TOWN AND COUNTRY
Here, where love"s stuff is body, arm and side Are stabbing-sweet "gainst chair and lamp and wall.
In every touch more intimate meanings hide; And flaming brains are the white heart of all.
Here, million pulses to one centre beat: Closed in by men"s vast friendliness, alone, Two can be drunk with solitude, and meet On the sheer point where sense with knowing"s one.
Here the green-purple clanging royal night, And the straight lines and silent walls of town, And roar, and glare, and dust, and myriad white Undying pa.s.sers, pinnacle and crown
Intensest heavens between close-lying faces By the lamp"s airless fierce ecstatic fire; And we"ve found love in little hidden places, Under great shades, between the mist and mire.
Stay! though the woods are quiet, and you"ve heard Night creep along the hedges. Never go Where tangled foliage shrouds the crying bird, And the remote winds sigh, and waters flow!
Lest--as our words fall dumb on windless noons, Or hearts grow hushed and solitary, beneath Unheeding stars and unfamiliar moons, Or boughs bend over, close and quiet as death,--
Unconscious and unpa.s.sionate and still, Cloud-like we lean and stare as bright leaves stare, And gradually along the stranger hill Our unwalled loves thin out on vacuous air,
And suddenly there"s no meaning in our kiss, And your lit upward face grows, where we lie, Lonelier and dreadfuller than sunlight is, And dumb and mad and eyeless like the sky.
DINING-ROOM TEA
When you were there, and you, and you, Happiness crowned the night; I too, Laughing and looking, one of all, I watched the quivering lamplight fall On plate and flowers and pouring tea And cup and cloth; and they and we Flung all the dancing moments by With jest and glitter. Lip and eye Flashed on the glory, shone and cried, Improvident, unmemoried; And fitfully and like a flame The light of laughter went and came.
Proud in their careless transience moved The changing faces that I loved.
Till suddenly, and otherwhence, I looked upon your innocence; For lifted clear and still and strange From the dark woven flow of change Under a vast and starless sky I saw the immortal moment lie.
One instant I, an instant, knew As G.o.d knows all. And it and you I, above Time, oh, blind! could see In witless immortality.
I saw the marble cup; the tea, Hung on the air, an amber stream; I saw the fire"s unglittering gleam, The painted flame, the frozen smoke.
No more the flooding lamplight broke On flying eyes and lips and hair; But lay, but slept unbroken there, On stiller flesh, and body breathless, And lips and laughter stayed and deathless, And words on which no silence grew.
Light was more alive than you.
For suddenly, and otherwhence, I looked on your magnificence.
I saw the stillness and the light, And you, august, immortal, white, Holy and strange; and every glint Posture and jest and thought and tint Freed from the mask of transiency, Triumphant in eternity, Immote, immortal.
Dazed at length Human eyes grew, mortal strength Wearied; and Time began to creep.
Change closed about me like a sleep.
Light glinted on the eyes I loved.
The cup was filled. The bodies moved.
The drifting petal came to ground.
The laughter chimed its perfect round.
The broken syllable was ended.
And I, so certain and so friended, How could I cloud, or how distress, The heaven of your unconsciousness?
Or shake at Time"s sufficient spell, Stammering of lights unutterable?
The eternal holiness of you, The timeless end, you never knew, The peace that lay, the light that shone.
You never knew that I had gone A million miles away, and stayed A million years. The laughter played Unbroken round me; and the jest Flashed on. And we that knew the best Down wonderful hours grew happier yet.
I sang at heart, and talked, and eat, And lived from laugh to laugh, I too, When you were there, and you, and you.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON
THE SONG OF ELF
Blue-eyed was Elf the minstrel, With womanish hair and ring, Yet heavy was his hand on sword, Though light upon the string.
And as he stirred the strings of the harp To notes but four or five, The heart of each man moved in him Like a babe buried alive.
And they felt the land of the folk-songs Spread southward of the Dane, And they heard the good Rhine flowing In the heart of all Allemagne.
They felt the land of the folk-songs, Where the gifts hang on the tree, Where the girls give ale at morning And the tears come easily,
The mighty people, womanlike, That have pleasure in their pain; As he sang of Balder beautiful, Whom the heavens loved in vain.
As he sang of Balder beautiful, Whom the heavens could not save, Till the world was like a sea of tears And every soul a wave.
"There is always a thing forgotten When all the world goes well; A thing forgotten, as long ago When the G.o.ds forgot the mistletoe, And soundless as an arrow of snow The arrow of anguish fell.
"The thing on the blind side of the heart, On the wrong side of the door; The green plant groweth, menacing Almighty lovers in the spring; There is always a forgotten thing, And love is not secure."
WILLIAM H. DAVIES
THE CHILD AND THE MARINER