school rises red!
  A red rock silent and shadowless, clung round
     with clusters of shouting lads,
Some few dark-cleaving the doorway, souls that
     cling as the souls of the dead
  In stupor persist at the gates of life, obstinate
     dark monads.

This new red rock in a waste of white rises against
     the day
  With shelter now, and with blandishment, since
     the winds have had their way
And laid the desert horrific of silence and snow on
     the world of mankind,
  School now is the rock in this weary land the winter
     burns and makes blind.

SICKNESS

WAVING slowly before me, pushed into the dark,
Unseen my hands explore the silence, drawing the
    bark
Of my body slowly behind.

Nothing to meet my fingers but the fleece of night
Invisible blinding my face and my eyes! What if
    in their flight
My hands should touch the door!

What if I suddenly stumble, and push the door
Open, and a great grey dawn swirls over my feet,
    before
I can draw back!

What if unwitting I set the door of eternity wide
And am swept away in the horrible dawn, am gone
    down the tide
Of eternal hereafter!

Catch my hands, my darling, between your breasts.
Take them away from their venture, before fate
    wrests
The meaning out of them.

EVERLASTING FLOWERS

WHO do you think stands watching
  The snow-tops shining rosy
In heaven, now that the darkness
  Takes all but the tallest posy?

Who then sees the two-winged
  Boat down there, all alone
And asleep on the snow's last shadow,
  Like a moth on a stone?

The olive-leaves, light as gad-flies,
  Have all gone dark, gone black.
And now in the dark my soul to you
  Turns back.

To you, my little darling,
  To you, out of Italy.
For what is loveliness, my love,
  Save you have it with me!

So, there's an oxen wagon
  Comes darkly into sight:
A man with a lantern, swinging
  A little light.

What does he see, my darling
  Here by the darkened lake?
Here, in the sloping shadow
  The mountains make?

He says not a word, but passes,
  Staring at what he sees.
What ghost of us both do you think he saw
  Under the olive trees?

All the things that are lovely—
  The things you never knew—
I wanted to gather them one by one
  And bring them to you.

But never now, my darling
  Can I gather the mountain-tips
From the twilight like half-shut lilies
  To hold to your lips.

And never the two-winged vessel
  That sleeps below on the lake
Can I catch like a moth between my hands
  For you to take.

But hush, I am not regretting:
  It is far more perfect now.
I'll whisper the ghostly truth to the world
  And tell them how

I know you here in the darkness,
  How you sit in the throne of my eyes
At peace, and look out of the windows
  In glad surprise.

THE NORTH COUNTRY

IN another country, black poplars shake them-
    selves over a pond,
And rooks and the rising smoke-waves scatter and
    wheel from the works beyond;
The air is dark with north and with sulphur, the
    grass is a darker green,
And people darkly invested with purple move
   palpable through the scene.

Soundlessly down across the counties, out of the
    resonant gloom
That wraps the north in stupor and purple travels
    the deep, slow boom
Of the man-life north-imprisoned, shut in the hum
    of the purpled steel
As it spins to sleep on its motion, drugged dense in
    the sleep of the wheel.

Out of the sleep, from the gloom of motion, sound-
    lessly, somnambule
Moans and booms the soul of a people imprisoned,
    asleep in the rule
Of the strong machine that runs mesmeric, booming
    the spell of its word
Upon them and moving them helpless, mechanic,
    their will to its will deferred.

Yet all the while comes the droning inaudible, out
    of the violet air,
The moaning of sleep-bound beings in travail that
    toil and are will-less there
In the spell-bound north, convulsive now with a
    dream near morning, strong
With violent achings heaving to burst the sleep
    that is now not long.

BITTERNESS OF DEATH

I

AH, stern, cold man,
How can you lie so relentless hard
While I wash you with weeping water!
Do you set your face against the daughter
Of life? Can you never discard
Your curt pride's ban?

You masquerader!
How can you shame to act this part
Of unswerving indifference to me?
You want at last, ah me!
To break my heart
Evader!

You know your mouth
Was always sooner to soften
Even than your eyes.
Now shut it lies
Relentless, however often
I kiss it in drouth.

It has no breath
Nor any relaxing. Where,
Where are you, what have you done?
What is this mouth of stone?
How did you dare
Take cover in death!

II

Once you could see,
The white moon show like a breast revealed
By the slipping shawl of stars.
Could see the small stars tremble
As the heart beneath did wield
Systole, diastole.

All the lovely macrocosm
Was woman once to you,
Bride to your groom.
No tree in bloom
But it leaned you a new
White bosom.

And always and ever
Soft as a summering tree
Unfolds from the sky, for your good,
Unfolded womanhood;
Shedding you down as a tree
Sheds its flowers on a river.

I saw your brows
Set like rocks beside a sea of gloom,
And I shed my very soul down into your
   thought;
Like flowers I fell, to be caught
On the comforted pool, like bloom
That leaves the boughs.

III

Oh, masquerader,
With a hard face white-enamelled,
What are you now?
Do you care no longer how
My heart is trammelled,
Evader?

Is this you, after all,
Metallic, obdurate
With bowels of steel?
Did you never feel?—
Cold, insensate,
Mechanical!

Ah, no!—you multiform,
You that I loved, you wonderful,
You who darkened and shone,
You were many men in one;
But never this null
This never-warm!

Is this the sum of you?
Is it all nought?
Cold, metal-cold?
Are you all told
Here, iron-wrought?
Is this what's become of you?

SEVEN SEALS

SINCE this is the last night I keep you