I like to see the ladies walk
With heels to set their chins atilt:
I like to hear the clergy talk
Of other clergy’s people’s guilt;
For happy is the amorous eye,
And indignation clears the sky.
TRIAL
Beauty of old and beauty yet to be,
Stripped of occasion, have security;
This hour it is searches the judgment through,
When masks of beauty walk with beauty too.
CHARGE TO THE PLAYERS
THE TROJAN WOMEN, BIRMINGHAM REPERTORY
THEATRE, APRIL 1918
Shades, that our town-fellows have come
To hear rewake for Christendom
This cleansing of a Pagan wrong
In flowing tides of tragic song,—
You shadows that the living call
To walk again the Trojan wall,—
You lips and countenance renewed
Of an immortal fortitude,—
Know that, among the silent rows
Of these our daily town-fellows,
Watching the shades with these who bring
But mortal ears to this you sing,
There somewhere sits the Greek who made
This gift of song, himself a shade.
CHARACTER
If one should tell you that in such a spring
The hawthorn boughs into the blackbird’s nest
Poured poison, or that once at harvesting
The ears were stony, from so manifest
Slander of proven faith in tree and corn
You would turn unheeding, knowing him forsworn.