reckoning. Tall black Bacchae of midnight, why then, why Do you rush to assail me? Do I intrude on your rites nocturnal? What should it avail me? Is there some great Iacchos of these slopes Suburban dismal? Have I profaned some female mystery, orgies Black and phantasmal? 

  

  

       NEXT MORNING     

      How have I wandered here to this vaulted room In the house of life?—the floor was ruffled with gold Last evening, and she who was softly in bloom,      Glimmered as flowers that in perfume at twilight unfold For the flush of the night; whereas now the gloom Of every dirty, must-besprinkled mould, And damp old web of misery's heirloom Deadens this day's grey-dropping arras-fold. And what is this that floats on the undermist Of the mirror towards the dusty grate, as if feeling Unsightly its way to the warmth?—this thing with a list To the left? this ghost like a candle swealing? Pale-blurred, with two round black drops, as if it missed Itself among everything else, here hungrily stealing Upon me!—my own reflection!—explicit gist Of my presence there in the mirror that leans from the ceiling! Then will somebody square this shade with the being I know I was last night, when my soul rang clear as a bell And happy as rain in summer? Why should it be so? What is there gone against me, why am I in hell? 

  

  

       PALIMPSEST OF TWILIGHT     

 DARKNESS comes out of the earth And swallows dip into the pallor of the west; From the hay comes the clamour of children's mirth; Wanes the old palimpsest. The night-stock oozes scent, And a moon-blue moth goes flittering by:      All that the worldly day has meant Wastes like a lie. The children have forsaken their play; A single star in a veil of light Glimmers: litter of day Is gone from sight. 

  

  

       EMBANKMENT AT NIGHT,     

       BEFORE THE WAR     

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