New Poems

Excerpt

APPREHENSION

AND all hours long, the town
  Roars like a beast in a cave
That is wounded there
And like to drown;
  While days rush, wave after wave
On its lair.

An invisible woe unseals
  The flood, so it passes beyond
All bounds: the great old city
Recumbent roars as it feels
  The foamy paw of the pond
Reach from immensity.

But all that it can do
  Now, as the tide rises,
Is to listen and hear the grim
Waves crash like thunder through
  The splintered streets, hear noises
Roll hollow in the interim.

COMING AWAKE

WHEN I woke, the lake-lights were quivering on the
     wall,
The sunshine swam in a shoal across and across,
And a hairy, big bee hung over the primulas
In the window, his body black fur, and the sound
     of him cross.

There was something I ought to remember: and yet I did not remember. Why should I? The run- ning lights And the airy primulas, oblivious Of the impending bee—they were fair enough sights.

FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW

THE glimmer of the limes, sun-heavy, sleeping,
   Goes trembling past me up the College wall.
Below, the lawn, in soft blue shade is keeping,
   The daisy-froth quiescent, softly in thrall.

Beyond the leaves that overhang the street,
  Along the flagged, clean pavement summer-white,
Passes the world with shadows at their feet
   Going left and right.

Remote, although I hear the beggar's cough,
   See the woman's twinkling fingers tend him a
      coin,
I sit absolved, assured I am better off
   Beyond a world I never want to join.

FLAPPER

LOVE has crept out of her sealéd heart
  As a field-bee, black and amber,
  Breaks from the winter-cell, to clamber
Up the warm grass where the sunbeams start.

Mischief has come in her dawning eyes,
  And a glint of coloured iris brings
  Such as lies along the folded wings
Of the bee before he flies.

Who, with a ruffling, careful breath,
  Has opened the wings of the wild young sprite?
  Has fluttered her spirit to stumbling flight
In her eyes, as a young bee stumbleth?

Love makes the burden of her voice.
  The hum of his heavy, staggering wings
  Sets quivering with wisdom the common
      things
That she says, and her words rejoice.

BIRDCAGE WALK

WHEN the wind blows her veil
  And uncovers her laughter
I cease, I turn pale.
When the wind blows her veil
From the woes I bewail
  Of love and hereafter:
When the wind blows her veil
I cease, I turn pale.

LETTER FROM TOWN: THE ALMOND TREE

YOU promised to send me some violets. Did you
     forget?
  White ones and blue ones from under the orchard
     hedge?
  Sweet dark purple, and white ones mixed for a
     pledge
Of our early love that hardly has opened yet.

Here there's an almond tree—you have never seen
  Such a one in the north—it flowers on the street,
     and I stand
  Every day by the fence to look up for the flowers
     that expand
At rest in the blue, and wonder at what they mean.

Under the almond tree, the happy lands
  Provence, Japan, and Italy repose,
  And passing feet are chatter and clapping of
     those
Who play around us, country girls clapping their
     hands....