Haunted

EVENING was in the wood, louring with storm.

A time of drought had sucked the weedy pool
And baked the channels; birds had done with song.
Thirst was a dream of fountains in the moon,
Or willow-music blown across the water

Leisurely sliding on by weir and mill.

Uneasy was the man who wandered, brooding,
His face a little whiter than the dusk.

A drone of sultry wings flicker'd in his head.

The end of sunset burning thro' the boughs
Died in a smear of red; exhausted hours
Cumber'd, and ugly sorrows hemmed him in.

He thought: "Somewhere there's thunder," as he

strove

To shake off dread; he dared not look behind him,
But stood, the sweat of horror on his face.

He blundered down a path, trampling on thistles,
In sudden race to leave the ghostly trees.

And: "Soon I'll be in open fields," he thought,
And half remembered starlight on the meadows,
Scent of mown grass and voices of tired men,
Fading along the field-paths; home and sleep
And cool-swept upland spaces, whispering leaves,
And far off the long churring night-jar's note.
But something in the wood, trying to daunt him,
Led him confused in circles through the brake.
He was forgetting his old wretched folly,
And freedom was his need; his throat was choking;
Barbed brambles gripped and clawed him round his

And he floundered over snags and hidden stumps.
Mumbling: "I will get out! I must get out!"
Butting and thrusting up the baffling gloom,
Pausing to listen in a space 'twixt thorns,
He peers around with boding, frantic eyes.
An evil creature in the twilight looping,
Flapped blindly in his face. Beating it off,

legs,

He screeched in terror, and straightway something clambered

Heavily from an oak, and dropped, bent double,
To shamble at him zigzag, squat and bestial.

Headlong he charges down the wood, and falls
With roaring brain-agony-the snap't spark-
And blots of green and purple in his eyes.
Then the slow fingers groping on his neck,
And at his heart the strangling clasp of death.

Blind

His headstrong thoughts that once in eager strife
Leapt sure from eye to brain and back to eye,
Weaving unconscious tapestries of life,

Are now thrust inward, dungeoned from the sky.
And he who has watched his world and loved it all,
Starless and old and blind, a sight for pity,
With feeble steps and fingers on the wall,
Gropes with his staff along the rumbling city.

Before Day

COME in this hour to set my spirit free

When earth is no more mine though night goes out
And stretching forth these arms I cannot be
Lord of winged sunrise and dim Arcady:

When fieldward boys far off with clack and shout
From orchards scare the birds in sudden rout,
Come, ere my heart grows cold and full of doubt
In the still summer dawns that waken me.

When the first lark goes up to look for day,
And morning glimmers out of dreams, come then,
Out of the songless valleys, over gray
Wide misty lands to bring me on my way:
For I am lone, a dweller among men,
Hungered for what my heart shall never say.