GERMAN RAINThe heat came down and sapped away my powers.The laden heat came down and drowned my brain,Till through the weight of overcoming hoursfelt the rain.Then suddenly I saw what more to seeI never thought: old things renewed, retrieved,The rain that fell in England fell on me,And I believed.ALL THE HILLS AND VALESAll the hills and vales alongEarth is bursting into song,And the singers are the chapsWho are going to die perhaps.O sing, marching men,Till the valleys ring again.Give your gladness to earth's keeping,So be glad, when you are sleeping.Cast away regret and rue,Think what you are marching to.Little live, great pass.Jesus Christ and BarabbasWere found the same day.This died, that went his way.So sing with joyful breath.For why, you are going to death.Teeming earth will surely storeAll the gladness that you pour.Earth that never doubts nor fears,Earth that knows of death, not tears,Earth that bore with joyful easeHemlock for Socrates,Earth that blossomed and was glad'Neath the cross that Christ had,Shall rejoice and blossom tooWhen the bullet reaches you.Wherefore, men marchingOn the road to death, sing!Pour your gladness on earth's head,So be merry, so be dead.From the hills and valleys earthShouts back the sound of mirth,Tramp of feet and lilt of songRinging all the road along.All the music of their going,Ringing swinging glad song-throwing,Earth will echo still, when footLies numb and voice mute.On, marching men, onTo the gates of death with song.Sow your gladness for earth's reaping,So you may be glad, though sleeping.Strew your gladness on earth's bed,So be merry, so be dead.JAMES STEPHENSDEIRDREDo not let any woman read this verse;It is for men, and after them their sonsAnd their sons' sons.The time comes when our hearts sink utterly;When we remember Deirdre and her tale,And that her lips are dust.Once she did tread the earth: men took her hand;They looked into her eyes and said their say,And she replied to them.More than a thousand years it is since sheWas beautiful: she trod the waving grass;She saw the clouds.A thousand years! The grass is still the same,The clouds as lovely as they were that timeWhen Deirdre was alive.But there has never been a woman bornWho was so beautiful, not one so beautifulOf all the women born.Let all men go apart and mourn together;No man can ever love her; not a manCan ever be her lover.No man can bend before her: no man say—What could one say to her? There are no wordsThat one could say to her!Now she is but a story that is toldBeside the fire! No man can ever beThe friend of that poor queen.THE GOAT PATHSThe crooked paths go every wayUpon the hill—they wind aboutThrough the heather in and outOf the quiet sunniness.And there the goats, day after day,Stray in sunny quietness,Cropping here and cropping there,As they pause and turn and pass,Now a bit of heather sprayNow a mouthful of the grass.In the deeper sunniness,In the place where nothing stirs,Quietly in quietness,In the quiet of the furze,For a time they come and lieStaring on the roving sky.If you approach they run away,They leap and stare, away they bound,With a sudden angry sound,To the sunny quietude;Crouching down where nothing stirsIn the silence of the furze,Crouching down again to broodIn the sunny solitude.If I were as wise as theyI would stray apart and brood,I would beat a hidden wayThrough the quiet heather sprayTo a sunny solitude;And should you come I'd run away,I would make an angry sound,I would stare and turn and boundTo the deeper quietude,To the place where nothing stirsIn the silence of the furze.In that airy quietnessI would think as long as they;Through the quiet sunninessI would stray away to broodBy a hidden beaten wayIn a sunny solitude.I would think until I foundSomething I can never find,Something lying on the ground,In the bottom of my mind.THE FIFTEEN ACRESI cling and swingOn a branch, or singThrough the cool, clear hush ofMorning, O:Or fling my wingOn the air, and bringTo sleepier birds a warning, O:That the night's in flight,And the sun's in sight,And the dew is the grass adorning, O:And the green leaves swingAs I sing, sing, sing,Up by the river,Down the dell,To the little wee nest,Where the big tree fell,So early in the morning, O.I flit and twitIn the sun for a bitWhen his light so bright is shining, O:Or sit and fitMy plumes, or knitStraw plaits for the nest's nice lining, OAnd she with gleeShows unto meUnderneath her wings reclining, O:And I sing that PegHas an egg, egg, egg,Up by the oat-field,Round the millPast the meadowDown the hill,So early in the morning, O.I stoop and swoopOn the air, or loopThrough the trees, and then go soaring, O:To group with a troopOn the gusty poopWhile the wind behind is roaring, O:I skim and swimBy a cloud's red rimAnd up to the azure flooring, O:And my wide