I
FIRES in the dark you build; tall quivering flames | |
| In the huge midnight forest of the unknown. | |
| Your soul is full of cities with dead names, | |
| And blind-faced, earth-bound gods of bronze and stone | |
| Whose priests and kings and lust-begotten lords | 5 |
| Watch the procession of their thundering hosts, | |
| Or guard relentless fanes with flickering swords | |
| And wizardry of ghosts. | |
| |
II
In a strange house I woke; heard overhead | |
| Hastily-thudding feet and a muffled scream... | 10 |
| (Is death like that?) ... I quaked uncomforted, | |
| Striving to frame to-morrow in a dream | |
| Of woods and sliding pools and cloudless day. | |
| (You know how bees come into a twilight room | |
| From dazzling afternoon, then sail away | 15 |
| Out of the curtained gloom.) | |
| |
III
You understand my thoughts; though, when you think, | |
| You’re out beyond the boundaries of my brain. | |
| I’m but a bird at dawn that cries ‘chink, chink’— | |
| A garden-bird that warbles in the rain. | 20 |
| And you’re the flying-man, the speck that steers | |
| A careful course far down the verge of day, | |
| Half-way across the world. Above the years | |
| You soar ... Is death so bad? ... I wish you’d say. | |
