LONDON SQUARES
To-night this city seems delirious. The air
Is fever'd, hot and heavy—yet each street,
Each tortuous lane and slumb'ring stone-bound square
Smells of the open woods, so wild and sweet.
Through the dim spaces, where each town-bred tree
Sweeps out, mysterious and tall and still,
The country's passionate spirit—old and free—
Flings off the fetters of the calm and chill.
There in the garden, fauns leap out and sing—
Chant those strange sun-born songs from far away!
With joyous ecstasy in this new spring,
They cast the coats and top-hats of the day.
There by the railings, where the women pace
With painted faces, passionless and dead,
Out of the dark, Pan shows his leering face,
Mocks their large hats and faces painted red.
Then as they walk away, he mocks their lives,
Racking each wearied soul with lost desires,
And—cruelty more subtle—he contrives
With aching memories of love's first fires
To tune their hearts up to a different key.
So, when they sleep, the withered years unfold
—Again, as children round a mother's knee
They listen to their future as foretold
—A future rich and innocent and gay.
Then wake up to the agony of day!
TEARS
Silence o'erwhelms the melody of Night,
Then slowly drips on to the woods that sigh
For their past vivid vernal ecstasy.
The branches and the leaves let in the light
In patterns, woven 'gainst the paler sky
—Create mysterious Gothic tracery
Between those high dark pillars, that affright
Poor weary mortals who are wand'ring by.
Silence drips on the woods like sad faint rain
Making each frail tired sigh a sob of pain;
Each drop that falls, a hollow painted tear
Such as are shed by Pierrots when they fear
Black clouds may crush their silver lord to death.
The world is waxen; and the wind's least breath
Would make a hurricane of sound. The earth
Smells of the hoarded sunlight that gave birth
To the gold-glowing radiance of that leaf
Which falls to bury from our sight its grief.
To VIOLET GORDON-WOODHOUSE