wandering happiness, and the wind, wasted in liberty, drifts on and is sad. Oh but the water loves me and folds me, Plays with me, sways me, lifts me and sinks me as though it were living blood, Blood of a heaving woman who holds me, Owning my supple body a rare glad thing, supremely good. 

  

  

       STUDY     

 SOMEWHERE the long mellow note of the blackbird Quickens the unclasping hands of hazel, Somewhere the wind-flowers fling their heads back, Stirred by an impetuous wind. Some ways'll All be sweet with white and blue violet.          (Hush now, hush. Where am I?—Biuret—)       On the green wood's edge a shy girl hovers From out of the hazel-screen on to the grass, Where wheeling and screaming the petulant plovers Wave frighted. Who comes? A labourer, alas! Oh the sunset swims in her eyes' swift pool.          (Work, work, you fool—!)       Somewhere the lamp hanging low from the ceiling Lights the soft hair of a girl as she reads, And the red firelight steadily wheeling Weaves the hard hands of my friend in sleep. And the white dog snuffs the warmth, appealing For the man to heed lest the girl shall weep.       (Tears and dreams for them; for me Bitter science—the exams. are near. I wish I bore it more patiently. I wish you did not wait, my dear, For me to come: since work I must:      Though it's all the same when we are dead.—      I wish I was only a bust, All head.) 

  

  

       DISCORD IN CHILDHOOD     

 OUTSIDE the house an ash-tree hung its terrible whips, And at night when the wind arose, the lash of the tree      Shrieked and slashed the wind, as a ship's Weird rigging in a storm shrieks hideously. Within the house two voices arose in anger, a slender lash Whistling delirious rage, and the dreadful sound Of a thick lash booming and bruising, until it drowned The other voice in a silence of blood, 'neath the noise of the ash. 

  

  

       VIRGIN YOUTH     

      Now and again All my body springs alive, And the life that is polarised in my eyes,      

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