Out of the hell-queen's cup, the heaven's pale wine—
Drink then, invisible heroes, drink.
Lips to the vessels, never shrink,
Throats to the heavens incline.
And take within the wine the god's great oath
By heaven and earth and hellish stream
To break this sick and nauseous dream
We writhe and lust in, both.
Swear, in the pale wine poured from the cups of the
queen
Of hell, to wake and be free
From this nightmare we writhe in,
Break out of this foul has-been.
On That Day
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 flowers asunder
To see whose praise
Is blazoned here so white and so bloodily red.
Then they will say: "'Tis long since she is dead,
Who has remembered her after many days?"
And standing there
They will consider how you went your ways
Unnoticed among them, a still queen lost in the
maze
Of this earthly affair.
A queen, they'll say,
Has slept unnoticed on a forgotten hill.
Sleeps on unknown, unnoticed there, until
Dawns my insurgent day.
Bay: A Book of Poems
Guards!
A Review in Hyde Park 1913.
The Crowd Watches.
WHERE the trees rise like cliffs, proud and
blue-tinted in the distance,
Between the cliffs of the trees, on the grey-
green park
Rests a still line of soldiers, red motionless range of
guards
Smouldering with darkened busbies beneath the bay-
onets' slant rain.
Colossal in nearness a blue police sits still on his horse
Guarding the path; his hand relaxed at his thigh,
And skyward his face is immobile, eyelids aslant
In tedium, and mouth relaxed as if smiling—ineffable
tedium!
So! So! Gaily a general canters across the space,
With white plumes blinking under the evening grey
sky.
And suddenly, as if the ground moved
The red range heaves in slow, magnetic reply.
Evolutions Of Soldiers
The red range heaves and compulsory sways, ah see!
in the flush of a march
Softly-impulsive advancing as water towards a weir
from the arch
Of shadow emerging as blood emerges from inward
shades of our night
Encroaching towards a crisis, a meeting, a spasm and
throb of delight.
The wave of soldiers, the coming wave, the throbbing
red breast of approach
Upon us; dark eyes as here beneath the busbies glit-
tering, dark threats that broach
Our beached vessel; darkened rencontre inhuman, and
closed warm lips, and dark
Mouth-hair of