October and Other Poems with Occasional Verses on the War . Bridges Robert

recall me a time sixty summers ago,

      When, a young chubby chap, I sat just so

      With others on a school-form rank’d in a row,

      Not less eager and hungry than you, I trow,

      With intelligences agape and eyes aglow,

      While an authoritative old wise-acre

      Stood over us and from a desk fed us with flies.

      Dead flies—such as litter the library south-window,

      That buzzed at the panes until they fell stiff-baked on the sill,

      Or are roll’d up asleep i’ the blinds at sunrise,

      Or wafer’d flat in a shrunken folio.

      A dry biped he was, nurtured likewise

      On skins and skeletons, stale from top to toe

      With all manner of rubbish and all manner of lies.

      GHOSTS

      Mazing around my mind like moths at a shaded candle,

      In my heart like lost bats in a cave fluttering,

      Mock ye the charm whereby I thought reverently to lay you,

      When to the wall I nail’d your reticent effigys?

      Έτώσιον ἄχθος ἀρούρης

      Who goes there? God knows. I’m nobody. How should I answer?

      Can’t jump over a gate nor run across the meadow.

      I’m but an old whitebeard of inane identity. Pass on!

      What’s left of me to-day will very soon be nothing.

      HELL AND HATE

      Two demons thrust their arms out over the world,

      Hell with a ruddy torch of fire,

      And Hate with gasping mouth,

      Striving to seize two children fair

      Who play’d on the upper curve of the Earth.

      Their shapes were vast as the thoughts of man,

      But the Earth was small

      As the moon’s rim appeareth

      Scann’d through an optic glass.

      The younger child stood erect on the Earth

      As a charioteer in a car

      Or a dancer with arm upraised;

      Her whole form—barely clad

      From feet to golden head—

      Leapt brightly against the uttermost azure,

      Whereon the stars were splashes of light

      Dazed in the gulfing beds of space.

      The elder might have been stell’d to show

      The lady who led my boyish love;

      But her face was graver than e’er to me

      When I look’d in her eyes long ago,

      And the hair on her shoulders fal’n

      Nested its luminous brown

      I’ the downy spring of her wings:

      Her figure aneath was screen’d by the Earth,

      Whereoff—so small that was

      No footing for her could be—

      She appeared to be sailing free

      I’ the glide and poise of her flight.

      Then knew I the Angel Faith,

      Who was guarding human Love.

      Happy were both, of peaceful mien,

      Contented as mankind longeth to be,

      Not merry as children are;

      And show’d no fear of the Fiends’ pursuit,