THIS delicate day of spring, like a Chopin prelude, mingles
Bursts of rapture by turns with snatches of wistful pain;
At earliest chill of evening the blood already tingles, —
Andante the day began, but presto the pace of its wane.
Traceless the sun has been quenched, a metal disc in acid,
In the vitriol pool at the base of the bare and glassy sky;
Smoky blue of the dusk is mottled by the placid
Faint amber halo of street-lamps. Faces float past, and I,
In this hour which tenderly joins sunset with star-rise, travel
Back to when first I trod these pavements. The years between
With their tale of storms and havens have vanished, and I unravel
Shyly the tangled dreams of the things that never have been.
MEDITERRANEAN SONNET
IT is now three days and nights since the last streak
Of our island coastline foundered amid the haze
Over a sallow sea. In those leaden days
We saw thin wisps of light straggle and leak
From the clouds that ranged to the dark-rimmed horizon; we saw
Bleak sunsets and desolate dawns, as they had been
In the first week of the world, when they filtered their sheen
On the face of the waters, obeying the earliest law.
But a miracle overnight has changed the cold
Froth-smeared flood to a dappled syrup; and where
Was a blank sky is a riot of azure and gold;
Africa’s russet earth has spiced the air,
And after tomorrow’s nightfall we shall behold
The strange southern tilt of the Great Bear.
WE shall not dream the grisly dreams that cause
Gasfitters, bishops, hangmen, flunkeys, peers,
Field-marshals and the mob who pass the laws
To wake, pallidly sweating with sudden fears.
But these shall be our dreams: Journeys on decks
Of galleons; frenzied sunsets glazing the sea
With smoulder of spectrums and myriad colour-flecks;
Calm, twilit anchorage beneath the lee
Of magic islands, where we shall possess
All our old loves again in a single night.
In brief, our dreams shall be of such finesse,
That Dr. Freud, hearing thereof, shall write
Their inner meaning in at least a score
Of tomes more choice than any he penned before.
ANACREONTIC
GAMMA at twenty caused a huge to-do
With his first novel. Now he has conceived
His next at thirty. I compare the two,
And murmur: “Why, he’d almost have achieved
A masterpiece, had he but used his pen
For writing novels at the age of ten.”
ARITHMETICAL PROGRESSION, OR THE BOOM OF SPOOF
NOT incunabula nor palimpsest
Can rouse a myriad raptures in me now;
And strophic ecstasies of the possessed
Are empty echoes that I disavow.
For I intently con this crimson script,
This enchiridion of sealed delight, —
The lordly names of potions I have sipped,
— One is the vintage I shall quaff tonight.
