You have come your way, I have come my way; You have stepped across your people, carelessly, hurting them all; I have stepped across my people, and hurt them in spite of my care.
But steadily, surely, and notwithstanding We have come our ways and met at last Here in this upper room.
Here the balcony Overhangs the street where the bullock-wagons slowly Go by with their loads of green and silver birch- trees For the feast of Corpus Christi.
Here from the balcony We look over the growing wheat, where the jade- green river Goes between the pine-woods, Over and beyond to where the many mountains Stand in their blueness, flashing with snow and the morning.
I have done; a quiver of exultation goes through me, like the first Breeze of the morning through a narrow white birch.
You glow at last like the mountain tops when they catch Day and make magic in heaven.
At last I can throw away world without end, and meet you Unsheathed and naked and narrow and white; At last you can throw immortality off, and I see you Glistening with all the moment and all your beauty.
Shameless and callous I love you; Out of indifference I love you; Out of mockery we dance together, Out of the sunshine into the shadow, Pa.s.sing across the shadow into the sunlight, Out of sunlight to shadow.
As we dance Your eyes take all of me in as a communication; As we dance I see you, ah, in full!
Only to dance together in triumph of being together Two white ones, sharp, vindicated, Shining and touching, Is heaven of our own, sheer with repudiation.
_IN THE DARK_
A BLOTCH of pallor stirs beneath the high Square picture-dusk, the window of dark sky.
A sound subdued in the darkness: tears!
As if a bird in difficulty up the valley steers.
"Why have you gone to the window? Why don"t you sleep?
How you have wakened me! But why, why do you weep?"
_"I am afraid of you, I am afraid, afraid!
There is something in you destroys me--!"_
"You have dreamed and are not awake, come here to me."
_"No, I have wakened. It is you, you are cruel to me!"_
"My dear!"--_"Yes, yes, you are cruel to me. You cast A shadow over my b.r.e.a.s.t.s that will kill me at last."_
"Come!"--_"No, I"m a thing of life. I give You armfuls of sunshine, and you won"t let me live."_
"Nay, I"m too sleepy!"--_"Ah, you are horrible; You stand before me like ghosts, like a darkness upright."_
"I!"--_"How can you treat me so, and love me?
My feet have no hold, you take the sky from above me."_
"My dear, the night is soft and eternal, no doubt You love it!"--_"It is dark, it kills me, I am put out."_
"My dear, when you cross the street in the sun- shine, surely Your own small night goes with you. Why treat it so poorly?"
_"No, no, I dance in the sun, I"m a thing of life--"_ "Even then it is dark behind you. Turn round, my wife."
_"No, how cruel you are, you people the sunshine With shadows!"_--"With yours I people the sunshine, yours and mine--"
"In the darkness we all are gone, we are gone with the trees And the restless river;--we are lost and gone with all these."
_"But I am myself, I have nothing to do with these."_ "Come back to bed, let us sleep on our mys- teries.
"Come to me here, and lay your body by mine, And I will be all the shadow, you the shine.
"Come, you are cold, the night has frightened you.
Hark at the river! It pants as it hurries through
"The pine-woods. How I love them so, in their mystery of not-to-be."
_"--But let me be myself, not a river or a tree."_
"Kiss me! How cold you are!--Your little b.r.e.a.s.t.s Are bubbles of ice. Kiss me!--You know how it rests
"One to be quenched, to be given up, to be gone in the dark; To be blown out, to let night dowse the spark.
"But never mind, my love. Nothing matters, save sleep; Save you, and me, and sleep; all the rest will keep."
MUTILATION
A THICK mist-sheet lies over the broken wheat.
I walk up to my neck in mist, holding my mouth up.
Across there, a discoloured moon burns itself out.
I hold the night in horror; I dare not turn round.
To-night I have left her alone.
They would have it I have left her for ever.
Oh my G.o.d, how it aches Where she is cut off from me!
Perhaps she will go back to England.
Perhaps she will go back, Perhaps we are parted for ever.
If I go on walking through the whole breadth of Germany I come to the North Sea, or the Baltic.
Over there is Russia--Austria, Switzerland, France, in a circle!
I here in the undermist on the Bavarian road.
It aches in me.
What is England or France, far off, But a name she might take?
I don"t mind this continent stretching, the sea far away; It aches in me for her Like the agony of limbs cut off and aching; Not even longing, It is only agony.
A cripple!
Oh G.o.d, to be mutilated!
To be a cripple!