we Are met at length to finish our rest of days In a unity." 

  

  

       HEIMWEH     

 FAR-OFF the lily-statues stand white-ranked in the garden at home. Would God they were shattered quickly, the cattle would tread them out in the loam. I wish the elder trees in flower could suddenly heave, and burst The walls of the house, and nettles puff out from the hearth at which I was nursed. It stands so still in the hush composed of trees and inviolate peace, The home of my fathers, the place that is mine, my fate and my old increase. And now that the skies are falling, the world is spouting in fountains of dirt, I would give my soul for the homestead to fall with me, go with me, both in one hurt. 

  

  

       DEBACLE     

 THE trees in trouble because of autumn, And scarlet berries falling from the bush, And all the myriad houseless seeds Loosing hold in the wind's insistent push Moan softly with autumnal parturition, Poor, obscure fruits extruded out of light Into the world of shadow, carried down Between the bitter knees of the after-night. Bushed in an uncouth ardour, coiled at core With a knot of life that only bliss can unravel, Fall all the fruits most bitterly into earth Bitterly into corrosion bitterly travel. What is it internecine that is locked, By very fierceness into a quiescence Within the rage? We shall not know till it burst Out of corrosion into new florescence. Nay, but how tortured is the frightful seed The spark intense within it, all without Mordant corrosion gnashing and champing hard For ruin on the naked small redoubt. Bitter, to fold the issue, and make no sally; To have the mystery, but not go forth; To bear, but retaliate nothing, given to save The spark in storms of corrosion, as seeds from the north. The sharper, more horrid the pressure, the harder the heart That saves the blue grain of eternal fire Within its quick, committed to hold and wait And suffer unheeding, only forbidden to expire. 

  

  

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