The sickle moon is in the west
And where, against the fading green,
A thicket darkles shall be seen
The humming chafers on their quest.
Come, leather-bird, rise up and gird!
Round sunset eaves there boom again
Great beetles on their sharded wings
And many air-borne lesser things
Are tapping at the window pane.
Come, flitter-mouse, and haunt my house.
But where the stygian water broods,
Dim twilight homes for evermore,
And bats beat up the dusky shore
For white, ghost-moths in phantom woods.
Come, pipistrelle, be off to hell.
MOON-MOTH
Beyond the sun, beside a crystal sea
She ruled her isle of lapis lazuli.
Her palaces of marble, agate, jade
Rose like a sheaf of savage flowers and laid
A splendour on the waves that only night could fade.
And for her nameless sins and cruelties,
Murders of love-mad men and lusts and lies,
Her sentence fell and she was swept away
From flaming pomps and crimes and royal sway,
Hurled from the joy of life, rapt from the light of day.
Yet, being fairest far and loveliest
Of any in a woman's body drest,
Fate banished not her beauty from the earth--
Only her evil happiness and mirth,
And left her living dead, doomed to eternal dearth.
The Shadows that do mould our destiny
Willed her a moon-moth evermore to be--
Woman and insect one in mingled state,
A chimera without a peer, or mate,
To ancient Night inscribed and Darkness dedicate.
By day she sleeps, even as the vampires sleep,
Behind her sombre wings, that fold and keep
Her body's glory hidden: they are brown,
Grizzled and amber, jagged and slashed adown
With faded serecloth grey--a winding-sheet for gown.
And while she hides within some tawny brake
Her shard but echoes the dead leaf and snake,
Where, tranced in slumber, through the long day's prime
Her motley coverings harmonious chime
With sad, crepuscular shades in dusky, twilight rhyme.
Invisible thus; but when returning night
Drowns with a purple torrent all the light,
She rises woman high and spreads her wing,
A rare, unparagoned, unearthly thing
Beyond the dream of joy or grief's imagining.
Upon her head two radiant feathery rays
Of crocus fire flash upward; but the gaze
From her dim, poisonous, and anguished eyes
Throbs out with passionate, violet miseries,
In hate that never fades and woe that never dies.
Her body, like the heart of a white rose,
Shines in the petals of her wings and glows;
Her pinions--azure, lilac, marigold--
Wide on the dark deliciously unfold
As any rainbow bright, as any glacier cold.
Lit with her own and inner gleam, she shines
Like a low meteor through the lians and vines,
Flies upward high beyond the forest towers,
Then swoops and hawks along night-hidden bowers,
To hang on murmuring plumes and drink the livid flowers.
Most fair, most foul, at Moira's stern decree
The radiant monster wanders wretchedly
Haunting each strand and isle of that lone shore
Where never human eye may see her more,
Or sentient soul delight and tremble and adore.
Yet deep in dreams I often faintly hear,
Like a sad wind that strokes my sleeping ear,
By fairy waters of that far lagoon,
The moon-moth wailing, wailing to the moon
Through many a silver night at hour of plenilune.
THE HUNTING
When red sun fox steals down the sky,
And darkness dims the heavens high,
There leap again upon his tracks
The eager, starry, hunting packs.
They glitter, glitter, gold and green,
With sparks of frosty fire between,
And Dian bright as day;
While in the gloaming, far below,
Brown owl doth shout "Hi! Tally Ho!
Sun fox hath gone away!"
To music of the spheres they sweep
Over the western world asleep;
Then in the east, with sudden rush,
Sun fox shall whisk his white-tipped brush.
The field is fading, gold and green,
With sparks of frosty fire between,
And Dian growing grey;
While morning leaps the hither hill
And herald lark shouts with a will,
"Sun fox hath gone away!"
Oh, Huntress fond and silly stars--
White Venus, fiery, futile Mars,
In vain your pack ye whirl and cast
Upon the marches of the vast;
In vain ye glitter, gold and green,
With sparks of frosty fire between,
And Dian's arrows fly
In silver shafts of broken light;
For ne'er shall day be caught by night,
And sun fox cannot die.
THE GOOD GIRL
When you were born, a shooting star did sunder
The nightly void, and flashed to earth and brought
Endowment of rare magic and sweet wonder
And gifts beyond your mother's highest thought.
Oh, blessed be your soul of cheerfulness,
Your mind content and steadfast set, to hold
Such level journeying through storm and stress
Of life's rough weather and hope's heat and cold.
You come, a restful breath of evening wind
Upon the parched day, and cannot see
Your winning humour hearten many a mind
Where you bestow yourself unconsciously.
Never the violet her own fragrance knew:
Even such a flowery innocent are you.
THE LOVER
Under the silver thatch, where dwells my love,
About her dormer window, in the straw,
The sparrows build, and with their morning talk
Often awaken her.
And by the lattice climbs a crimson rose,
Who, if he could but see my dinky dear,
Before her loveliness, so wonderful,
Would pale with jealousy.
When the first glow of honeysuckle dawn
Cuddles her cottage in the dayspring light,
I pass upon my woodland road to work
And whistle as I come.
And if she hear me and twinkle out of bed
To wave a kiss, then all my toil goes well;
But if she heed me not, for weariness,
How long the working day!
THE MOTOR CAR