| masonry, and there |
| The mother birds bring grubs and flies. |
| My wall is loosening; honey-bees, |
| Come
build in the empty house of the stare. |
|
|
|
|
| We are closed in, and the key is turned |
| On our uncertainty; somewhere |
| A man is killed, or a house burned, |
| Yet no clear fact to be discerned: |
| Come build in the empty house
of the stare. |
|
|
|
|
| A barricade of stone or of wood; |
| Some fourteen days of civil war; |
| Last night they trundled
down the road |
| That dead young soldier in his blood: |
| Come build in the empty house of the stare. |
|
|
|
|
| We
had fed the heart on fantasies, |
| The heart’s grown brutal from the fare; |
| More substance in our enmities |
| Than in our love; O honey-bees, |
| Come build in the empty house of the stare. |
|
|
|
|
| I climb to the tower-top and lean upon
broken stone, |
| A mist that is like blown snow is sweeping over all, |
| Valley, river, and elms, under the light
of a moon |
| That seems unlike itself, that seems unchangeable, |
| A glittering sword out of the east. A puff
of wind |
| And those white glimmering fragments of the mist sweep by. |
| Frenzies bewilder, reveries perturb
the mind; |
| Monstrous familiar images swim to the mind’s eye. |
|
|
|
|
| ‘Vengeance upon the murderers,’ the cry
goes up, |
| ‘Vengeance for Jacques Molay.’ In cloud-pale rags, or in lace, |
| The rage-driven, rage-tormented,
and rage-hungry troop, |
| Trooper belabouring trooper, biting at arm or at face, |
| Plunges towards nothing,
arms and fingers spreading wide |
| For the embrace of nothing; and I, my wits astray |
| Because of all that
senseless tumult, all but cried |
| For vengeance on the murderers of Jacques Molay. |
|
|
|
|
| Their legs long, delicate
and slender, aquamarine their eyes, |
| Magical unicorns bear ladies on their backs. |
| The ladies close their
musing eyes. No prophecies, |
| Remembered out of Babylonian almanacs, |
| Have closed the ladies’ eyes,
their minds are but a pool |
| Where even longing drowns under its own excess; |
| Nothing but stillness can
remain when hearts are full |
| Of their own sweetness, bodies of their loveliness. |
|
|
|
|
| The cloud-pale unicorns,
the eyes of aquamarine, |
| The quivering half-closed eyelids, the rags of cloud or of lace, |
| Or eyes that
rage has brightened, arms it has made lean, |
| Give place to an indifferent multitude, give place |
| To brazen
hawks. Nor self-delighting reverie, |
| Nor hate of what’s to come, nor pity for what’s gone, |
| Nothing but
grip of claw, and the eye’s complacency, |
| The innumerable clanging wings that have put out the moon. |
|
|
|
|
| I turn away and shut the door, and on the stair |
| Wonder how many times I could have proved my worth |
| In something that all others understand or share; |
| But O! ambitious heart, had such a proof drawn forth |
| A company of friends, a conscience set at ease, |
| It had but made us pine the more. The abstract joy, |
| The half-read wisdom of daemonic images, |
| Suffice the ageing man as once the growing boy. |
| 1923 |
