TO BOBBY, ON ENCOUNTERING A LINE IN SHELLEY'S "REVOLT OF ISLAM" (CANTO VIII, STANZA XXII) OFFSPRING of Earth- shall somewhere pierce the Night, Some when these boughs will gleam with petalled stars, Healed be the gaping dark to woundless Light And rid the face of Youth of threat of scars. There was, ere wings of Life were joined to Earth, Ere seeds of hope were sown within her tomb, Irreparable Age—no other birth, Undying Death—a gloom within a gloom. I, like that Earth in lack of life, alone Might ever thread a dim unlustred way, Lacking your smile of welcome, joy of mind, And all the clean bright flame of

FAR ACROSS THE FOAM OF CHANGE SWIFTLY come and swiftly pass Through the .shadows on the grass Joyful bands and faery glee Over the rainbow-flowered lea. Bright their eyes and bright their hair ; Song-bright "voices free from care. Scarfed with webs of golden glow : Sweet are the silver horns they blow. All the summer-laden day Bathes their bird swift meadow-play In a more translucid ray Than spills from cloudless noon of May ; For the fair strand through which they range Lies far across the foam of change. Invocation BRIGHT world across the foaming sea of change,

TO BOBBY, A FORESTALLING OF SEPARATION IN SPACE ON thy smooth brow what laurels shall descend For life's enhancing to the Perfect Way ? In the silver road may our linked footsteps blend What width soever have sundered feet of clay. When leagues of air have stilled thy voice to rest, When balks of earth uprear between and veil The gesture of thy welcome, swift the test That souls have scope upon far other scale. The music of thy speaking then shall weave Its rhythm through my faring on the road : Nor in the past thy welcomes shall be found, But made a victor's beacon they shall cleave Through the false

VISION OF EROS I PACED the length of shrouded street Desponding, weary of earth : "Loathed charnel-dust beneath my feet, Prevailer over birth," I groaned—when, harnessed in his light, The Love God loomed upon my sight ; Eros, or youth—with parted lips (Where was now the long eclipse ?) And raptured eyes and lily brow (The whole earth was singing now) And lovely look of joy too deep To dream athwart its wonder sleep. That vision veiled, a larger scope Engulphed the sense in swathes of hope. No light, but Inner Power of light Lifted vast pinions o'er the night Fathomless and indigo. No form that shi

THE FIRST CORAL REEF WHETHER by glare of tropic noon, Or under the sprinkled stars, Or when the high hush of the moon Splinters the waves with silver gars, Or while the first hours flush the foam Or the sun sets in a wash of gold, Swift-glimpsed by seafowl as they roam What new leaf lurks whom waves enfold This was the strangeness of that day— The shrunken tides lay bare Sharp ridge where goes withstood the sway Of waves, where feet of wildfowl fare. March 7, 1936 Page-165

MOONRISE IN THE NIGHT OF MAYA ONLY the darkest cloud grows luminous with lightning. And to end the rain-girt hours the weather-gleam is brightening Faint margins of the mist-enfolded sky. Not where a paltering mirage had unfurled Deceptive palms dwelt they who would transmute The bars of Babel and the separate grave. Night-farer blindly groping until the moon-dawn wave Unearthly wings of dreamlight (how howlet-soft they fly Across all feigned chasms through Oneness absolute !) ; Athwart their leaping wing way no arrowed song is hurled To mar the loom of Silence that claims each cancelled cry,— Woven to build the raiment

COUNTERSIGNS WHAT will spring up from the beating of the pulse And strange things wrought within the hollow skull, Sea's quivering onset which dead rocks repulse And the unanswered clamour of the gull ? One Life within the winding sheet of lives," Some warmth of thought in embers of a world, Beauty kept out by selves, lusts, hates and shives, A lone quest through unheeding ages whirled. February 27, 1936. Page-159

[A RENDERING OF XAVIER DE MAGALLON'S LINES, IN "l' Ombre" ON HIS SON, A FLYING OFFICER WHO WAS KILLED IN THE WAR] LOVELY dawns return not of long ago : Fair were the two striplings-yourself and day Who together rose to the quickened sun; Then the sun and you in the echoing air Redolent, purified with dew, together Linked your ways like comrades, sleep left behind. I unlatch my window as in days gone by, Letting in pellucid dawn-litanies ; Cerement drops from newly-arisen day ; Morning reappears on the sad hill-tops— Dark is he, now dragging un companioned steps. Page-110

THE FLOWER OF LIGHT THIS whiteness has no withering : When petals fall, Miraculous swan's-down-through the air, A hundred petals build the crowning flower Stilly nor all Dissevering gusts can make that stateliness less fair. The bee can settle in its heart of light— O winged soul; But we with fettered feet and soiled with clay Gaze through bewildered tears At that quintessenced goal, Craving one prized petal-touch may light on our dismay. November 1, 1936. Page-230

QUO VADIS ? RICHLY laden waggons go Over a starlit plain. Between dry banks no waters flow ; They will not flow again. Wax-white bones of camel and horse Forespeak the journey's end ; No dew relents the watercourse, No cloud that lightnings rend. The waggons touch the rot of Time, The verdigris of Space ; There are no mountains more to climb. No steep descents to face. And all the load has end in dust, And every axle bends ; The horses' hooves are shod with rust : And even chaos ends. April 26, 1938. Page-321