BULLION
| My thoughts Chink against my ribs And roll about like silver hail-stones. I should like to spill them out, And pour them, all shining, Over you. But my heart is shut upon them And holds them straitly. Come, You! and open my heart; That my thoughts torment me no longer, But glitter in your hair. |
SOLITAIRE
| When night drifts along the streets of the city, And sifts down between the uneven roofs, My mind begins to peek and peer. It plays at ball in old, blue Chinese gardens, And shakes wrought dice-cups in Pagan temples, Amid the broken flutings of white pillars. It dances with purple and yellow crocuses in its hair, And its feet shine as they flutter over drenched grasses. How light and laughing my mind is, When all the good folk have put out their bed-room candles, And the city is still! |
THE BOMBARDMENT
Slowly, without force, the rain drops into the city. It stops a moment on the carved head of Saint John, then slides on again, slipping and trickling over his stone cloak. It splashes from the lead conduit of a gargoyle, and falls from it in turmoil on the stones in the Cathedral square. Where are the people, and why does the fretted steeple sweep about in the sky? Boom! The sound swings against the rain. Boom, again! After it, only water rushing in the gutters, and the turmoil from the spout of the gargoyle. Silence. Ripples and mutters. Boom!
The room is damp, but warm. Little flashes swarm about from the firelight. The lustres of the chandelier are bright, and clusters of rubies leap in the bohemian glasses on the étagère. Her hands are restless, but the white masses of her hair are quite still. Boom! Will it never cease to torture, this iteration! Boom! The vibration shatters a glass on the étagère. It lies there formless and glowing, with all its crimson gleams shot out of pattern, spilled, flowing red, blood-red. A thin bell-note pricks through the silence. A door creaks. The old lady speaks: "Victor, clear away that broken glass." "Alas! Madame, the bohemian glass!" "Yes, Victor, one hundred years ago my father brought it—" Boom! The room shakes, the servitor quakes. Another goblet shivers and breaks. Boom!