Until my mind was fog-bound in that gem.Blue diamonds, cold diamondsYou shook before me, so that out of themGlittered and glowed vast diamond dawns of spring.Tiger-eyed rubies, wrathful rubiesYou rolled. I watched their hot hearts flingFlames from each glaring summer of my life.Quiet amber, mellow amberYou lifted; and behold the whole air rifeWith evening, and…
‘Over the top to-morrer; boys, we’re for it,First wave we are, first ruddy wave; that’s tore it.’‘Ah well,’ says Jimmy, — an’ ‘e’s seen some scrappin’ —‘There ain’t more nor five things as can ‘appen;Ye get knocked out; else wounded — bad or cushy;Scuppered; or nowt except yer feeling mushy.’One of us got the knock-out,…
3 And, finding comfortable chests and knees4 Carelessly slept. But many there stood still5 To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,6 Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.7 Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled8 By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge,9 For though the…
Watched the magnificent recession of farewell,Clouding, half gleam, half glower,And a last splendour burn the heavens of his cheek.And in his eyesThe cold stars lighting, very old and bleak,In different skies.
Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the parkVoices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,Voices of play and pleasure after day,Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.About this time Town used to swing so gayWhen glow-lamps budded in the light blue trees,And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,-In the old times, before…
In Shrewsbury Town e’en Hercules wox tired,Tired of the streets that end not up nor down;Tired of the Quarry, though seats may be hiredOf Shrewsbury Town.Tired of the tongues that knew not his renown;Tired of the Quarry Bye-Laws, so admiredBy the Salopian, the somnambulant clown.Weak as a babe, and in like wise attired,He leaned upon…
I shook, and was uneasy as a treeThat draws the brilliant danger, tremulous, bowed.So must I tempt that face to loose its lightning.Great gods, whose beauty is death, will laugh above,Who made his beauty lovelier than love.I shall be bright with their unearthly brightening.And happier were it if my sap consume;Glorious will shine the opening…
And as they sojourned, both of them together,Isaac the first-born spake, and said, My Father,Behold the preparations, fire and iron,But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,And builded parapets the trenches there,And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,Saying,…
Helped by the yellow may-flowers by his head.A blind-cord drawls across the window-sill . . .How smooth the floor of the ward is! what a rug!And who’s that talking, somewhere out of sight?Why are they laughing? What’s inside that jug?‘Nurse! Doctor!’ ‘Yes; all right, all right.’But sudden dusk bewilders all the air —There seems no…
Grown wistful of a former earthIt might recall.I listened for a tale of leavesAnd smothered ferns,Frond-forests; and the low, sly livesBefore the fawns.My fire might show steam-phantoms simmerFrom Time’s old cauldron,Before the birds made nests in summer,Or men had children.But the coals were murmuring of their mine,And moans down thereOf boys that slept wry sleep,…
