How different, in the middle of snows, the great school rises red! A red rock silent and shadowless, clung round with clusters of shouting lads, Some few dark-cleaving the doorway, souls that cling as the souls of the dead In stupor persist at the gates of life, obstinate dark monads. This new red rock in […]

WAVING slowly before me, pushed into the dark, Unseen my hands explore the silence, drawing the bark Of my body slowly behind. Nothing to meet my fingers but the fleece of night Invisible blinding my face and my eyes! What if in their flight My hands should touch the door! What if I suddenly stumble, […]

I AH, stern, cold man, How can you lie so relentless hard While I wash you with weeping water! Do you set your face against the daughter Of life? Can you never discard Your curt pride’s ban? You masquerader! How can you shame to act this part Of unswerving indifference to me? You want at […]

IN another country, black poplars shake them- selves over a pond, And rooks and the rising smoke-waves scatter and wheel from the works beyond; The air is dark with north and with sulphur, the grass is a darker green, And people darkly invested with purple move palpable through the scene. Soundlessly down across the counties, […]

WHO do you think stands watching The snow-tops shining rosy In heaven, now that the darkness Takes all but the tallest posy? Who then sees the two-winged Boat down there, all alone And asleep on the snow’s last shadow, Like a moth on a stone? The olive-leaves, light as gad-flies, Have all gone dark, gone […]

SINCE this is the last night I keep you home, Come, I will consecrate you for the journey. Rather I had you would not go. Nay come, I will not again reproach you. Lie back And let me love you a long time ere you go. For you are sullen-hearted still, and lack The will […]

SHE sits on the recreation ground Under an oak whose yellow buds dot the pale blue sky. The young grass twinkles in the wind, and the sound Of the wind in the knotted buds in a canopy. So sitting under the knotted canopy Of the wind, she is lifted and carried away as in a […]

RETURNING, I find her just the same, At just the same old delicate game. Still she says: “Nay, loose no flame To lick me up and do me harm! Be all yourself!–for oh, the charm Of your heart of fire in which I look! Oh, better there than in any book Glow and enact the […]

ROUND the house were lilacs and strawberries And foal-foots spangling the paths, And far away on the sand-hills, dewberries Caught dust from the sea’s long swaths. Up the wolds the woods were walking, And nuts fell out of their hair. At the gate the nets hung, balking The star-lit rush of a hare. In the […]

I INTO the shadow-white chamber silts the white Flux of another dawn. The wind that all night Long has waited restless, suddenly wafts A whirl like snow from the plum-trees and the pear, Till petals heaped between the window-shafts In a drift die there. A nurse in white, at the dawning, flower-foamed pane Draws down […]

THE trees in trouble because of autumn, And scarlet berries falling from the bush, And all the myriad houseless seeds Loosing hold in the wind’s insistent push Moan softly with autumnal parturition, Poor, obscure fruits extruded out of light Into the world of shadow, carried down Between the bitter knees of the after-night. Bushed in […]

FAR-OFF the lily-statues stand white-ranked in the garden at home. Would God they were shattered quickly, the cattle would tread them out in the loam. I wish the elder trees in flower could suddenly heave, and burst The walls of the house, and nettles puff out from the hearth at which I was nursed. It […]

THE sun sets out the autumn crocuses And fills them up a pouring measure Of death-producing wine, till treasure Runs waste down their chalices. All, all Persephone’s pale cups of mould Are on the board, are over-filled; The portion to the gods is spilled; Now, mortals all, take hold! The time is now, the wine-cup […]

WHERE the minnows trace A glinting web quick hid in the gloom of the brook, When I think of the place And remember the small lad lying intent to look Through the shadowy face At the little fish thread-threading the watery nook– It seems to me The woman you are should be nixie, there is […]

I WILL give you all my keys, You shall be my chatelaine, You shall enter as you please, As you please shall go again. When I hear you jingling through All the chambers of my soul, How I sit and laugh at you In your vain housekeeping role. Jealous of the smallest cover, Angry at […]

ON that day I shall put roses on roses, and cover your grave With multitude of white roses: and since you were brave One bright red ray. So people, passing under The ash-trees of the valley-road, will raise Their eyes and look at the grave on the hill, in wonder, Wondering mount, and put the […]

SOMEWHERE the long mellow note of the blackbird Quickens the unclasping hands of hazel, Somewhere the wind-flowers fling their heads back, Stirred by an impetuous wind. Some ways’ll All be sweet with white and blue violet. (Hush now, hush. Where am I?–Biuret–) On the green wood’s edge a shy girl hovers From out of the […]

THE quick sparks on the gorse bushes are leaping, Little jets of sunlight-texture imitating flame; Above them, exultant, the pee-wits are sweeping: They are lords of the desolate wastes of sadness their screamings proclaim. Rabbits, handfuls of brown earth, lie Low-rounded on the mournful grass they have bitten down to the quick. Are they asleep?–Are […]

THIS is the last of all, this is the last! I must hold my hands, and turn my face to the fire, I must watch my dead days fusing together in dross, Shape after shape, and scene after scene from my past Fusing to one dead mass in the sinking fire Where the ash on […]

Now and again All my body springs alive, And the life that is polarised in my eyes, That quivers between my eyes and mouth, Flies like a wild thing across my body, Leaving my eyes half-empty, and clamorous, Filling my still breasts with a flush and a flame, Gathering the soft ripples below my breasts […]