something dark.
I cried, but no one could hear me,
  I lay dumb and stark.

When I awoke this morning
  I could find no trace;
Perhaps 'twas a dream of warning,
  For I've lost my peace.

LETTER FROM TOWN: ON A GREY EVENING IN MARCH

THE clouds are pushing in grey reluctance slowly
     northward to you,
While north of them all, at the farthest ends,
     stands one bright-bosomed, aglance
With fire as it guards the wild north cloud-coasts,
     red-fire seas running through
The rocks where ravens flying to windward melt
     as a well-shot lance.

You should be out by the orchard, where violets
     secretly darken the earth,
Or there in the woods of the twilight, with
     northern wind-flowers shaken astir.
Think of me here in the library, trying and trying
     a song that is worth
Tears and swords to my heart, arrows no armour
     will turn or deter.

You tell me the lambs have come, they lie like
     daisies white in the grass
Of the dark-green hills; new calves in shed;
     peewits turn after the plough—
It is well for you. For me the navvies work in the
     road where I pass
And I want to smite in anger the barren rock of
     each waterless brow.

Like the sough of a wind that is caught up high in
     the mesh of the budding trees,
A sudden car goes sweeping past, and I strain my
     soul to hear
The voice of the furtive triumphant engine as it
     rushes past like a breeze,
To hear on its mocking triumphance unwitting
     the after-echo of fear.

SUBURBS ON A HAZY DAY

O STIFFLY shapen houses that change not,
  What conjuror's cloth was thrown across you,
     and raised
To show you thus transfigured, changed,
  Your stuff all gone, your menace almost rased?

Such resolute shapes, so harshly set
  In hollow blocks and cubes deformed, and heaped
In void and null profusion, how is this?
  In what strong aqua regia now are you steeped?

That you lose the brick-stuff out of you
  And hover like a presentment, fading faint
And vanquished, evaporate away
  To leave but only the merest possible taint!

HYDE PARK AT NIGHT, BEFORE THE WAR

Clerks.

WE have shut the doors behind us, and the velvet
    flowers of night
Lean about us scattering their pollen grains of
    golden light.

Now at last we lift our faces, and our faces come
    aflower
To the night that takes us willing, liberates us to the
    hour.

Now at last the ink and dudgeon passes from our
    fervent eyes
And out of the chambered weariness wanders a
    spirit abroad on its enterprise.

    Not too near and not too far
    Out of the stress of the crowd
    Music screams as elephants scream
    When they lift their trunks and scream aloud
    For joy of the night when masters are
           Asleep and adream.

    So here I hide in the Shalimar
    With a wanton princess slender and proud,
    And we swoon with kisses, swoon till we seem
    Two streaming peacocks gone in a cloud
    Of golden dust, with star after star
           On our stream.

GIPSY

I, THE man with the red scarf,
   Will give thee what I have, this last week's earn-
        ings.
Take them, and buy thee a silver ring
   And wed me, to ease my yearnings.

For the rest, when thou art wedded
   I'll wet my brow for thee
With sweat, I'll enter a house for thy sake,
   Thou shalt shut doors on me.

TWO-FOLD

How gorgeous that shock of red lilies, and larkspur
    cleaving
All with a flash of blue!—when will she be leaving
Her room, where the night still hangs like a half-
    folded bat,
And passion unbearable seethes in the darkness, like
    must in a vat.

UNDER THE OAK

You, if you were sensible,
When I tell you the stars flash signals, each one
   dreadful,
You would not turn and answer me
"The night is wonderful."

Even you, if you knew
How this darkness soaks me through and through,
   and infuses
Unholy fear in my vapour, you would pause to dis-
   tinguish
What hurts, from what amuses.

For I tell you
Beneath this powerful tree, my whole soul's fluid
Oozes away from me as a sacrifice steam
At the knife of a Druid.

Again I tell you, I bleed, I am bound with withies,
My life runs out.
I tell you my blood runs out on the floor of this oak,
Gout upon gout.

Above me springs the blood-born mistletoe
In the shady smoke.
But who are you, twittering to and fro
Beneath the oak?

What thing better are you, what worse?
What have you to do with the mysteries
Of this ancient place, of my ancient curse?
What place have you in my histories?

SIGH NO MORE

THE cuckoo and the coo-dove's ceaseless calling,
               Calling,
Of a meaningless monotony is palling
All my morning's pleasure in the sun-fleck-scattered
     wood.
May-blossom and blue bird's-eye flowers falling,
               Falling
In a litter through the elm-tree shade are scrawling
Messages of true-love down the dust of the high-
     road.
I do not like to hear the gentle grieving,
               Grieving
Of the she-dove in the blossom, still believing
Love will yet again return to her and make all good.

When I know that there must ever be deceiving,
               Deceiving
Of the mournful constant heart, that while she's
     weaving
Her woes, her lover woos and sings within another
     wood.

Oh, boisterous the cuckoo shouts, forestalling,
               Stalling
A progress down the intricate enthralling
By-paths where the wanton-headed flowers doff
     their hood.

And like a laughter leads me onward, heaving,
               Heaving
A sigh among the shadows, thus retrieving
A decent short regret for that which once was very
     good.

LOVE STORM

MANY roses in the wind
Are tapping at the window-sash.
A hawk is in the sky; his wings
Slowly begin to plash.

The roses with the west wind rapping
Are torn away, and a splash
Of red goes down the billowing air.

Still hangs the hawk, with the whole sky moving
Past him—only a wing-beat proving
The will that holds him there.