when we are dead.—
I wish I was only a bust,
      All head.)

DISCORD IN CHILDHOOD

OUTSIDE the house an ash-tree hung its terrible
    whips,
And at night when the wind arose, the lash of the tree
Shrieked and slashed the wind, as a ship's
Weird rigging in a storm shrieks hideously.

Within the house two voices arose in anger, a slender
    lash
Whistling delirious rage, and the dreadful sound
Of a thick lash booming and bruising, until it
    drowned
The other voice in a silence of blood, 'neath the noise
    of the ash.

VIRGIN YOUTH

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
Into urgent, passionate waves,
And my soft, slumbering belly
Quivering awake with one impulse of desire,
Gathers itself fiercely together;
And my docile, fluent arms
Knotting themselves with wild strength
To clasp what they have never clasped.
Then I tremble, and go trembling
Under the wild, strange tyranny of my body,
Till it has spent itself,
And the relentless nodality of my eyes reasserts itself,
Till the bursten flood of life ebbs back to my eyes,
Back from my beautiful, lonely body
Tired and unsatisfied.

MONOLOGUE OF A MOTHER

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 the dying coals grows swiftly, like
    heavy moss.

Strange he is, my son, whom I have awaited like a
    lover,
Strange to me like a captive in a foreign country,
    haunting
The confines and gazing out on the land where the
    wind is free;
White and gaunt, with wistful eyes that hover
Always on the distance, as if his soul were chaunting
The monotonous weird of departure away from me.

Like a strange white bird blown out of the frozen
    seas,
Like a bird from the far north blown with a broken
    wing
Into our sooty garden, he drags and beats
From place to place perpetually, seeking release
From me, from the hand of my love which creeps up,
    needing
His happiness, whilst he in displeasure retreats.

I must look away from him, for my faded eyes
Like a cringing dog at his heels offend him now,
Like a toothless hound pursuing him with my will,
Till he chafes at my crouching persistence, and a
    sharp spark flies
In my soul from under the sudden frown of his brow,
As he blenches and turns away, and my heart stands
    still.

This is the last, it will not be any more.
All my life I have borne the burden of myself,
All the long years of sitting in my husband's house,
Never have I said to myself as he closed the door:
"Now I am caught!—You are hopelessly lost, O
    Self,
You are frightened with joy, my heart, like a
    frightened mouse."

Three times have I offered myself, three times rejected.
It will not be any more. No more, my son, my son!
Never to know the glad freedom of obedience, since
    long ago
The angel of childhood kissed me and went. I expected
Another would take me,—and now, my son, O my son,
I must sit awhile and wait, and never know
The loss of myself, till death comes, who cannot fail.

Death, in whose service is nothing of gladness, takes
    me;
For the lips and the eyes of God are behind a veil.
And the thought of the lipless voice of the Father
    shakes me
With fear, and fills my eyes with the tears of desire,
And my heart rebels with anguish as night draws
    nigher,

IN A BOAT

SEE the stars, love,
In the water much clearer and brighter
Than those above us, and whiter,
Like nenuphars.

Star-shadows shine, love,
How many stars in your bowl?
How many shadows in your soul,
Only mine, love, mine?

When I move the oars, love,
See how the stars are tossed,
Distorted, the brightest lost.
—So that bright one of yours, love.

The poor waters spill
The stars, waters broken, forsaken.
—The heavens are not shaken, you say, love,
Its stars stand still.

There, did you see
That spark fly up at us; even
Stars are not safe in heaven.
—What of yours, then, love, yours?

What then, love, if soon
Your light be tossed over a wave?
Will you count the darkness a grave,
And swoon, love, swoon?

WEEK-NIGHT SERVICE

THE five old bells
Are hurrying and eagerly calling,
Imploring, protesting
They know, but clamorously falling
Into gabbling incoherence, never resting,
Like spattering showers from a bursten sky-rocket
    dropping
In splashes of sound, endlessly, never stopping.

The silver moon
That somebody has spun so high
To settle the question, yes or no, has caught
In the net of the night's balloon,
And sits with a smooth bland smile up there in
    the sky
Smiling at naught,
Unless the winking star that keeps her company
Makes little jests at the bells' insanity,
As if he knew aught!

The patient Night
Sits indifferent, hugged in her rags,
She neither knows nor cares
Why the old church sobs and brags;
The light distresses her eyes, and tears
Her old blue cloak, as she crouches and covers her
    face,
Smiling, perhaps, if we knew it, at the bells' loud
    clattering disgrace.

The wise old trees
Drop their leaves with a faint, sharp hiss of contempt,
While a car at the end of the street goes by with a
    laugh;
As by degrees
The poor bells cease, and the Night is exempt,
And the stars can chaff
The ironic moon at their ease, while the dim old
    church
Is peopled with shadows and sounds and ghosts that
    lurch
In its cenotaph.

IRONY

ALWAYS, sweetheart,
Carry into your room the blossoming boughs of
    cherry,
Almond and apple and pear diffuse with light, that
    very
Soon strews itself on the floor; and keep the radiance
    of spring
Fresh quivering; keep the sunny-swift March-days
    waiting
In a little throng at your door, and admit the one
    who is plaiting
Her hair for womanhood, and play awhile with her,
    then bid her depart.

    A come and go of March-day loves
    Through the flower-vine, trailing screen;
       A fluttering in of doves.
    Then a launch abroad of shrinking doves