half-shut lilies To hold to your lips. And never the two-winged vessel That sleeps below on the lake Can I catch like a moth between my hands For you to take. But hush, I am not regretting: It is far more perfect now. I'll whisper the ghostly truth to the world And tell them how I know you here in the darkness, How you sit in the throne of my eyes At peace, and look out of the windows In glad surprise.
THE NORTH COUNTRY
IN another country, black poplars shake them- selves over a pond, And rooks and the rising smoke-waves scatter and wheel from the works beyond; The air is dark with north and with sulphur, the grass is a darker green, And people darkly invested with purple move palpable through the scene. Soundlessly down across the counties, out of the resonant gloom That wraps the north in stupor and purple travels the deep, slow boom Of the man-life north-imprisoned, shut in the hum of the purpled steel As it spins to sleep on its motion, drugged dense in the sleep of the wheel. Out of the sleep, from the gloom of motion, sound- lessly, somnambule Moans and booms the soul of a people imprisoned, asleep in the rule Of the strong machine that runs mesmeric, booming the spell of its word Upon them and moving them helpless, mechanic, their will to its will deferred. Yet all the while comes the droning inaudible, out of the violet air, The moaning of sleep-bound beings in travail that toil and are will-less there In the spell-bound north, convulsive now with a dream near morning, strong With violent achings heaving to burst the sleep that is now not long.
BITTERNESS OF DEATH
I
AH, stern, cold man, How can you lie so relentless hard While I wash you with weeping water! Do you set your face against the daughter Of life? Can you never discard Your curt pride's ban? You masquerader! How can you shame to act this part Of unswerving indifference to me? You want at last, ah me! To break my heart Evader! You know your mouth Was always sooner to soften Even than your
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