XIX

I have known the lure of cities and the bright gleam
   of golden things,
Spires, towers, bridges, rivers, and the crowd that
   flows as a river,
Lights in the midnight streets under the rain,
   and the stings
Of joys that make the spirit reel and shiver.

But I see bleak moors and marshes and sparse grasses,
And frozen stalks against the snow;
Dead forests, ragged pines and dark morasses
Under the shadows of the mountains where no men go. 
The crags untenanted and spacious cry aloud as clear
As the drear cry of a lost eagle over uncharted lands,
No thought that man has ever framed in words is spoken here,
And the language of the wind, no man understands.

Only the sifting wind through the grasses, and the hissing sleet,
And the shadow of the changeless rocks over the frozen wold,
Only the cold,
And the fierce night striding down with silent feet.

Chambery, 1918

XX

We wove a fillet for thy head,
  And from a flaming lyre
Struck a song that shall not die
Until the echoing stars be dead,
Until the world’s last word be said,
Until on tattered wings we fly
  Upward and expire.

And calm with night thou watchest till
  Long after we are gone,
Not knowing how we worshipped thee;
Serene, unfathomably still,
Gazing to the western hill
Where pales the moon’s hushed mystery,
  White in the white dawn.

Cambridge, 1915

BOOK III EROS

I

Now the sick earth revives, and in the sun
The wet soil gives a fragrance to the air;
The days of many colours are begun,
And early promises of meadows fair
With starry petals, and of trees now bare
Soon to be lyric with the trilling choir,
And lovely with new leaves, spread everywhere
A subtle flame that sets the heart on fire
With thoughts of other springs and dreams of new desire.

The mind will never dwell within the present,
It weeps for vanished years or hopes for new;
This morn of wakened warmth, so calm, so pleasant,
So gaily gemmed with diadems of dew,
When buds swell on the bough, and robins woo
Their loves with notes bell-like and crystal-clear,
The spirit stirs from sleep, yet wonders, too,
Whence comes the hint of sorrow or of fear
Making it move rebellious within its narrow sphere.

This flash of sun, this flight of wings in riot,
This festival of sound, of sight, of smell,
Wakes in the spirit a profound disquiet,
And greeting seems the foreword of farewell. 
Budding like all the world, the soul would swell
Out of its withering mortality;
Flower immortal, burst from its heavy shell,
Fly far with love beyond the world and sea,
Out of the grasp of change, from time and twilight free.