March, 1919.
FALLING ASLEEP
Voices moving about in the quiet house:
Thud of feet and a muffled shutting of doors:
Everyone yawning ... only the clocks are alert.
Out in the night there's autumn-smelling gloom
Crowded with whispering trees,—looming of oaks
That roared in wild wet gales: across the park
The hollow cry of hounds like lonely bells:
And I know that the clouds are moving across the moon,
The low, red, rising moon.
The herons call
And wrangle by their pool; and hooting owls
Sail from the wood across pale stocks of wheat.
Waiting for sleep, I drift from thoughts like these;
And where to-day was dream-like, build my dreams.
Music ... there was a bright white room below,
And someone singing a song about a soldier,—
One hour, two hours ago; and soon the song
Will be 'last night': but now the beauty swings
Across my brain, ghost of remember'd chords
Which still can make such radiance in my dream
That I can watch the marching of my soldiers,
And count their faces; faces; sunlit faces.
Falling asleep ... the herons, and the hounds...
September in the darkness; and the world
I've known; all fading past me into peace.
PRELUDE TO AN UNWRITTEN MASTERPIECE
You like my bird-sung gardens: wings and flowers;
Calm landscapes for emotion; star-lit lawns;
And Youth against the sun-rise ... 'Not profound;
'But such a haunting music in the sound:
'Do it once more; it helps us to forget.'
Last night I dreamt an old recurring scene—
Some complex out of childhood; (sex, of course!)
I can't remember how the trouble starts;
And then I'm running blindly in the sun
Down the old orchard, and there's something cruel
Chasing me; someone roused to a grim pursuit
Of clumsy anger ... Crash! I'm through the fence
And thrusting wildly down the wood that's dense
With woven green of safety; paths that wind
Moss-grown from glade to glade; and far behind,
One thwarted yell; then silence. I've escaped.
That's where it used to stop. Last night I went
Onward until the trees were dark and huge,
And I was lost, cut off from all return
By swamps and birdless jungles. I'd no chance
Of getting home for tea. I woke with shivers,
And thought of crocodiles in crawling rivers.