That is wounded there
And like to drown;
While days rush, wave after wave
On its lair.
An invisible woe unseals
The flood, so it passes beyond
All bounds: the great old city
Recumbent roars as it feels
The foamy paw of the pond
Reach from immensity.
But all that it can do
Now, as the tide rises,
Is to listen and hear the grim
Waves crash like thunder through
The splintered streets, hear noises
Roll hollow in the interim.
Coming Awake
WHEN I woke, the lake-lights were quivering on the wall,
The sunshine swam in a shoal across and across,
And a hairy, big bee hung over the primulas
In the window, his body black fur, and the sound of him cross.
There was something I ought to remember: and yet
I did not remember. Why should I? The running lights
And the airy primulas, oblivious
Of the impending bee—they were fair enough sights.
From a College Window
THE glimmer of the limes, sun-heavy, sleeping,
Goes trembling past me up the College wall.
Below, the lawn, in soft blue shade is keeping,
The daisy-froth quiescent, softly in thrall.
Beyond the leaves that overhang the street,
Along the flagged, clean pavement summer-white,
Passes the world with shadows at their feet
Going left and right.
Remote, although I hear the beggar's cough,
See the woman's twinkling fingers tend him a coin,
I sit absolved, assured I am better off
Beyond a world I never want to join.
Flapper
LOVE has crept out of her sealéd heart
As a field-bee, black and amber,
Breaks from the winter-cell, to clamber
Up the warm grass where the sunbeams start.
Mischief has come in her dawning eyes,
And a glint of coloured iris brings
Such as lies along the folded wings
Of the bee before he flies.
Who, with a ruffling, careful breath,
Has opened the wings of the wild young sprite?
Has fluttered her spirit to stumbling flight
In her eyes, as a young bee stumbleth?
Love makes the burden of her voice.
The hum of his heavy, staggering wings
Sets quivering with wisdom the common things
That she says, and her words rejoice.
Birdcage Walk
WHEN the wind blows her veil
And uncovers her laughter
I cease, I turn pale.
When the wind blows her veil
From the woes I bewail
Of love and hereafter:
When the wind blows her veil
I cease, I turn pale.
Letter from Town: The
ALMOND TREE
YOU promised to send me some violets. Did you forget?
White ones and blue ones from under the orchard hedge?
Sweet dark purple, and white ones mixed for a pledge
Of our early love that hardly has opened yet.
Here there's an almond tree—you have never seen
Such a one in the north—it flowers on the street, and I stand
Every day by the fence to look up for the flowers that expand
At rest in the blue, and wonder at what they mean.
Under the almond tree, the happy lands
Provence, Japan, and Italy repose,
And passing feet are chatter and clapping of those
Who play around us, country girls clapping their hands.
You, my love, the foremost, in a flowered gown,
All your unbearable tenderness, you with the laughter
Startled upon your eyes now so wide with here-after,
You with loose hands of abandonment hanging down.
Flat Suburbs, S.W., In The
MORNING
THE new red houses spring like plants
In level rows
Of reddish herbage that bristles and slants
Its square shadows.
The pink young houses show one side bright
Flatly assuming the sun,
And one side shadow, half in sight,
Half-hiding the pavement-run;
Where hastening creatures pass intent
On their level way,
Threading like ants that can never relent
And have nothing to say.
Bare stems of street-lamps stiffly stand
At random, desolate twigs,
To testify to a blight on the land
That has stripped their sprigs.