chariot-wheels, with the sparks a-scatter, Their chirp was heard in old Babylon. 

 In Babylon, and more ancient Memphis, They chattered and quarrelled, pecked and fumed, And loved their loves, and flew their ways, Where the royal Pharaohs lay entombed Deep from the daylight's vulgar gaze. 

 Then, just such little homely fellows (When the angry monarch, terrible, Watched his curled Assyrians writhe) They sat, on a carven granite bull Unheeding of anguish, feathered and blithe. 

 So did they sit, on the roofs of Rome, And preen themselves in the morning sun; And Caesar saw them, brown and grey, Whisk in the dust, when his course was run And he took to the Forum his fated way. 

 Oh, changing time; oh, sun and birds How little changing. In the Square This winter morning I have met Old Egypt's grandson, stopped him there, And "Sir, you will outlive me yet," Said I politely, "mark my words." 

 

 

 THE MOON IN JANUARY 

 Sharp and straight are the scaffold poles, Black on a delicate sky; Upright they stand, across they lie, In changeless angles fixed and bound, The sunset light in mist is drowned, And the moon has risen high; 

 High above houses, high and clear Above the scaffolding, So exquisite, so faint a thing, The young moon's silver curve that shines Above the fretting, tangled lines, With the old moon in her ring. 

 The young moon holds the old black moon In a sky all grey with frost, By cable wires barred and crossed, And below, the haze of purplish-brown Smokes upward from the lamp-lit town Where outlines all are lost. 

 The pure pale arch of windless sky, The pure bright young moon's thread, These wide and still are overhead; And in the dusky glare below The lamps go dotting, row on row, And there is movement, to and fro, Where far the pavements spread. 

 

 

 AN AUGUST NIGHT, 1914 

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