MOUSIKE (On hearing Mrs. Fullop Miller.) THE air grows one with a voice; Some magical sway , Has utterly changed the paltry hour To a strangeness which is yet our one true home. The calyx of the song no longer laps The slowly opening silence that is Light. Now the silence is a calm blue sky : The song has become three dazzling doves Of whiteness, and they wing with a lovely motion Of a rapture unmingled and unmarred. O harmony of incorruptible form Stay further— in the hourglass every sand-grain Is of gold—Time's metronome Is changed to the subtlest weaving Of the Life Dance and the Hymn of L

JE TE DONNE CES VERS (From Baudelaire) I GIVE to thee these lines that if my name's prow hail After auspicious voyage the shores of future clime And blend with men's thoughts at eve a shadowy dream-chime, A galliot speeding down the course of a veer less gale, Thy memory, like the unfixed legends of old time, May as a dulcimer the listening ears assail And weary them, and a mystic fellowship prevail And link to it everlastingly my haughty rhyme, Being whom all revile, to whom from the chasmed black To the zenith of light none, save I, throws answer back ! —O thou who, like a shadow which leaves no dint or sig

FOR FEET OF A MOTH-PALENESS THERE, in the grey twilight, on the verge of the magical wood Turn, Laelia, and question the gathering shade With the eyes of inwardness : not the mind had understood Nor those eyes with the long lashes, of dust and mournful ashes made. Then face once more "the mossed path glimmering far into the dim Onward ness of Day wane ; and over the waves Of shadowiness we two, as birds entranced, swim And a faint mazed shoreline follow till we enter midnight's hollow caves. Here stand the adamantine pillars all alone, Ringed with the opal walls, and here milk-white Jade floor for feet of

LONELINESS DEEP in a far green forest land Is the shore of an inland sea: No grey shingle or gleaming sand Or wave's white ecstasy. Only a moon-pale ledge of rock, Lapped by that sullen waste Of Limbo-drift where a shadowy flock Of dream birds spaced. In the unquiet wideness of their lonelihood Are as that sky-line aimlessly empty of good. September 20,1934. Page-86

ALIEN TO THIS SHAME FIRE-TRAIL of the comets and meteors Through spaces of the mind— Gesture swift dimming, brief expostulation Leaving cold dust behind. Hopes with moth-wings swarmed and perished, Foolish and gleam-betrayed : Where is the glamour of that false miming, Of those mock-truths that fade ? Hands lifted, that cast no shadow, By the soul alien to this shame, Outstretching to the lonely and translunar Incorruptible flame. October 6, 1936. Page-208

A MOORLAND STREAM THE Royal Fern with swaying plume, The ravelled tumult of a brook, Three dragonflies that dart and zoom, And the red-loaden rowan's crook. A dipping scud of yellowness Bewrays a wagtail nestward flown : At water brink two grey flies press Gauzy wings to buff-grey stone. Against the clearness of the sky A buzzard looms in wheeling flight; And water-mosses wavering lie In the nether clearness flecked with white. All changing, yet so ghostly still— Could fragments one Quintessence frame ? All vistas One Unvista'd fill ? All spoken names one Silence name ?

THE MOTHER OF TIME OUT of an infinite ocean Time arose; By his shore with a thunderous motion That Splendour flows. Here is one shell of Its bringing. Cast on the beach ; Hold it and hark to the singing, Eternity speech. Flotsam and jetsam of One hood Unbaffled and free, Spurring Time to remember his son hood, His mother—the Sea. February 26, 1937. Page-256

NORTHERN MOORS DISTANCE and a blue-grey fringe Of jagged hills— A staple whereon high clouds hinge And flood the ghylls With peat-brown and foam-dappled rush Of mountain beck, Whose mid-stream water-wagtails brush Nor halt nor check Their undulous hurrying flight until They near the nest Where hungering young with opened bill Make shrill behest. On a dreary height the curlews call Through empty air ; The round-winged plovers circle and fall By a peat-moss lair. April 8, 1938. Page-316

PRIMACY FEATURELESS grey-white cloud Wrapping the earth in a shroud, Muting the foam-lilt tune Of sea-bewitching moon. Silence sprung from no womb. Gathered about with gloom And un shape of Not-Being, Glimpse less to mortal seeing. Un transitory Beam Behind earth-shapes that seem ; Shore to the last dim wave : Death's ultimate grave. October 18, 1934. Page-92

" THESE LAUGHING CUPS OF SPIRIT-GOLD " TREAD lightly over the crocus flame That„flares from the floor of March ; Gay gold from the solemn winter came, And frith from the war-bow arch. Hither the bee and the butterfly To the goblets of the sun Wing swift and sip and joyward hie And every shadow shun. What alchemy from winter's mould Has framed this miracle, These laughing cups of spirit-gold Sundream, springbeam full ? March 18, 1936. Page-172