wings dripAs I slip, slip, slipDown through the rain-drops,Back where PegBroods in the nestOn the little white eggSo early in the morning, O.EDWARD WYNDHAM TENNANTBorn 1895.Killed in Action 1916.HOME THOUGHTS IN LAVENTIEGreen gardens in Laventie!Soldiers only know the streetWhere the mud is churned and splashed aboutBy battle-wending feet;And yet beside one stricken house there is a glimpse of grass,Look for it when you pass.Beyond the Church whose pitted spireSeems balanced on a strandOf swaying stone and tottering brickTwo roofless ruins stand,And here behind the wreckage where thebackwall should have beenWe found a garden green.The grass was never trodden on,The little path of gravelWas overgrown with celandine,No other folk did travelAlong its weedy surface, but the nimble-footed mouseRunning from house to house.So all among the vivid bladesOf soft and tender grassWe lay, nor heard the limber wheelsThat pass and ever pass,In noisy continuity until their stony rattleSeems in itself a battle.At length we rose up from this easeOf tranquil happy mind,And searched the garden's little lengthA fresh pleasaunce to find;And there, some yellow daffodils and jasmine hanging highDid rest the tired eye.The fairest and most fragrantOf the many sweets we found,Was a little bush of Daphne flowerUpon a grassy mound,And so thick were the blossoms set and so divine the scentThat we were well content.Hungry for Spring I bent my head,The perfume fanned my face,And all my soul was dancing,In that lovely little place,Dancing with a measured step from wrecked and shattered townsAway......upon the Downs.I saw green banks of daffodil,Slim poplars in the breeze,Great tan-brown hares in gusty MarchA-couching on the leas;And meadows with their glittering streams, and silver scurrying dace,Home—what a perfect place.Belgium, March,1916.EDWARD THOMASBorn 1877.Killed in Action 1017.ASPENSAll day and night, save winter, every weather,Above the inn, the smithy, and the shop,The aspens at the cross-roads talk togetherOf rain, until their last leaves fall from the top.Out of the blacksmith's cavern comes the ringingOf hammer, shoe, and anvil; out of the innThe clink, the hum, the roar, the random singing—Thesounds that for these fifty years have been.The whisper of the aspens is not drowned,And over lightless pane and footless road,Empty as sky, with every other soundNot ceasing, calls their ghosts from their abode.A silent smithy, a silent inn, not failsIn the bare moonlight or the thick-furred gloom,In tempest or the night of nightingales,To turn the cross-roads to a ghostly room.And it would be the same were no house near.Over all sorts of weather, men, and times,A spens must shake their leaves and men may hearBut need not listen, more than to my rhymes.Whatever wind blows, while they and I have leavesWe cannot other than an aspen beThat ceaselessly, unreasonably grieves,Or so men think who like a different tree.THE BROOKSeated once by a brook, watching a childChiefly that paddled, I was thus beguiled.Mellow the blackbird sang and sharp the thrushNot far off in the oak and hazel brush,Unseen. There was a scent like honeycombFrom mugwort dull. And down upon the domeOf the stone the cart-horse kicks against so oftA butterfly alighted. From aloftHe took the heat of the sun, and from below,On the hot stone he perched contented so,As if never a cart would pass againThat way; as if I were the last of menAnd he the first of insects to have earthAnd sun together and to know their worth,I was divided between him and the gleam,The motion, and the voices, of the stream,The waters running frizzled over gravel,That never vanish and for ever travel.A grey flycatcher silent on a fenceAnd I sat as if we had been there sinceThe horseman and the horse lying beneathThe fir-tree-covered barrow on the heath,The horseman and the horse with silver shoes,Galloped the downs last. All that I could loseI lost. And then the child's voice raised the dead."No one's been here before" was what she saidAnd what I felt, yet never should have foundA word for, while I gathered sight and sound.THE BRIDGEI have come a long way to-day:On a strange bridge alone,Remembering friends, old friends,I rest, without smile or moan,As they remember me without smile or moan.All are behind, the kindAnd the unkind too, no moreTo-night than a dream. The streamRuns softly yet drowns the Past,The dark-lit stream has drowned the Future and the Past.No traveller has rest more blestThan this moment brief betweenTwo lives, when the Night's first lightsAnd shades hide what has never been,Things goodlier, lovelier, dearer, than will be or have been.LIGHTS OUTI have come to the borders of sleep,The unfathomable deepForest where all must loseTheir way, however straight,Or winding, soon or late;They cannot choose.Many