LET THEN THE CONE-SHAPED HOOD THAT SHADOWS EARTH LET then the cone-shaped hood that shadows earth And sometimes sweeps across the glittering moon Be but the wrapping that is rent at birth— My newborn eyes shall only see the noon. Seek not the lower valleys and the wild Foothills where fragrant pasture for the ewes Is lush and tender : be the eagle's child And the straight pathway to the sun peak choose, Till Silence there be moulded to a Face Marred with no time prints of mortality, And the four winds be rhythms of pure space That gale through wideness to Infinity. Se

THE JOURNEY OVER the moat of unknowing, Out of the gloom and glare, Far from all fond bestowing And from hatred's stony stare. Such a mountainous island is looming, All calm from shore to peak : Far beneath is the Time-frothed booming ; Here on high will the throned Love speak. March 4, 1938. Page-304

SPRING CRAFT APRICOT bloom we weave on our loom, And tassels of silk we will Spin— The silver and gold which the sallows unfold, Or dark red where the cobnuts begin. From a rainbow vat we draw the cravat For the drake with his emerald gleam, And a bridegroom suit for the crested newt And thetiddlers that joust in the stream. With satin-cloth white we garnish the height Of the grim winter hedgegrow bare— For the stitchwort spray has hidden away The bonesof a by-gone year. But along the hem ground ivy stem Invades with a purply-blue, Dog-violets rove in paler mauve With hyacinths piercing through.

A STONE AGE SITE ON THE DOWNS THIN shallow soil upon a flank of down, All rife with flint-stones, yields a niggard breast To living crops. Upon the windy crest Some wizened larch trees dot a Stone Age town : Unfriendly ground with short sheep-nibbled grass (O stabbing symbol of the Stone Age heart That sours the time we live in); clouds but pass And fling indifferent shadows and depart. What dream distils in song from larks who thrill the sky. . Past savagery o'erthrown.... new Love that will not die ? March 19, 1938. Page-312

" CRUMBLED TO SHAFT AND LEAVES " LUMINOUS is the void where nothing feels The anti-self pushed back by growth within, The blade of Light unsheathed from scabbard-skin While thunder's answer from the Noon-Height peals. Starved of a birthright, hell-creation heaves In utmost darkness, lowest depth of fall : Of trillioned atoms, each forgets the All (Fair fronded bough crumbled to shaft and leaves). How gain the puissant rhythm that would bind These drooping shreds back to the unpierced Whole, Quicken the dying sparks with that Flame Soul— Make One no sterile void, nor Light-Source blind ? October

OTHER WHERE WHEN I darken my lamp in the twilight Till farness is shed through the house— A viewless flicker of ghost-flame In the stead of the flame that I dowse— There are fitfully hearkened voices Floating through gulfs of air With the golden cry of a harpstring And a bicker of lintwhite hair. O honey-sweet was the music With dancers lithe and gay In the realms of the woven half light And the harvested joys of day. July 11, 1935- Page-135

GREEN MOTH HOW came your green translucency to palimpsest my page, shadow of dim-wayed alchemy backthrown from after-age ? No this-world-print enwalls my cage, but script of gramarye up glimmers past your filmy wings and dips my hodden thought in some faint moon washed tide that brings colours undreamt, unsought ! If all your kind are fosterlings a phantom gale up caught from dragoned meadows of the moon, your flutter-fans of jade belong where palaces are hewn from porcelain, choicely made, whose silver carp in trance have swayed through chasms emerald-strewn divergelessly.... and midnight's rim o

THE VALLEY OF THE FLEECE A WINDLESS eve in a quiet coomb ; Rock-roseyellow and golden broom. Sandmartins wheel aloft Watching day's goblet quaffed By the priestess, Venus-adorned, rising from eastern tomb. A dream-laden wind from the sky escorts The starry ships of the Argonauts. Sandmartinstirs in the hole ; Peeps out one guardian troll— " Will they carry our golden fleece back to the day-break ports?" Page-15

LE FLAMBEAU VIVANT (From Baudelaire) THEY cleave their way before me, Eyes of unearthly gleaming Some adept among Angels did erstwhile magnetise ; They cleave their way, these godlike brothers I am deeming My own brothers—diamonds of light beckoning my eyes. My pledge against grave sinning and all the hidden snares, They lead my footsteps in the path of Beauty's height ; They are to me as servants ; I am a slave of theirs : My whole self bears obedience to that torch's living light. Charm-weaving eyes who shine in lambent mystery. As sentinel candles in the clinquant glare of day, Bowed red by the sun, quench n

FULFILMENT THINE be the winds of devotion, Thine be the stars of flame,— Their whisper to echo that Music, Their outline to girdle the Name. The world is a shadowy motion,— The dream at the back of a dream, With days that faint echo the Footstep, And fields that wan-mirror the Gleam. Token re-mirrored in token, Sign that had echoed a sign,— Might our senses be net of the Hunter, Our thought-ways a fishing line. So with not one word spoken, So with nor ever a look To Beauty we're borne by the Hunter, To the soot hafts shore by the hook. July 7, 1935.