IN THE THEATRE
Darkness in the theatre:
Darkness and a multitude
Assembled in the darkness.
These who every day perform
The unique tragi-comedy
Of birth and death;
Now press upon each other,
Directing the irresistible weight of their thoughts to the stage.
A great broad shaft of calcium light
Cleaves, like a stroke of a sword, the darkness:
And, at the end of it,
A tiny spot which is the red nose of a comedian
Marks the goal of the spot-light and the eyes which people the darkness.
SHIPS IN THE HARBOUR
Like a flock of great blue cranes
Resting upon the water,
The ships assemble at morning, when the grey light wakes in the east.
Weary, no longer flying,
Over the hissing spindrift, through the ravelled clutching sea;
No longer over the tops of the waves spinning along north-eastward,
In a great irregular wedge before the trade-wind far from land.
But drowsy, mournful, silent,
Yet under their bulged projecting bows runs the silver foam of the sunlight,
And rebelliously they shake out their plumage of sails, wet and heavy with the rain.
THE EMPTY HOUSE
Out from my window-sill I lean,
And see a straight four-storied row
Of houses.
Once, long ago,
These had their glory: they were built
In the fair palmy days before
The Civil War when all the seas
Saw the white sails of Yankee ships
Scurrying home with spice and gold.
And many of these houses hung
Proud wisps of crêpe upon their doors
On hearing that some son had died
At Chancellorsville or Fredericksburg,
Their offering to the Union side.