VI

Kick up the fire

Kick up the fire, and let the flames break loose

To drive the shadows back;

Prolong the talk on this or that excuse,

Till the night comes to rest

While some high bell is beating two o’clock.

Yet when the guest

Has stepped into the windy street, and gone,

Who can confront

The instantaneous grief of being alone?

Or watch the sad increase

Across the mind of this prolific plant,

Dumb idleness?

VII

The horns of the morning

The horns of the morning

Are blowing, are shining,

The meadows are bright

With the coldest dew;

The dawn reassembles.

Like the clash of gold cymbals

The sky spreads its vans out

The sun hangs in view.

Here, where no love is,

All that was hopeless

And kept me from sleeping

Is frail and unsure;

For never so brilliant,

Neither so silent

Nor so unearthly, has

Earth grown before.

VIII

Winter

In the field, two horses,

Two swans on the river,

While a wind blows over

A waste of thistles

Crowded like men;

And now again

My thoughts are children

With uneasy faces

That awake and rise

Beneath running skies

From buried places.

For the line of a swan

Diagonal on water

Is the cold of winter,

And each horse like a passion

Long since defeated

Lowers its head,

And oh, they invade

My cloaked-up mind

Till memory unlooses

Its brooch of faces—

Streams far behind.

Then the whole heath whistles

In the leaping wind,

And shrivelled men stand

Crowding like thistles

To one fruitless place;

Yet still the miracles

Exhume in each face

Strong silken seed,

That to the static

Gold winter sun throws back

Endless and cloudless pride.

IX

Climbing the hill within the deafening wind

Climbing the hill within the deafening wind

The blood unfurled itself, was proudly borne

High over meadows where white horses stood;

Up the steep woods it echoed like a horn

Till at the summit under shining trees

It cried: Submission is the only good;

Let me become an instrument sharply stringed

For all things to strike music as they please.

How to recall such music, when the street

Darkens? Among the rain and stone places

I find only an ancient sadness falling,

Only hurrying and troubled faces,

The walking of girls’ vulnerable feet,

The heart in its own endless silence kneeling.

X

Within the dream you said

Within the dream you said:

Let us kiss then,

In this room, in this bed,

But when all’s done

We must not meet again.

Hearing this last word,

There was no lambing-night,

No gale-driven bird

Nor frost-encircled root

As cold as my heart.

XI

Night-Music

At one the wind rose,

And with it the noise

Of the black poplars.

Long since had the living

By a thin twine

Been led into their dreams

Where lanterns shine

Under a still veil

Of falling streams;

Long since had the dead

Become untroubled

In the light soil.

There were no mouths

To drink of the wind,