Small thoughts like frightened fishes glide
Beneath their eyes’ pale glassy tide:
They said: “Poor thing! we must be nice!”
They said: “We know your father!”—twice.
III
SOLO FOR EAR-TRUMPET
THE carriage brushes through the bright
Leaves (violent jets from life to light).
Strong polished speed is plunging, heaves
Between the showers of bright hot leaves.
The window-glasses glaze our faces
And jarr them to the very basis,—
But they could never put a polish
Upon my manners, or abolish
My most distinct disinclination
For calling on a rich relation!
In her house, bulwark built between
The life man lives and visions seen,—
The sunlight hiccups white as chalk,
Grown drunk with emptiness of talk,
And silence hisses like a snake,
Invertebrate and rattling ache.
. . . .
Till suddenly, Eternity
Drowns all the houses like a sea,
And down the street the Trump of Doom
Blares,—barely shakes this drawing-room
Where raw-edged shadows sting forlorn
As dank dark nettles. Down the horn
Of her ear-trumpet I convey
The news that: “It is Judgment Day!”
“Speak louder; I don’t catch, my dear.”
I roared: “It is the Trump we hear!”
“The What?”—“The TRUMP!” ... “I shall complain—
The boy-scouts practising again!”
ANTIC HAY
HOW like a lusty satyr, the hot sun
Doth in his orbit run
O’er rivers and the light blue hills of noon,
And where the white still moon
Sleeps in the lovely woodlands of the light.
Made drunken with his might,
Like flames the goat-foot satyrs leap and fling
The blossom’d beans of Spring.
The oreads leave their swan-like fountains, bells
Of foam, and dark wood-wells,
And grasses where the pale dew lovelorn lies
And like an echo dies.
The river-gods are tossing their blue manes
Still wet with brine; the reins
Lie loosely on their plunging horses; earth
Shakes with the storm of mirth;
And all the cloudy castles of the air
Are bathed with radiance. There,
Beneath dark chestnut trees, King Pan doth sport
With all his hornèd court.
Their goat-feet clattering to the oaten tune
That cools the heat of noon
Like water gurgling; hoofs all wreath’d with flowers,
Wild as the dew-pale hours,
The clownish satyrs dance the antic hay;
They butt with horns and sway,
While laughing leaves, like smitten cymbals thrill
Their sunburnt dance; until
The light falls like a rain of panick’d leaves
Through the gold heart of eves.
O’er misty fields, mild Dian’s old faint horn
Bloweth a sound forlorn.
Then from their hives with palest flowers bedight,
The yellow bees take flight—
Whirling where old Silenus tries to sing
Unto his hornèd King
—Feeding upon gold-freckled strawberries—
And sting the poor fat fool until he cries.
LULLABY
GOLDEN night-airs lull his eyes,
Starlight come not where Love lies,
Lest your faint light touch his wings
Who swiftly comes and swiftly flies;
Lovers, wake him not with sighs,
But list where Philomela sings
Lullaby.
Dreams come tiptoe to his bed,
Dim fantastic wings outspread
To fan his pretty sleeping eyes.
Upon my breast he laid his head
(On lilies white heap roses red);
Hushed in my maiden heart, Love lies
A-sleeping.
WATER MUSIC
FROM Florence and from Venice,
Like silver swans at noon,
That silken dim winds menace—
Each barque a drownèd moon,
I’ll bring you freights of amber,
Perfumèd like the rose,
To build your sleeping chamber,
And song-birds for your close;
Faint stars to go a-singing,
Like fluttering nightingales
From golden cages winging,
When, Love, your tir’d wing fails.
And as we come a-rowing,
Great rainbows rise and swing
Like haughty peacocks bowing
In the gardens of the King.