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

WITH JADE-WHITE-PETALS FOR the moon-pale feet of Laelia the still night sheddeth dew. Or at noon in the white-rose garden—domed with a trance of blue— Blossoms with jade-white petals before her feet are shed And fall from the dreaming rose-trees, with never a leaf of red. The foam-pale hands of Laelia that weave my web of dream,— How they pluck white water-lilies afloat on a languid stream, And how from the strings of a zither they slowly waken strain Lustrously pale as the starlight when the air has been washed by the rain. In a moth-like silence I gather blooms of the night for her brow ; As in a shrine men proff

THE KINGFISHER UP a mossy creek, All in a blur the rosy breast And the blue of water-mirrored, earth-forsaking, dream-swift pinionson their quest,— Bird of the rainbow, quilled from the noon-sky, tempest-sudden and bysunrise blest. On, over rock, under bough, yet you seek. Owing me too on, and afar, to the end of your way, Your fathomless, sun happy, speed-dizzy, crystalline water-bright way, Till with eyes rinsed clear by the wind-rush, And with ears that your strangeness unsealed, Iam one with the prayer of the noon-hush, " May the wounded Silence be healed." Sapphire thought swung to time with your wingbeat, Outwitting dul