Pitiful, thin, remote. Poor vapour is the grass, So frail the trees and railings seem, That, did I sweep my hand around, 'twould pass Through them, as in a dream. Godlike I fear no changes; Shatter the world with thunders loud, Still would I ray-like flit about the ranges Of dark and ruddy cloud. SONG There is a wood where the fairies dance All night long in a ring of mushrooms daintily, By each tree bole sits a squirrel or a mole, And the moon through the branches darts. Light on the grass their slim limbs glance, Their shadows in the moonlight swing in quiet unison, And the moon discovers that they all have lovers, But they never break their hearts. They never grieve at all for sands that run, They never know regret for a deed that's done, And they never think of going to a shed with a gun At the rising of the sun. TOWN Mostly in a dull rotation We bear our loads and eat and drink and sleep, Feeling no tears, knowing no meditation— Too tired to think, too clogged with earth to weep. Dimly convinced, poor groping wretches, Like eyeless insects in a murky pond That out and out this city stretches, Away, away, and there is no beyond. No larger earth, no loftier heaven, No cleaner, gentler airs to breathe. And yet, Even to us sometimes is given Visions of things we otherwhiles forget. Some day is done, its labour ended, And as we brood at windows high, A steady wind from far descended, Blows off the filth that hid the deeper sky; There are the empty waiting spaces, We watch, we watch, unwinking, pale and dumb, Till gliding up with noiseless paces Night sweeps o'er all the wide arch: Night has come. Not that sick false night of the city, Lurid and low and yellow and obscene, But mother Night, pure, full of pity, The star-strewn Night, blue, potent and serene. O, as we gaze the clamour ceases, The turbid world around grows dim and small, The soft-shed influence releases Our shrouded spirits from their dusty pall. No more we hear the turbulent traffic, Not scorned but unremembered is the day; The Night, all luminous and seraphic, Has brushed its heavy memories away. The great blue Night so clear and kindly, The little stars so wide-eyed and so still, Open a door for souls that blindly Had wandered, tunnelling the endless hill; They draw the long-untraversed portal, Our souls slip out and tremble and expand, The immortal feels for the immortal, The eternal holds the eternal by the hand. Impalpably we are led and lifted, Softly we shake into the gulf of blue, The last environing veil is rifted And lost horizons float into our view. Lost lands, lone seas, lands that afar gleam With a miraculous beauty, faint yet clear, Forgotten lands of night and star-gleam, Seas that are somewhere but that are not here. Borne without effort or 

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