EARLY CHRONOLOGY
Slowly the daylight left our listening faces.
Professor Brown, with level baritone,
Discoursed into the dusk.
Five thousand years
He guided us through scientific spaces
Of excavated History, till the lone
Roads of research grew blurred, and in our ears
Time was the rumoured tongues of vanished races,
And Thought a chartless Age of Ice and Stone.
The story ended. Then the darkened air
Flowered as he lit his pipe; an aureole glowed
Enwreathed with smoke; the moment's match-light showed
His rosy face, broad brow, and smooth grey hair,
Backed by the crowded book-shelves.
In his wake
An archæologist began to make
Assumptions about aqueducts; (he quoted
Professor Sandstorm's book;) and soon they floated
Through desiccated forests; mangled myths;
And argued easily round megaliths.
* * * * * * *
Beyond the college garden something glinted:
A copper moon climbed clear above the trees.
Some Lydian coin? ... Professor Brown agrees
That copper coins were in that culture minted.
But, as her whitening way aloft she took,
I thought she had a pre-dynastic look.
ELEGY
(TO ROBERT ROSS)
Your dextrous wit will haunt us long
Wounding our grief with yesterday.
Your laughter is a broken song;
And death has found you, kind and gay.
We may forget those transient things
That made your charm and our delight:
But loyal love has deathless wings
That rise and triumph out of night.
So, in the days to come, your name
Shall be as music that ascends
When honour turns a heart from shame...
O heart of hearts! ... O friend of friends!
MIRACLES
I dreamt I saw a huge grey boat in silence steaming
Down a canal; it drew the dizzy landscape after;
The solemn world was sucked along with it—a streaming
Land-slide of loveliness. O, but I rocked with laughter,
Staring, and clinging to my tree-top. For a lake
Of gleaming peace swept on behind. (I mustn't wake.)