“Rowses, Rowses! Penny a bunch!” they tell you—
Slattern girls in Trafalgar, eager to sell you.
Roses, roses, red in the Kensington sun,
Holland Road, High Street, Bayswater, see you and smell you—
Roses of London town, red till the summer is done.
Roses, roses, locust and lilac, perfuming
West End, East End, wondrously budding and blooming
Out of the black earth, rubbed in a million hands,
Foot-trod, sweat-sour over and under, entombing
Highways of darkness, deep gutted with iron bands.
“Rowses, rowses! Penny a bunch!” they tell you,
Ruddy blooms of corruption, see you and smell you,
Born of stale earth, fallowed with squalor and tears—
North shire, south shire, none are like these, I tell you,
Roses of London perfumed with a thousand years.
WINTER AT DELPHI
Cold are the stars of the night,
Wild is the tempest crying,
Fast through the velvet dark
Little white flakes are flying.
Still is the House of Song.
But the fire on the hearth is burning;
And the lamps are trimmed, and the cup
Is full for his day of returning.
His watchers are fallen asleep,
They wait but his call to follow,
Ay, to the ends of the earth—
But Apollo, the god, Apollo?
Sick is the heart in my breast,
Mine eyes are blinded with weeping;
The god who never comes back,
The watch that forever is keeping.
Service of gods is hard;
Deep lies the snow on my pillow.
For him the laurel and song,
Weeping for me and the willow:
Empty my arms and cold
As the nest forgot of the swallow;
Birds will come back with the spring,—
But Apollo, the god, Apollo?
Hope will come back with the spring,
Joy with the lark’s returning;
Love must awake betimes,
When crocus buds are a-burning.
Hawthorns will follow the snow,
The robin his tryst be keeping;
Winds will blow in the May,
Waking the pulses a-sleeping.
Snowdrops will whiten the hills,
Violets hide in the hollow:
Pan will be drunken and rage—
But Apollo, the god, Apollo?
PARADOX
“I knew them both upon Miranda’s isle,
Which is of youth a sea-bound seigniory:
Misshapen Caliban, so seeming vile,
And Ariel, proud prince of minstrelsy,
Who did forsake the sunset for my tower
And like a star above my slumber burned.
The night was held in silver chains by power
Of melody, in which all longings yearned—
Star-grasping youth in one wild strain expressed,
Tender as dawn, insistent as the tide;
The heart of night and summer stood confessed.
I rose aglow and flung the lattice wide—
Ah, jest of art, what mockery and pang!
Alack, it was poor Caliban who sang.