Perfect thy motion

Perfect thy motion ever within me,

Master of mind.
Grey of the brain, flash of the lightning,

Brilliant and blind,

These thou linkest, the world to mould,

Writing the thought in a scroll of gold

Violet-lined.

Tablet of brain thou hast made for thy writing,
Master divine.
Calmly thou writest or full of thy grandeur
Flushed as with wine,
Then with a laugh thou erasest the scroll,

Bringing another, like waves that roll

And sink supine.

Phaethon

Ye weeping poplars by the shelvy slope
From murmurous lawns down-dropping to the stream
On whom the dusk air like a sombre dream
Broods and a twilight ignorant of hope,

Say what compulsion drear has bid you seam
Your mossy sides with drop on eloquent drop

That in warm rillets from your eyes elope?

Is it for the too patient sure decay

Pale-gilded Autumn, aesthete of the years,
A gorgeous death, a fading glory wears
That thus along the tufted, downy way

Creep slothfully this ooze of amber tears

And thus with tearful gusts your branches sway

Sighing a requiem to your emerald day?

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