a road and trackThat, since the dawn's first crack,Up to the forest brink,Deceived the travellersSuddenly now blurs,And in they sink.Here love ends,Despair, ambition ends,All pleasure and all trouble,Although most sweet or bitter,Here ends in sleep that is sweeterThan tasks most noble.There is not any bookOr face of dearest lookThat I would not turn from nowTo go into the unknownI must enter and leave aloneI know not how.The tall forest towers;Its cloudy foliage lowersAhead, shelf above shelf;Its silence I hear and obeyThat I may lose my wayAnd myself.WORDSOut of us allThat make rhymes,Will you chooseSometimes—As the winds useA crack in the wallOr a drain,Their joy or their painTo whistle through—Choose me,You English words?I know you:You are light as dreams,Tough as oak,Precious as gold,As poppies and corn,Or an old cloak:Sweet as our birdsTo the ear,As the linnet noteIn the heatOf Midsummer:Strange as the racesOf dead and unborn:Strange and sweetEqually.And familiar,To the eye,As the dearest facesThat a man knows,And as lost homes are:But though older farThan oldest yew,—As our hills are, old,—Worn newAgain and again:Young as our streamsAfter rain:And as dearAs the earth which you proveThat we love.Make me contentWith some sweetnessFrom WalesWhose nightingalesHave no wings,—From Wiltshire and KentAnd Herefordshire,And the villages there,—From the names, and the things,No less.Let me sometimes danceWith you,Or climbOr stand perchanceIn ecstasy,Fixed and freeIn a rhyme,As poets do.TALL NETTLESTall nettles cover up, as they have doneThese many springs, the rusty harrow, the ploughLong worn out, and the roller made of stone:Only the elm butt tops the nettles now.This corner of the farmyard I like most:As well as any bloom upon a flowerI like the dust on the nettles, never lostExcept to prove the sweetness of a shower.THE PATHRunning along a bank, a parapetThat saves from the precipitous wood belowThe level road, there is a path. It servesChildren for looking down the long smooth steep,Between the legs of beech and yew, to whereA fallen tree checks the sight: while men and womenContent themselves with the road, and what they seeOver the bank, and what the children tell.The path, winding like silver, trickles on,Bordered and ever invaded by thinnest mossThat tries to cover roots and crumbling chalkWith gold, olive, and emerald, but in vain.The children wear it. They have flattened the bankOn top, and silvered it between the mossWith the current of their feet, year after year.But the road is houseless, and leads not to school.To see a child is rare there, and the eyeHas but the road, the wood that overhangsAnd underyawns it, and the path that looksAs if it led on to some legendaryOr fancied place where men have wished to goAnd stay; till, sudden, it ends where the wood ends.SWEDESThey have taken the gable from the roof of clayOn the long swede pile. They have let in the sunTo the white and gold and purple of curled frondsUnsunned. It is a sight more tender-gorgeousAt the wood-corner where Winter moans and dripsThan when, in the Valley of the Tombs of Kings,A boy crawls down into a Pharaoh's tombAnd, first of Christian men, beholds the mummy,God and monkey, chariot and throne and vase,Blue pottery, alabaster, and gold.But dreamless long-dead Amen-hotep lies.This is a dream of Winter, sweet as Spring.W. J. TURNERROMANCEWhen I was but thirteen or soI went into a golden land,Chimborazo, CotopaxiTook me by the hand.My father died, my brother too,They passed like fleeting dreams.I stood where PopocatapetlIn the sunlight gleams.I dimly heard the Master's voiceAnd boys far-off at play,Chimborazo, CotopaxiHad stolen me away.I walked in a great golden dreamTo and fro from school—Shining PopocatapetlThe dusty streets did rule.I walked home with a gold dark boyAnd never a word I'd say,Chimborazo, CotopaxiHad taken my speech away:I gazed entranced upon his faceFairer than any flower—O shining PopocatapetlIt was thy magic hour:The houses, people, traffic seemedThin fading dreams by day,Chimborazo, CotopaxiThey had stolen my soul away!THE CAVES OF AUVERGNEHe carved the red deer and the bullUpon the smooth cave rock,Returned from war with belly full,And scarred with many a knock,He carved the red deer and the bullUpon the smooth cave rock.The stars flew by the cave's wide door,The clouds wild trumpets blew,Trees rose in wild dreams from the floor,Flowers with dream faces grewUp to the sky, and softly hungGolden and white and blue.The woman ground her heap of corn,Her heart a guarded fire;The wind played in his trembling soulLike a hand upon a lyre,The wind drew faintly on the stoneSymbols of his desire:The red deer of the forest dark,Whose antlers cut the sky,That vanishes into the mirkAnd like a dream flits by,And by an arrow slain at lastIs but