Yet dust bears seeds that grow to grace
Behind my crude-striped wooden face
As I, a puppet tinsel-pink,
Leap on my springs, learn how to think,
Then like the trembling golden stalk
Of some long-petalled star, I walk
Through the dark heavens until dew
Falls on my eyes and sense thrills through.
XV
“TOURNEZ, TOURNEZ, BONS CHEVAUX DE BOIS”
TURN, turn again,
Ape’s blood in each vein.
The people that pass
Seem castles of glass,
The old and the good,
Giraffes of blue wood;
The soldier, the nurse,
Wooden face and a curse,
Are shadowed with plumage
Like birds by the gloomage.
Blond hair like a clown’s,
The music floats, drowns
The creaking of ropes
The breaking of hopes.
The wheezing, the old,
Like harmoniums scold:
Go to Babylon, Rome,
The brain-cells called home,
The grave, New Jerusalem,
Wrinkled Methusalem:
From our floating hair
Derived the first fair
And queer inspiration
Of music (the nation
Of bright-plumed trees
And harpy-shrill breeze).
. . .
Turn, turn again,
Ape’s blood in each vein.
SEVEN NURSERY SONGS
I
OLD LADY FLY-AWAY
OLD Lady Fly-Away
Lost her temper, night and day,
Took the bright moon’s broom—
Swept round the attic room.
“Dear me, where can it be?
Not a temper can I see!”
Sighed the Moon upon the stair:
“Always look to see, dear,
When you ‘put your foot down,’
Lest it crushes Babylon;
Try to get it nearer home,
In fields of clover or in Rome!”
Old Lady Fly-Away
Knew her temper would not stay,
So pretended not to hear—
Sweeping for it on the stair.