Thinking no further than the hand can hold,

All that grows old,

Yet works on uselessly with shortened breath.

Damn all explanatory rhymes!

To be that girl!—but that’s impossible;

For me the task’s to learn the many times

When I must stoop, and throw a shovelful:

I must repeat until I live the fact

That everything’s remade

With shovel and spade;

That each dull day and each despairing act

Builds up the crags from which the spirit leaps

—The beast most innocent

That is so fabulous it never sleeps;

If I can keep against all argument

Such image of a snow-white unicorn,

Then as I pray it may for sanctuary

Descend at last to me,

And put into my hand its golden horn.

XXI

I dreamed of an out-thrust arm of land

I dreamed of an out-thrust arm of land

Where gulls blew over a wave

That fell along miles of sand;

And the wind climbed up the caves

To tear at a dark-faced garden

Whose black flowers were dead,

And broke round a house we slept in,

A drawn blind and a bed.

I was sleeping, and you woke me

To walk on the chilled shore

Of a night with no memory,

Till your voice forsook my ear

Till your two hands withdrew

And I was empty of tears,

On the edge of a bricked and streeted sea

And a cold hill of stars.

XXII

One man walking a deserted platform

One man walking a deserted platform;

Dawn coming, and rain

Driving across a darkening autumn;

One man restlessly waiting a train

While round the streets the wind runs wil

Beating each shuttered house, that seems

Folded full of the dark silk of dreams,

A shell of sleep cradling a wife or child.

Who can this ambition trace,

To be each dawn perpetually journeying?

To trick this hour when lovers re-embrace

With the unguessed-at heart riding

The winds as gulls do? What lips said

Starset and cockcrow call the dispossessed

On to the next desert, lest

Love sink a grave round the still-sleeping head?

XXIII

If hands could free you, heart

If hands could free you, heart,

Where would you fly?

Far, beyond every part

Of earth this running sky

Makes desolate? Would you cross

City and hill and sea,

If hands could set you free?

I would not lift the latch;

For I could run

Through fields, pit-valleys, catch

All beauty under the sun—

Still end in loss:

I should find no bent arm, no bed

To rest my head.

XXIV

Love, we must part now: do not let it be

Love, we must part now: do not let it be

Calamitous and bitter. In the past

There has been too much moonlight and self-pity:

Let us have done with it: for now at last

Never has sun more boldly paced the sky,

Never were hearts more eager to be free,

To kick down worlds, lash forests; you and I

No longer hold them; we are husks, that see