I deny to Time his terror;
Come-and-go prevails not here;
Spring is constant, loveless winter
Looms, but elsewhere, for he comes not near.
I deny to Space the sorrow;
No leagues measure love from me;
Turning boldly from her arms,
Into her arms I shall come certainly.
Time and Space, folly’s wonder,
Three-card shufflers, magic-men!
True love is, that none shall say
It ever was, or ever flowers again.
THE AVENGERS
Who grafted quince on Western may,
Sharon’s mild rose on Northern briar?
In loathing since that Gospel day
The two saps flame, the tree’s on fire.
The briar-rose weeps for injured right,
May sprouts up red to choke the quince.
With angry throb of equal spite
Our wood leaps maddened ever since.
Then mistletoe, of gods not least,
Kindler of warfare since the Flood,
Against green things of South and East
Voices the vengeance of our blood.
Crusading ivy Southward breaks
And sucks your lordly palms upon,
Our island oak the water takes
To outrage cedared Lebanon.
Our slender ash-twigs feathered fly
Against your vines; bold buttercup
Pours down his legions; malt of rye
Inflames and burns your lentils up....
For bloom of quince yet caps the may,
The briar is held by Sharon’s rose,
Monsters of thought through earth we stray,
And how remission comes, God knows.