Under their heaped snow-eaves, Leaden houses shiver.
Through thin blue creva.s.ses, Trickles an icy stream.
The pines groan white-laden, The waves shiver, struck by the wind; Beyond from treeless horizons, Broken snow-peaks crawl to the sea.
Wearily the snow glares, Through the grey silence, day after day, Mocking the colourless cloudless sky With the reflection of death.
There is no smoke through the pine tops, No strong red boatmen in pale green reeds, No herons to flicker an instant, No lanterns to glow with gay ray.
No sails beat up to the harbour, With creaking cordage and sailors" song.
Somnolent, bare-poled, indifferent, They sleep, and the city sleeps.
Mid-winter about them casts, Its dreary fortifications: Each day is a gaunt grey rock, And death is the last of them all.
Over the sluggish snow, Drifts now a pallid weak shower of bloom; Boredom of fresh creation, Death-weariness of old returns.
White, white blossom, Fall of the shattered cups day on day: Is there anything here that is not ancient, That has not bloomed a thousand years ago?
Under the glare of the white-hot day, Under the restless wind-rakes of the winter, White blossom or white snow scattered, And beneath them, dark, the graves.
Dark graves never changing, White dream drifting, never changing above them: O that the white scroll of heaven might be rolled up, And the naked red lightning thrust at the smouldering earth!
MIDSUMMER DREAMS
_(Symphony in White and Blue)_
I
There is a tall white weed growing at the top of this sand hill: In the gra.s.s It is very still.
It lifts its heavy bracts of flattened bloom Against the sky Hazily grey with brume.
Out over yonder boats pa.s.s And the swallows Flatten themselves on the gra.s.s.
The lake is silvering beneath the heat.
The wind"s feet Touch lazily each crest, Like white gulls slow flapping To windward.
One rose white cloud slowly disengages, loosening itself, And stands Above the larkspur-coloured water: Like Dione"s daughter Braiding up her wet hair with her pale, hands.
II
The moon puts out her face at a rift between the trees, Which do not lift one drooping leaf, this night of June.
There is no lazy breeze to set them clashing adrift.
Thin gleams of silver rise and break in the air, Fireflies--here and there.
Forest of blue ma.s.ses suddenly quivering with rapid points of white, Are the forests beneath the sea where no breeze pa.s.ses As still as you to-night?
The moon puts out her face at a rift between the trees; Through my window, the bed cut evenly with diagonal shafts of light, Is a boat rocking out adrift.
Under it bend the silver tips of the dark blue coral trees, And fireflies like gla.s.s fish Drift and ripple upwards in the breeze.
III
We are drifting slowly, you and I, To where the clouds are lifting High-fretted towers in the sky: Palaces of ivory, Which we look at dreamily.
Over our sail Frail white clouds, Drift as slowly Over the undulant pale blue silk of the water, As we.
We are racing swiftly, you and I, The sun darts one firm track Through the blue-black Of the crinkled water.
Gold spirals spattering, flashing, The water heaves and curls away at our bow, A mad fish splashing.
We are rocked together, you and I, To this undulant movement.
White cloud with blue water blent, Cloud dipping down to wave its lazy head, Wave curling under cloud its cloudy blue.
I and you, All alone, alone, at last.
I hold you fast.
IV
The midsummer clouds were piling up upon the south horizon, Mountains of drifting translucence in the larkspur-fields of the sky: Ascending and toppling in crumbled ravines, dribbling down chasms of silence, Rea.s.sembling in crowded mult.i.tudes, ma.s.sive forms one above another.
And I saw in their ridges and hollows, the appearance of a woman Immeasurable, carven in stainless marble, motionless, naked, fair: Her head thrown back, her pointed b.r.e.a.s.t.s up-gleaming in chill sunlight, Her heavy flanks dark in the shadow, resting forever inert.
And up to her there suddenly clomb and hurried another cloud, Huge, hairy, bulging, and k.n.o.bby, with dark and knotted brows: And he thrust out long bungling arms to her and drew himself up to her, And I watched them melting together, blue mouth to sad white mouth.
ORANGE SYMPHONY
I