharge the ache Out of the cloud; Had I known yesterday you could take The turgid electric ache away, Drink it up with your proud White body, as lovely white lightning Is drunk from an agonised sky by the earth, I might have hated you, Helen. But […]

I WONDER, can the night go by; Can this shot arrow of travel fly Shaft-golden with light, sheer into the sky Of a dawned to-morrow, Without ever sleep delivering us From each other, or loosing the dolorous Unfruitful sorrow! What is it then that you can see That at the window endlessly You watch the […]

CLOSE your eyes, my love, let me make you blind; They have taught you to see Only a mean arithmetic on the face of things, A cunning algebra in the faces of men, And God like geometry Completing his circles, and working cleverly. I’ll kiss you over the eyes till I kiss you blind; If […]

HOLLOW rang the house when I knocked on the door, And I lingered on the threshold with my hand Upraised to knock and knock once more: Listening for the sound of her feet across the floor, Hollow re-echoed my heart. The low-hung lamps stretched down the road With shadows drifting underneath, With a music of […]

ROUND clouds roll in the arms of the wind, The round earth rolls in a clasp of blue sky, And see, where the budding hazels are thinned, The wild anemones lie In undulating shivers beneath the wind. Over the blue of the waters ply White ducks, a living flotilla of cloud; And, look you, floating […]