DRAGON
Some saw a dragon eating up the light,
Oho! Oho! Oho, ho, ho!
Some heard a lost bird riding out the night,
Oho! Oho! Oho, ho, ho!
But I saw:
A low dark hill with its twisted back,
Two wings of flame from the green cloud rack,
A sprawling flank overlaid with leaf
Glitter and gleam and shine like steel,
Crackle and lash like a serpent’s tail!
And I heard:
The wind draw out of the west and wail,
Dance and stagger and jig and reel
With the long low sound of a life in grief!
I saw a life in grief
Oho! Oho! Oho, ho, ho!
Dance and stagger and jig and reel!
Oho! Oho! Oho, ho, ho!
THE WANDERER
Hear the illimitable wind
Rush from a desolate sea of space
Into the valley’s folded gloom,
And smite the branches gibbeted
On frosty trees, and lash the woods
To moans of age-old agony!
Hark! how it leaps upon the roofs
Of cottages, to drop whimpering
Like some old dog before the door of home;
Or pipes through chink and sill, a witless thing.
It is the only houseless one,
A pensioner of sea and cloud,
An outcast in a universe
Of night and day, of life and death,
An alien, frenzied wanderer,—
Homeless, illimitable wind!