The Flower of the Mind, and Later Poems Part 7

CRADLE-SONG AT TWILIGHT

The child not yet is lulled to rest.

Too young a nurse, the slender Night So laxly holds him to her breast That throbs with flight.

He plays with her and will not sleep.

For other playfellows she sighs; An unmaternal fondness keep Her alien eyes.

THE ROARING FROST

A flock of winds came winging from the North, Strong birds with fighting pinions driving forth With a resounding call!

Where will they close their wings and cease their cries - Between what warming seas and conquering skies - And fold, and fall?

PARENTAGE

"When Augustus Caesar legislated against the unmarried citizens of Rome, he declared them to be, in some sort, slayers of the people."

Ah no, not these!

These, who were childless, are not they who gave So many dead unto the journeying wave, The helpless nurslings of the cradling seas; Not they who doomed by infallible decrees Unnumbered man to the innumerable grave.

But those who slay Are fathers. Theirs are armies. Death is theirs, The death of innocences and despairs; The dying of the golden and the grey.

The sentence, when these speak it, has no Nay.

And she who slays is she who bears, who bears.

THE MODERN MOTHER

Oh what a kiss With filial pa.s.sion overcharged is this!

To this misgiving breast The child runs, as a child ne'er ran to rest Upon the light heart and the unoppressed.

Unhoped, unsought!

A little tenderness, this mother thought The utmost of her meed She looked for grat.i.tude; content indeed With thus much that her nine years' love had bought.

Nay, even with less.

This mother, giver of life, death, peace, distress, Desired ah! not so much Thanks as forgiveness; and the pa.s.sing touch Expected, and the slight, the brief caress.

Oh filial light Strong in these childish eyes, these new, these bright Intelligible stars! Their rays Are near the constant earth, guides in the maze, Natural, true, keen in this dusk of days.

WEST WIND IN WINTER

Another day awakes. And who - Changing the world--is this?

He comes at whiles, the Winter through, West Wind! I would not miss His sudden tryst: the long, the new Surprises of his kiss.

Vigilant, I make haste to close With him who comes my way.

I go to meet him as he goes; I know his note, his lay, His colour and his morning rose; And I confess his day.

My window waits; at dawn I hark His call; at morn I meet His haste around the tossing park And down the softened street; The gentler light is his; the dark, The grey--he turns it sweet.

So too, so too, do I confess My poet when he sings.

He rushes on my mortal guess With his immortal things.

I feel, I know him. On I press - He finds me 'twixt his wings.

NOVEMBER BLUE

The colour of the electric lights has a strange effect in giving a complementary tint to the air in the early evening.--ESSAY ON LONDON.

O, Heavenly colour! London town Has blurred it from her skies; And hooded in an earthly brown, Unheaven'd the city lies.

No longer standard-like this hue Above the broad road flies; Nor does the narrow street the blue Wear, slender pennon-wise.

But when the gold and silver lamps Colour the London dew, And, misted by the winter damps, The shops s.h.i.+ne bright anew - Blue comes to earth, it walks the street, It dyes the wide air through; A mimic sky about their feet, The throng go crowned with blue.

CHIMES

Brief, on a flying night, From the shaken tower, A flock of bells take flight, And go with the hour.

Like birds from the cote to the gales, Abrupt--O hark!

A fleet of bells set sails, And go to the dark.

Sudden the cold airs swing.

Alone, aloud, A verse of bells takes wing And flies with the cloud.