“ And the firing died away; and the night fell
On our battle. Only in the sullen sky
A prairie fire, with huge fantastic flame
Leapt, lighting dark clouds charged with thunder.
And my heart was sick with shame
That there, in death, he should lie,
Crying: 'Oh, why am I alive, I wonder?'
In a dream I saw war riding the land:
Stark rode she, with bowed eyes, against the glare
Of sack'd cities smouldering in the dark,
A tired horse, lean, with outreaching head,
And hid her face of dread.... ”

“ With torrents and barb'd lightning, swelleth the yellow river
To a tumult of whitening foam and confusèd might
That drowns in a single night many a mud-made city;
And cities of boats, and frail cities of lath and reed,
Are whirled away without pity or set afloat in a pale,
Swirling, shallow sea ... and their names seem lost for ever
Till a stranger nomad race drive their herds to the sad place
Where old sorrows lie forgotten, and raise upon the rotten
Level waste another brood to await another flood. ”

“ Than the cedarn fleets that Sheba's treasure bore.
SONG
What is the worth of war
In a world that turneth, turneth
About a tired star
Whose flaming centre burneth
No longer than the space
Of the spent atom's race:
Where conquered lands, soon, soon
Lie waste as the pale moon?
What is the worth of art
In a world that fast forgetteth
Those who have wrung its heart
With beauty that love begetteth,
Whose faint flames vanish quite
In that star-powdered night
Where even the mighty ones
Shine only as far suns? ”

“ Caught at my heart and fast in chains of horror bound--
As one who in profound and midnight forest ways
Sees in the dark the burning eyes of a tiger barred
Or stealthy footed pard blaze in a solemn hate
And lust of human blood, yet cannot cry, nor turning
Flee from the huddled wood, but stands and sees his fate,
Or one who in a black night, groping for his track,
Clings to the dizzy verge of a cragged precipice,
Shrinks from the dim abyss, yet dare not venture back,
And no sound hears but the hiss of empty air
Swirling past his ears.... ”

“ And the dust of dry stubbles blows over the whitening
Shocks of lank grain and bundles of flax,
And men fling themselves down forgetting their troubles,
Unheedful of the song that the landrail weaves along
Misty woodlands, or lightning that the pale sky laves
Like phosphorescent waves washing summer seas:
And, more beautiful than these, that sleep of dazèd wonder
When love has torn asunder the veils of the sky
And raptured lovers lie faint in each other's arms
Beneath a heaven strewn with myriad starry swarms,
Where planets float like lonely gold-flowered nenuphars
In pools of the sky ”

“ By stagnant waters, we lie rotten.
On windless nights, in the lonely places,
There, where the winter water races,
O, Porton river, are we forgotten?
Through Porton village, under the bridge,
The clear bourne floweth with grasses trailing,
Wherein are shadows of light cloud sailing,
And elms that shelter under the ridge.
The pale moon she comes and looks;
Over the lonely spire she climbs;
For there she is lovelier many times
Than in the little broken brooks.
AN OLD HOUSE
No one lives in the old house; long ago
The voices of men and women left it lonely. ”

“ Before its prime; yet their frail fingers white
From that bruised bloom distill'd
Uttermost attar of the living rose.
Wherefore, O shining ones, I will not mourn
You, who have ravish'd beauty's secret ways
Beneath death's impotent shadow, suffering scorn,
Hatred, and desolation in her praise....
Thus as I spoke their phantom faces smiled,
As brooding night with heavy downward wing
Fell upon Wilton's elegiac stone,
On the dark woodlands and the waters wild
And every living thing--
Leaving me there amazèd and alone. ”

“ Should be broken by my treading, for I lived, I lived again,
And my heart would have been broken by a living creature's pain,
So I kissed them for a token of my joy in their new birth,
And I kissed the gentle earth. Slowly the shadows crept
To the bases of the crags, and I slept....
'Once, in another life, had I remembered sleep,
When tired children creep on to their mother's knees,
And there a dreamless peace more quietly descendeth
Than gentle evening endeth or ring-doves fold their wings,
Before the nightjar spins or the nightingale begins ”

“ A dull throb thrumming, a noise of faint drumming,
Threatening, coming nearer, piercing deeper
Than a dream lost in the heart of a sleeper
Into those deeps where the dark fire gloweth,
The secret flame that every man knoweth,
Embers that smoulder, fires that none can fan,
Terrible, older than the mind of man.... ”

“ In heavy sleep or swoon fallen, who did not move
But lay as mortals lie in the sweet release of love.
And stark between them stood huge eunuchs of ebony,
Mute, motionless, as they had been carven of black wood. ”

“ The lumbering troop-train passing clanks and jangles;
And I, a stranger, peer with careless wonder
Into the thickets of the garden tangles.
Yet, as I pass, a transient vision dawns
Ghostly upon my pondering spirit's gloom,
Of grey lavender bushes and weedy lawns
And a solitary cherry-tree in bloom....
No one lives in the old house: year by year
The plaster crumbles on the lonely walls:
The apple falls in the lush grass ”

“ So, amid the sleepers, the black eunuchs stood.
When the sleepers stirred faintly in the heat
Of that painted room a silken sound I heard,
And a thin music, sweet as the brown nightingale
Sings in the jealous shade of a lonely spinney,
Stranger far than any music mortal made
Fell softer than the dew falleth when stars are pale. ”

“ Yet, in my heart, a melancholy rapture
Tells me that eyes, which now an iron haste
Hurries to iron days, may here recapture
A vision of ancient loveliness gone to waste.
THE DHOWS
South of Guardafui with a dark tide flowing
We hailed two ships with tattered canvas bent to the monsoon,
Hung betwixt the outer sea and pale surf showing
Where dead cities of Libya lay bleaching in the moon. ”

“ But never given before--England, the giver,
In a vision of three poplar-trees that shiver
On still evenings of summer, after rain,
By Slapton Ley, where reed-beds start and quiver
When scarce a ripple moves the upland grain. ”

“ And I entered, alone....
'Behold a cavern of stone carven, and in the midst
A brazier that hissed with tongued flames, leaping
Over whitened embers of gummy frankincense,
Into a fume of dense and fragrant vapour, creeping
Over the roof to spread a milky coverlet
Softer than the woof of webby spider's net. ”

“ With carven silver phalli for the ebony maids of Ophir
From brown-skinned baharias of Arabia the Blest.'
'Oh whither be ye sailing, with your dark flag flying?'
'We sail, with creaking cedar, towards the Northern Star.
The helmsman singeth wearily, and in our hold are lying
A hundred slaves in shackles from the marts of Zanzibar.'
'Oh whither be ye sailing...?'
'Alas, we sail no longer:
Our hulls are wrack, our sails are dust, as any man might know.
And why should you torment us? ... ”