wind-swept way is wending Easily down the sky. The daisies, sending Strange white signals, seem intending To show the place whence the scream was heard. But, oh, my heart, what birds are piping! A silver wind is hastily wiping The face of the youngest rose. And oh, my heart, cease apprehending! The hawk is gone, a rose is tapping The window-sash as the west-wind blows. Knock, knock, 'tis no more than a red rose rapping, And fear is a plash of wings. What, then, if a scarlet rose goes flapping Down the bright-grey ruin of things! 

  

  

       PARLIAMENT HILL IN THE     

       EVENING     

 THE houses fade in a melt of mist Blotching the thick, soiled air With reddish places that still resist The Night's slow care. The hopeless, wintry twilight fades, The city corrodes out of sight As the body corrodes when death invades That citadel of delight. Now verdigris smoulderings softly spread Through the shroud of the town, as slow Night-lights hither and thither shed Their ghastly glow. 

  

  

       PICCADILLY CIRCUS AT NIGHT     

      Street-Walkers. 

 WHEN into the night the yellow light is roused like dust above the towns, Or like a mist the moon has kissed from off a pool in the midst of the downs, Our faces flower for a little hour pale and uncertain along the street, Daisies that waken all mistaken white-spread in ex-         pectancy to meet The luminous mist which the poor things wist was dawn arriving across the sky,      When dawn is far behind the star the dust-lit town has driven so high. All the birds are folded in a silent ball of sleep, All the flowers are faded from the asphalt isle in the sea, Only we hard-faced creatures go round and round, and keep The shores of this innermost ocean alive and illusory. Wanton sparrows that twittered when morning looked in at their eyes And the Cyprian's pavement-roses are gone, and now it is we Flowers of illusion who shine in our gauds, make a Paradise On the shores of this ceaseless ocean, gay birds of the town-dark sea. 

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