Phantom to phantom leaning; strange women weep
Aloud, suddenly on my mind
Startling a fear unspeakable, as the shuddering wind
Breaks and sobs in the blind.
So like to women, tall strange women weeping!
Why continually do they cross the bed?
Why does my soul contract with unnatural fear?
I am listening! Is anything said?
Ever the long black figures swoop by the bed;
They seem to be beckoning, rushing away, and
beckoning.
Whither then, whither, what is it, say
What is the reckoning.
Tall black Bacchae of midnight, why then, why
Do you rush to assail me?
Do I intrude on your rites nocturnal?
What should it avail me?
Is there some great Iacchos of these slopes
Suburban dismal?
Have I profaned some female mystery, orgies
Black and phantasmal?
Next Morning
How have I wandered here to this vaulted room
In the house of life?—the floor was ruffled with gold
Last evening, and she who was softly in bloom,
Glimmered as flowers that in perfume at twilight
unfold
For the flush of the night; whereas now the gloom
Of every dirty, must-besprinkled mould,
And damp old web of misery's heirloom
Deadens this day's grey-dropping arras-fold.
And what is this that floats on the undermist
Of the mirror towards the dusty grate, as if feeling
Unsightly its way to the warmth?—this thing with
a list
To the left? this ghost like a candle swealing?
Pale-blurred, with two round black drops, as if it
missed
Itself among everything else, here hungrily stealing
Upon me!—my own reflection!—explicit gist
Of my presence there in the mirror that leans from
the ceiling!
Then will somebody square this shade with the
being I know
I was last night, when my soul rang clear as a bell
And happy as rain in summer? Why should it be
so?
What is there gone against me, why am I in hell?
Palimpsest Of Twilight
DARKNESS comes out of the earth
And swallows dip into the pallor of the west;
From the hay comes the clamour of children's mirth;
Wanes the old palimpsest.
The night-stock oozes scent,
And a moon-blue moth goes flittering by:
All that the worldly day has meant
Wastes like a lie.
The children have forsaken their play;
A single star in a veil of light
Glimmers: litter of day
Is gone from sight.
Embankment At Night
BEFORE THE WAR
Outcasts.
THE night rain, dripping unseen,
Comes endlessly kissing my face and my hands.
The river, slipping between
Lamps, is rayed with golden bands
Half way down its heaving sides;
Revealed where it hides.
Under the bridge
Great electric cars
Sing through, and each with a floor-light racing
along at its side.
Far off, oh, midge after midge
Drifts over the gulf that bars
The night with silence, crossing the lamp-touched
tide.
At Charing Cross, here, beneath the bridge
Sleep in a row the outcasts,
Packed in a line with their heads against the wall.
Their feet, in a broken ridge
Stretch out on the way, and a lout casts
A look as he stands on the edge of this naked stall.
Beasts that sleep will cover
Their faces in their flank; so these
Have huddled rags or limbs on the naked sleep.
Save, as the tram-cars hover
Past with the noise of a breeze
And gleam as of sunshine crossing the low black heap,
Two naked faces are seen
Bare and asleep,
Two pale clots swept and swept by the light of the
cars.
Foam-clots showing between
The long, low tidal-heap,
The mud-weed opening two pale, shadowless stars.
Over the pallor of only two faces
Passes the gallivant beam of the trams;
Shows in only two sad places
The white bare bone of our shams.
A little, bearded man, pale, peaked in sleeping,
With a face like a chickweed flower.
And a heavy woman, sleeping still keeping
Callous and dour.
Over the pallor of only two places
Tossed on the low, black, ruffled heap
Passes the light of the tram as it races
Out of the deep.
Eloquent limbs
In disarray
Sleep-suave limbs of a youth with long, smooth
thighs
Hutched up for warmth; the