New Poems

CONTENTS

AND all hours long, the town Roars like a beast in a cave That is wounded there And like to drown; While days rush, wave after wave On its lair. An invisible woe unseals The flood, so it passes beyond All bounds: the great old city Recumbent roars as it feels The foamy paw of the pond Reach from immensity. But all that it can do Now, as the tide rises, Is to listen and hear the grim Waves crash like thunder through The splintered streets, hear noises Roll hollow in the interim.

WHEN I woke, the lake-lights were quivering on the wall, The sunshine swam in a shoal across and across, And a hairy, big bee hung over the primulas In the window, his body black fur, and the sound of him cross. There was something I ought to remember: and yet I did not remember. Why should I? The run- ning lights And the airy primulas, oblivious Of the impending bee—they were fair enough sights.

THE glimmer of the limes, sun-heavy, sleeping, Goes trembling past me up the College wall. Below, the lawn, in soft blue shade is keeping, The daisy-froth quiescent, softly in thrall. Beyond the leaves that overhang the street, Along the flagged, clean pavement summer-white, Passes the world with shadows at their feet Going left and right. Remote, although I hear the beggar's cough, See the woman's twinkling fingers tend him a coin, I sit absolved, assured I am better off Beyond a world I never want to join.

LOVE has crept out of her sealéd heart As a field-bee, black and amber, Breaks from the winter-cell, to clamber Up the warm grass where the sunbeams start. Mischief has come in her dawning eyes, And a glint of coloured iris brings Such as lies along the folded wings Of the bee before he flies. Who, with a ruffling, careful breath, Has opened the wings of the wild young sprite? Has fluttered her spirit to stumbling flight In her eyes, as a young bee stumbleth? Love makes the burden of her voice. The hum of his heavy, staggering wings Sets quivering with wisdom the common things That she says, and her words rejoice.