Light a fire in the gloom THE LAND OF COUNTERPANE From Poems and Ballads. By permission of the authorized publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons HEN I was sick and lay a-bed, WHE I had two pillows at my head, And sometimes for an hour or so And sometimes sent my ships in fleets I was the giant great and still That sits upon the pillow-hill, And sees before him, dale and plain, NORTHWEST PASSAGE From Poems and Ballads. By permission of the authorized publishers, All round the house is the jet-black night: It stares through the window-pane; Now my little heart goes a-beating like a drum, And all round the candle the crooked shadows come, The shadow of the balusters, the shadow of the lamp, III. IN PORT Last, to the chamber where I lie My fearful footsteps patter nigh, And come from out the cold and gloom Into my warm and cheerful room. There, safe arrived, we turn about Then, when mamma goes by to bed, "IF THIS WERE FAITH » From Poems and Ballads. By permission of the authorized publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons OD, if this were enough, GR That I see things bare to the buff And up to the buttocks in mire; That I ask nor hope nor hire, Not in the husk, Nor dawn beyond the dusk, Nor life beyond death: God, if this were faith? Having felt thy wind in my face Spit sorrow and disgrace, Having seen thine evil doom In Golgotha and Khartoum, And the brutes, the work of thine hands, Fill with injustice lands And stain with blood the sea: If still in my veins the glee Of the black night and the sun And the lost battle, run; If, an adept, The iniquitous lists I still accept With joy, and joy to endure and be withstood, And still to battle and perish for a dream of good: If to feel, in the ink of the slough Veins of glory and fire Run through and transpierce and transpire, To thrill with the joy of girded men To go on for ever and fail and go on again, And be mauled to the earth and arise, And contend for the shade of a word and a thing not seen with the eyes: With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night That somehow the right is the right And the smooth shall bloom from the rough: Lord, if that were enough? REQUIEM From Poems and Ballads. By permission of the authorized publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons From Poems and Ballads. By permission of the authorized publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons Still with gray hair we stumble on, To the doorway of the dead. We have come the primrose way. "THE TROPICS VANISH » From Poems and Ballads. By permission of the authorized publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons HE tropics vanish, and meseems that I, THE From Halkerside, from topmost Allermuir, There, on the sunny frontage of a hill, My dead, the ready and the strong of word. Their works, the salt-incrusted, still survive; The sea bombards their founded towers; the night Thrills pierced with their strong lamps. The artificers, Where the rain erases and the rust consumes, Fell upon lasting silence. Continents And continental oceans intervene; A sea uncharted, on a lampless isle, Environs and confines their wandering child APEMAMA. |