Part 5 (1/2)

But when the windows up and down those faces With yellow glimmer of gas, blaze forth; I know it is the only house that lives In all that grim four-storied row.

The others are mere shelves, overcrowded layers, Of warring, separate personalities; A jangle and a tangle of emotions, Without a single meaning running through them; But it, the empty house, has mastered all its secrets.

Behind its silent swarthy face, Eyelessly proud, It watches, it is master; It sees the other houses still incessantly learning The lesson it remembers, And which it can repeat the last dim syllable of.

THE SKATERS

_To A. D. R._

Black swallows swooping or gliding In a flurry of entangled loops and curves; The skaters skim over the frozen river.

And the grinding click of their skates as they impinge upon the surface, Is like the brus.h.i.+ng together of thin wing-tips of silver.

F. S. FLINT

EASTER

Friend we will take the path that leads down from the flagstaff by the pond through the gorse thickets; see, the golden spikes have thrust their points through, and last year's bracken lies yellow-brown and trampled.

The sapling birch-groves have shown no leaf, and the wistarias on the desolate pergola are shorn and ashen.

We lurch on, and, stumbling, touch each other.

You do not shrink, friend.

There you, and I here, side by side, we go, jesting.

We do not seek, we do not avoid, contact.

Here is the road, with the budding elm-trees lining it, and there the low gate in the wall; on the other side, the people.

Are they not aliens?

You and I for a moment see them shabby of limb and soul, patched up to make s.h.i.+ft.

We laugh and strengthen each other; But the evil is done.

Is not the whole park made for them, and the bushes and plants and trees and gra.s.ses, have they not grown to their standard?

The paths are worn to the gravel with their feet; the green moss will not carpet them.

The flags of the stone steps are hollowed; and you and I must strive to remain two and not to merge in the mult.i.tude.

It impinges on us; it separates us; we shrink from it; we brave through it; we laugh; we jest; we jeer; and we save the fragments of our souls.

Between two clipped privet hedges now; we will close our eyes for life's sake to life's patches.

Here, maybe, there is quiet; pa.s.s first under the bare branches, beyond is a pool flanked with sedge, and a swan among water-lilies.