the wind's dark body.The bull that stands in marshy lakesAs motionless and stillAs a dark rock jutting from a plainWithout a tree or hill;The bull that is the sign of life,Its sombre, phallic will.And from the dead, white eyes of themThe wind springs up anew,It blows upon the trembling heart,And bull and deer renewTheir flitting life in the dim pastWhen that dead Hunter drew.I sit beside him in the night,And, fingering his red stone,I chase through endless forests darkSeeking that thing unknown,That which is not red deer or bull,But which by them was shown:By those stiff shapes in which he drewHis soul's exalted cry,When flying down the forest darkHe slew and knew not why,When he was filled with song, and strengthFlowed to him from the sky.The wind blows from red deer and bull,The clouds wild trumpets blare.Trees rise in wild dreams from the earth,Flowers with dream faces stare,O Hunter, your own shadow standsWithin your forest lair!ECSTASYI saw a frieze on whitest marble drawnOf boys who sought for shells along the shore,Their white feet shedding pallor in the sea,The shallow sea, the spring-time sea of greenThat faintly creamed against the cold, smooth pebbles.The air was thin, their limbs were delicate,The wind had graven their small eager handsTo feel the forests and the dark nights of AsiaBehind the purple bloom of the horizon,Where sails would float and slowly melt away.Their naked, pure, and grave, unbroken silenceFilled the soft air as gleaming, limpid waterFills a spring sky those days when rain is lyingIn shattered bright pools on the wind-dried roads,And their sweet bodies were wind-purified.One held a shell unto his shell-like earAnd there was music carven in his face,His eyes half-closed, his lips just breaking openTo catch the lulling, mazy, coralline roarOf numberless caverns filled with singing seas.And all of them were hearkening as to singingOf far off voices thin and delicate,Voices too fine for any mortal mindTo blow into the whorls of mortal ears—And yet those sounds flowed from their grave, sweet faces.And as I looked I heard that delicate music,And I became as grave, as calm, as stillAs those carved boys. I stood upon that shore,I felt the cool sea dream around my feet,My eyes were staring at the far horizon:And the wind came and purified my limbs,And the stars came and set within my eyes,And snowy clouds rested upon my shoulders,And the blue sky shimmered deep within me,And I sang like a carven pipe of music.KENT IN WARThe pebbly brook is cold to-night,Its water soft as air,A clear, cold, crystal-bodied windShadowless and bare,Leaping and running in this worldWhere dark-horned cattle stare:Where dark-horned cattle stare, hoof-firmOn the dark pavements of the sky,And trees are mummies swathed in sleep,And small dark hills crowd wearily:Soft multitudes of snow-grey cloudsWithout a sound march by.Down at the bottom of the roadI smell the woody dampOf that cold spirit in the grass,And leave my hill-top camp—Its long gun pointing in the sky—Andtake the Moon for lamp.I stop beside the bright cold glintOf that thin spirit of the grass,So gay it is, so innocent!I watch its sparkling footsteps passLightly from smooth round stone to stone,Hid in the dew-hung grass.My lamp shines in the globes of dew,And leaps into that crystal windRunning along the shaken grassTo each dark hole that it can find—The crystal wind, the Moon my lamp,Have vanished in a wood that's blind.High lies my small, my shadowy camp,Crowded about by small dark hills;With sudden small white flowers the skyAbove the woods' dark greenness fills;And hosts of dark-browed, muttering treesIn trance the white Moon stills.I move among their tall grey forms,A thin moon-glimmering, wandering Ghost,Who takes his lantern through the worldIn search of life that he has lost,While watching by that long lean gunUpon his small hill post.DEATHWhen I am dead a few poor souls shall grieveAs I grieved for my brother long ago.Scarce did my eyes grow dim,I had forgotten him;I was far-off hearing the spring winds blow,And many summers burnedWhen, though still reeling with my eyes aflame,I heard that faded nameWhispered one Spring amid the hurrying worldFrom which, years gone, he turned.I looked up at my windows and I sawThe trees, thin spectres sucked forth by the moon.The air was very stillAbove a distant hill;It was the hour of night's full silver moon."O art thou there my brother?" my soul cried;And all the pale stars down bright rivers wept,As my heart sadly creptAbout the empty hills, bathed in that lightThat lapped him when he died.Ah! it was cold, so cold; do I not knowHow dead my heart on that remembered day!Clear in a far-away placeI see his delicate faceJust as he called me from my solitary play,Giving into my hands a tiny tree.We planted it in the dark, blossomless