A NIGHT OF STORM

Oh city, whom grey stormy hands have sown,
  With restless drift, scarce broken now of any,
  Out of the dark thy windows dim and many
Gleam red across the storm.  Sound is there none,
Save evermore the fierce wind’s sweep and moan,
  From whose grey hands the keen white snow is shaken
  In desperate gusts, that fitfully lull and waken,
Dense as night’s darkness round they towers of stone.

Darkling and strange art thou thus vexed and chidden;
    More dark and strange thy veiled agony,
City of storm, in whose grey heart are hidden
  What stormier woes, what lives that groan and beat,
  Stern and thin-cheeked, against time’s heavier sleet,
    Rude fates, hard hearts, and prisoning poverty.

THE RAILWAY STATION

The darkness brings no quiet here, the light
  No waking:  ever on my blinded brain
  The flare of lights, the rush, and cry, and strain,
The engines’ scream, the hiss and thunder smite: 
I see the hurrying crowds, the clasp, the flight,
  Faces that touch, eyes that are dim with pain: 
  I see the hoarse wheels turn, and the great train
Move labouring out into the bourneless night.

So many souls within its dim recesses,
  So many bright, so many mournful eyes: 
Mine eyes that watch grow fixed with dreams and guesses;
  What threads of life, what hidden histories,
What sweet or passionate dreams and dark distresses,
  What unknown thoughts, what various agonies.

A FORECAST

What days await this woman, whose strange feet
  Breathe spells, whose presence makes men dream like wine,
  Tall, free and slender as the forest pine,
Whose form is moulded music, through whose sweet
Frank eyes I feel the very heart’s least beat,
  Keen, passionate, full of dreams and fire: 
  How in the end, and to what man’s desire
Shall all this yield, whose lips shall these lips meet?

One thing I know:  if he be great and pure,
This love, this fire, this beauty shall endure;
  Triumph and hope shall lead him by the palm: 
But if not this, some differing thing he be,
That dream shall break in terror; he shall see
  The whirlwind ripen, where he sowed the calm.

IN NOVEMBER

The hills and leafless forests slowly yield
  To the thick-driving snow.  A little while
  And night shall darken down.  In shouting file
The woodmen’s carts go by me homeward-wheeled,
Past the thin fading stubbles, half concealed,
  Now golden-grey, sowed softly through with snow,
  Where the last ploughman follows still his row,
Turning black furrows through the whitening field.

Far off the village lamps begin to gleam,
  Fast drives the snow, and no man comes this way;
    The hills grow wintry white, and bleak winds moan
    About the naked uplands.  I alone
  Am neither sad, nor shelterless, nor grey,
Wrapped round with thought, content to watch and dream.