The faces pass in blurring white
Outside the frosted window, lifting
Eyes against my cheerful night,
From their night of dreadful drifting.
Sharp breaths blow fast in a smoky gale,
Rags wander through the dull lamp light;
O my veins run gold with Christmas ale,
And the tavern fire is bright.
The midnight sky is clear as glass,
The stars hang frozen on the town,
I watch the dying people pass,
And I wrap me warm in my gown.
Brussels, 1919
XVIII
Chords, tremendous chords,
Over the stricken plain,
The night is calling her ancient lords
Back to their own again.
Vast, unhappy song,
From incalculable space,
Calling the heavy-browed, the strong,
Out of their resting-place.
Far from the lighted town,
Over the snow and ice,
Their dreadful feet go up and down
Seeking a sacrifice.
And can you find a way
Where They will not come after?
The vast chords hesitate and sway
Into a sudden laughter.
Sheffield, 1917
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.
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