" OPEN THE MASQUE WITH MUSIC ' OPEN the masque with music,' Summer said, " My sceptre is wild iris, June roses crown my head ; I wend through the Early Purples And Ragged Robin red : And a dim white moth-smoke flutters At evening where 1tread." Lissom the day with dancing When Summer throws Larksong like spears of silver, Or cushat's green repose, Or cuckoo's bell-like question, Or the storm of song that goes Up to the blue-hush zenith From myriad-thronged hedgerows. August 15, 1936. Page-198

LASTINGNESS ........Custom may hold from me your words; It cannot check Your living kindness or my wish-borne birds That no dooms wreck. Of you unwitting, sleep is a mock of sand No clear dream lights ; I'll fashion like to you, with sleepless hand, My days and nights. A bridge no more, earth's but a prison wall That keeps you far ? O may those thresholds where your footsteps fall Be void of mar. February 24, 1938. Page-302

TO BOBBY, ON CATCHING SIGHT OF A LIZARD IN THE ROOM HE HAD LATELY LEFT A LIZARD at his ease walks on the floor As if he sensed some quietness in the room You quitted this half hour : since through 'that door Only your body went ; as fireflies loom And circle, when the sun has dowsed his flame, In scattered gleams like tinkling of a bell, So with soft wing your mood's own quiet came And the heart of stillness answered, " All is well." " Go then, thou wing-borne Figure of his mood. And may thy feathery wafting fan his eyes And, o'er his lips, may shadowy pinions brush Building him dreams of music from their

"I SING OF A DIFFERENT PLACE" I SING of a different place Where dreamlight falls . Not through dissevering space On outward walls, But cleaves a comelier way Where falsehood holds no sway And friendship gains A truth beyond the puppet hood of Time's chains. Within the moonscape of my dream The silvery hooves Of a snow-white unicorn shall gleam, And as it moves No harshness clangs upon the air— But earth-born thoughts remade, From swathes of sound stripped bare, Are echoed in moon-purity from cliffs of jade. There was a very silent pool: But at midnight's stroke

FRIENDSHIP AS tyrant eats the selfhood of his slave, As captive strikes no root in loneliness, Must draughtsman ship avoid all figure save These two,—the centre less circumference, And that self-weariness of Present whence Nor silvern hopes nor pure gold memories gave Access to one, friend-welcome, fetterless ? High dreams have limned the triptych, scored the stave. Now stave is set with ampler harmonies ; Ulysses has resailed from Ithaca,— To fairest apples of Hesperides, Beyond our drossed horizons, traveller ; And Argo's prow is aimed for Colchis Fleece : Foam-plash of silver. . . .courage.. shi

UNSATISFYING WORDS—AND AN ENGLIS UNSATISFYING WORDS—AND AN ENGLISH WOOD WITH BLUEBELLS SINCE all the coins are forged, how can I pay The meanings which I owe that unforeseen Generous forbearing, and most quiet play And half smile comprehending what has been ? Because my best is yours, how might I give One token to you from the harvest field You count as mine though blade and ear but live In the golden light which your self-comings yield ? O all too meagre what I would devise— The net of words is flung and brings no gain : As well make tally of untarnished skies, Or clutch the shadowy silences tha

VIGIL .. I FINE, the slang they talk in heaven must be Greek, Foot-hills of music to fade beneath the peak Of the unseizable august angelic speech That earth's joy-scanted tongue may never reach Nor these din-baffled ears hope once to hear : Yet,—rending joy's ebb and winter most of year,— Incarnate in melody, on wings of power to them Who guard the sheep on wakeful hills of Bethlehem. Page-91

EAST OF THE RISING SUN BUT I would go far out to the east of the rising sun Where morning's dove-grey mists from emptiness are spun And Silence hears its echo and Night in a looking-glass Sees the unlit shadows of Day hood stealthily come to pass. Bright were the colours of earth dawn, emptily gay and bright: But my lips ever craved for the goblet brimmed with the lack of light. Nesh and green were the wood ways, rhythm-curved at the beck of Time: Bound for the stir less axle, up the time-quelling steep I would climb. September 19, 1935. Page-137

DIFFERENT THOUGHT IF with a lidless eye Someone surveyed Palm trees that grew so high And cast no shade, —Those kites that wheel above Landful of foe, Their sky as empty of love As the steelscape below,— Would he not question why Earth's paradise Is lorded by men who lie And feed on lies ? Beyond, in a different thought The groves are still; Words sweet ; they sought Peace of His Will. November 15, 1938. Page-333

NEARING DUSK HAVE you seen the Evening Primrose open In, the Dusk, When the surface din of day is newly broken And its husk Is trolled across the sky by homing rook ? And silence-fall is mingled with the dewfall And many bats Are summoning the shadows with their cue-call From the vats Where the dawnghosts hang for hours on moon's-ort hook. A hedgepig threads the path along the streamway At gambol-gait; Gnats that hover in the after sunset gleam-play Mate, remate Where water-buttercups make white the brook. One, launched ungainly on dorbeetle fare, Heavily flies ;