But I see bleak moors and marshes and sparse grasses,
And frozen stalks against the snow;
Dead forests, ragged pines and dark morasses
Under the shadows of the mountains where no men go.
The crags untenanted and spacious cry aloud as clear
As the drear cry of a lost eagle over uncharted lands,
No thought that man has ever framed in words is spoken here,
And the language of the wind, no man understands.
Only the sifting wind through the grasses, and the hissing sleet,
And the shadow of the changeless rocks over the frozen wold,
Only the cold,
And the fierce night striding down with silent feet.
Chambery, 1918
XX
We wove a fillet for thy head,
And from a flaming lyre
Struck a song that shall not die
Until the echoing stars be dead,
Until the world's last word be said,
Until on tattered wings we fly
Upward and expire.
And calm with night thou watchest till
Long after we are gone,
Not knowing how we worshipped thee;
Serene, unfathomably still,
Gazing to the western hill
Where pales the moon's hushed mystery,
White in the white dawn.
Cambridge, 1915
BOOK III EROS
I
Now the sick earth revives, and in the sun
The wet soil gives a fragrance to the air;
The days of many colours are begun,
And early promises of meadows fair
With starry petals, and of trees now bare
Soon to be lyric with the trilling choir,
And lovely with new leaves, spread everywhere
A subtle flame that sets the heart on fire
With thoughts of other springs and dreams of new desire.