stand, they sleep, Wearily catching The flood's slow gait Like men who are drowned, but float erect in the deep. Oh, the singing mansions, Golden-lighted tall Trams that pass, blown ruddily down the night! The bridge on its stanchions Stoops like a pall To this human blight. On the outer pavement, slowly, Theatre people pass, Holding aloft their umbrellas that flash and are bright Like flowers of infernal moly Over nocturnal grass Wetly bobbing and drifting away on our sight. And still by the rotten Row of shattered feet, Outcasts keep guard. Forgotten, Forgetting, till fate shall delete One from the ward. The factories on the Surrey side Are beautifully laid in black on a gold-grey sky. The river's invisible tide Threads and thrills like ore that is wealth to the eye. And great gold midges Cross the chasm At the bridges Above intertwined plasm.
WINTER IN THE BOULEVARD
THE frost has settled down upon the trees And ruthlessly strangled off the fantasies Of leaves that have gone unnoticed, swept like old Romantic stories now no more to be told. The trees down the boulevard stand naked in thought, Their abundant summery wordage silenced, caught In the grim undertow; naked the trees confront Implacable winter's long, cross-questioning brunt. Has some hand balanced more leaves in the depths of the twigs? Some dim little efforts placed in the threads of the birch?— It is only the sparrows, like dead black leaves on the sprigs, Sitting huddled against the cerulean, one flesh with their perch. The clear, cold sky coldly bethinks itself. Like vivid thought the air spins bright, and all Trees, birds, and earth, arrested in the after-thought Awaiting the sentence out from the welkin brought.
SCHOOL ON THE OUTSKIRTS
How different, in the middle of snows, the great school rises red! A red rock silent and shadowless, clung round with clusters of shouting lads, Some few dark-cleaving the doorway, souls that cling as the souls of the dead In stupor persist at the gates of life, obstinate dark
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