Part 2 (2/2)

This dense hard ground I tread These iron bars that ripple past, Will they unshaken stand when I am dead And my deep thoughts outlast?

Is it my spirit slips, Falls, like this leaf I kick aside; This firmness that I feel about my lips, Is it but empty pride?

Mute knowledge conquers me; I contemplate them as they are, Faint earth and shadowy bars that shake and flee, Less hard, more transient far

Than those unbodied hues The sunset flings on the calm river; And, as I look, a swiftness thrills my shoes And my hands with empire quiver.

Now light the ground I tread, I walk not now but rather float; Clear but unreal is the scene outspread, Pitiful, thin, remote.

Poor vapour is the gra.s.s, So frail the trees and railings seem, That, did I sweep my hand around, 'twould pa.s.s Through them, as in a dream.

G.o.dlike I fear no changes; Shatter the world with thunders loud, Still would I ray-like flit about the ranges Of dark and ruddy cloud.

SONG

There is a wood where the fairies dance All night long in a ring of mushrooms daintily, By each tree bole sits a squirrel or a mole, And the moon through the branches darts.

Light on the gra.s.s their slim limbs glance, Their shadows in the moonlight swing in quiet unison, And the moon discovers that they all have lovers, But they never break their hearts.

They never grieve at all for sands that run, They never know regret for a deed that's done, And they never think of going to a shed with a gun At the rising of the sun.

TOWN

Mostly in a dull rotation We bear our loads and eat and drink and sleep, Feeling no tears, knowing no meditation-- Too tired to think, too clogged with earth to weep.

Dimly convinced, poor groping wretches, Like eyeless insects in a murky pond That out and out this city stretches, Away, away, and there is no beyond.

No larger earth, no loftier heaven, No cleaner, gentler airs to breathe. And yet, Even to us sometimes is given Visions of things we otherwhiles forget.

Some day is done, its labour ended, And as we brood at windows high, A steady wind from far descended, Blows off the filth that hid the deeper sky;

There are the empty waiting s.p.a.ces, We watch, we watch, unwinking, pale and dumb, Till gliding up with noiseless paces Night sweeps o'er all the wide arch: Night has come.

Not that sick false night of the city, Lurid and low and yellow and obscene, But mother Night, pure, full of pity, The star-strewn Night, blue, potent and serene.

O, as we gaze the clamour ceases, The turbid world around grows dim and small, The soft-shed influence releases Our shrouded spirits from their dusty pall.

No more we hear the turbulent traffic, Not scorned but unremembered is the day; The Night, all luminous and seraphic, Has brushed its heavy memories away.

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