Part 2 (1/2)
The woman is dead.
She died--you know the way. Just as we planned.
Smiling, with open sunlit eyes.
Smiling upon the outstretched fatal hand . . .'
He folds his letter, steps softly down the stairs.
The doors are closed and silent. A gas-jet flares.
His shadow disturbs a shadow of bal.u.s.trades.
The door swings shut behind. Night roars above him.
Into the night he fades.
Wind; wind; wind; carving the walls; Blowing the water that gleams in the street; Blowing the rain, the sleet.
In the dark alley, an old tree cracks and falls, Oak-boughs moan in the haunted air; Lamps blow down with a crash and tinkle of gla.s.s . . .
Darkness whistles . . . Wild hours pa.s.s . . .
And those whom sleep eludes lie wide-eyed, hearing Above their heads a goblin night go by; Children are waked, and cry, The young girl hears the roar in her sleep, and dreams That her lover is caught in a burning tower, She clutches the pillow, she gasps for breath, she screams . . .
And then by degrees her breath grows quiet and slow, She dreams of an evening, long ago: Of colored lanterns balancing under trees, Some of them softly catching afire; And beneath the lanterns a motionless face she sees, Golden with lamplight, smiling, serene . . .
The leaves are a pale and glittering green, The sound of horns blows over the trampled gra.s.s, Shadows of dancers pa.s.s . . .
The face smiles closer to hers, she tries to lean Backward, away, the eyes burn close and strange, The face is beginning to change,-- It is her lover, she no longer desires to resist, She is held and kissed.
She closes her eyes, and melts in a seethe of flame . . .
With a smoking ghost of shame . . .
Wind, wind, wind . . . Wind in an enormous brain Blowing dark thoughts like fallen leaves . . .
The wind shrieks, the wind grieves; It dashes the leaves on walls, it whirls then again; And the enormous sleeper vaguely and stupidly dreams And desires to stir, to resist a ghost of pain.
One, whom the city imprisoned because of his cunning, Who dreamed for years in a tower, Seizes this hour Of tumult and wind. He files through the rusted bar, Leans his face to the rain, laughs up at the night, Slides down the knotted sheet, swings over the wall, To fall to the street with a cat-like fall, Slinks round a quavering rim of windy light, And at last is gone, Leaving his empty cell for the pallor of dawn . . .
The mother whose child was buried to-day Turns her face to the window; her face is grey; And all her body is cold with the coldness of rain.
He would have grown as easily as a tree, He would have spread a pleasure of shade above her, He would have been his father again . . .
His growth was ended by a freezing invisible shadow.
She lies, and does not move, and is stabbed by the rain.
Wind, wind, wind; we toss and dream; We dream we are clouds and stars, blown in a stream: Windows rattle above our beds; We reach vague-gesturing hands, we lift our heads, Hear sounds far off,--and dream, with quivering breath, Our curious separate ways through life and death.
VIII.
The white fog creeps from the cold sea over the city, Over the pale grey tumbled towers,-- And settles among the roofs, the pale grey walls.
Along damp sinuous streets it crawls, Curls like a dream among the motionless trees And seems to freeze.
The fog slips ghostlike into a thousand rooms, Whirls over sleeping faces, Spins in an atomy dance round misty street lamps; And blows in cloudy waves over open s.p.a.ces . . .
And one from his high window, looking down, Peers at the cloud-white town, And thinks its island towers are like a dream . . .
It seems an enormous sleeper, within whose brain Laborious shadows revolve and break and gleam.
PART II.