Part 15 (1/2)

We shall _be_, _now_.

We shall know in full.

We, the mystic NOW.

ZENNOR

_AUTUMN RAIN_

THE plane leaves fall black and wet on the lawn;

The cloud sheaves in heaven's fields set droop and are drawn

in falling seeds of rain; the seed of heaven on my face

falling--I hear again like echoes even that softly pace

Heaven's m.u.f.fled floor, the winds that tread out all the grain

of tears, the store harvested in the sheaves of pain

caught up aloft: the sheaves of dead men that are slain

now winnowed soft on the floor of heaven; manna invisible

of all the pain here to us given; finely divisible falling as rain.

_FROST FLOWERS_

IT is not long since, here among all these folk in London, I should have held myself of no account whatever, but should have stood aside and made them way thinking that they, perhaps, had more right than I--for who was I?

Now I see them just the same, and watch them.

But of what account do I hold them?

Especially the young women. I look at them as they dart and flash before the shops, like wagtails on the edge of a pool.

If I pa.s.s them close, or any man, like sharp, slim wagtails they flash a little aside pretending to avoid us; yet all the time calculating.

They think that we adore them--alas, would it were true!

Probably they think all men adore them, howsoever they pa.s.s by.

What is it, that, from their faces fresh as spring, such fair, fresh, alert, first-flower faces, like lavender crocuses, snowdrops, like Roman hyacinths, scyllas and yellow-haired h.e.l.lebore, jonquils, dim anemones, even the sulphur auriculas, flowers that come first from the darkness, and feel cold to the touch, flowers scentless or pungent, ammoniacal almost; what is it, that, from the faces of the fair young women comes like a pungent scent, a vibration beneath that startles me, alarms me, stirs up a repulsion?

They are the issue of acrid winter, these first- flower young women; their scent is lacerating and repellant, it smells of burning snow, of hot-ache, of earth, winter-pressed, strangled in corruption; it is the scent of the fiery-cold dregs of corruption, when destruction soaks through the mortified, decomposing earth, and the last fires of dissolution burn in the bosom of the ground.

They are the flowers of ice-vivid mortification, thaw-cold, ice-corrupt blossoms, with a loveliness I loathe; for what kind of ice-rotten, hot-aching heart must they need to root in!

_CRAVING FOR SPRING_

I WISH it were spring in the world.

Let it be spring!

Come, bubbling, surging tide of sap!

Come, rush of creation!