groundGravely, without a sound;Then back I went and left him standing byHis birthday gift to me.In that far land perchance it quietly growsDrinking the rain, making a pleasant shade;Birds in its branches flyOut of the fathomless skyWhere worlds of circling light arise and fade,Blindly it quivers in the bright flood of day,Or drowned in multitudinous shouts of rainGlooms o'er the dark-veiled plain—Buriedbelow, the ghost that's in his bonesDreams in the sodden clay.And, while he faded, drunk with beauty's eyesI kissed bright girls and laughed deep in dumb trees,That stared fixt in the airLike madmen in despairGaped up from earth with the escaping breeze.I saw earth's exaltation slowly creepOut of their myriad sky-embracing veins.I laughed along the lanes,Meeting Death riding in from the hollow seasThrough black-wreathed woods asleep.I laughed, I swaggered on the cold, hard groundThrough the grey air trembled a falling wave—"Thou'rt pale, O Death!" I cried,Mocking him in my pride;And passing I dreamed not of that lonely grave,But of leaf-maidens whose pale, moon-like handsAbove the tree-foam waved in the icy air,Sweeping with shining hairThrough the green-tinted sky, one moment fledOut of immortal lands.One windless Autumn night the Moon came outIn a white sea of cloud, a field of snow;In darkness shaped of trees,I sank upon my kneesAnd watched her shining, from the small wood below—Faintly Death flickered in an owl's far cry—We floated soundless in the great gulf of space,Her light upon my face—Immortal,shining in that dark wood I kneltAnd knew I could not die.And knew I could not die—O Death did'st thouHeed my vain glory, standing pale by thy dead?There is a spirit who grievesAmid earth's dying leaves;Was't thou that wept beside my brother's bed?For I did never mourn nor heed at allHim passing on his temporal elm-wood bier;I never shed a tear.The drooping sky spread grey-winged through my soul,While stones and earth did fall.That sound rings down the years—I hear it yet—All earthly life's a winding funeral—And though I never wept,But into the dark coach stept,Dreaming by night to answer the blood's sweet call,She who stood there, high breasted, with small wise lips,And gave me wine to drink and bread to eat,Has not more steadfast feet,But fades from my arms as fade from mariners' eyesThe sea's most beauteous ships.The trees and hills of earth were once as closeAs my own brother, they are becoming dreamsAnd shadows in my eyes;More dimly liesGuaya deep in my soul, the coastline gleamsFaintly along the darkening crystalline seas.Glimmering and lovely still, 'twill one day go;The surging dark will flowOver my hopes and joys, and blot out allEarth's hills and skies and trees.I shall look up one night and see the MoonFor the last time shining above the hills,And thou, silent, wilt rideOver the dark hillside.'Twill be, perchance, the time of daffodils—"How come those bright immortals in the woods?Their joy being young, did'st thou not drag them allInto dark graves ere Fall?"Shall life thus haunt me, wondering, as I goTo thy deep solitudes?There is a figure with a down-turned torchCarved on a pillar in an olden time,A calm and lovely boyWho comes not to destroyBut to lead age back to its golden prime.Thus did an antique sculptor draw thee, Death,With smooth and beauteous brow and faint sweet smile,Nor haggard, gaunt and vile,And thou perhaps art Him to whom men mayUnvexed, give up their breath.But in my soul thou sittest like a dreamAmong earth's mountains, by her dim-coloured seas;A wild unearthly ShapeIn thy dark-glimmering cape,Piping a tune of wavering melodies,Thou sittest, ay, thou sittest at the feastOf my brief life among earth's bright-wreathed flowers,Stemming the dancing hoursWith sombre gleams until abrupt, thou risestAnd all, at once, is ceased.SOLDIERS IN A SMALL CAMPThere is a camp upon a rounded hillWhere men do sleep more closely to the stars,And tree-like shapes stand at its entrances,Beside the small, dark, shadow-soldiery.Deep in the gloom of days of isolation,Withdrawn, high up from the low, murmuring town,Those shadows sit, drooping around their fires,Or move as winds dark-waving in a wood.Staring at cattle on a neighbouring hillThey are oblivious as is stone or grass—Theclouds passed voiceless over, and the sunRose, and lit trees, and vanished utterly.Then in the awful beauty of the world,When stars are singing in dark ecstasy,Those ox-like soldiers sit collected roundA thin, metallic echo of human song:And click their feet and clap their hands in time,And wag their heads, and make the white ghost owlFlit from its branch—but still those tree-like shapesStand like archangels dark-winged in the sky.And presently the soldiers cease to stir;The thin voice sinks and all at once is dead;They lie down on their planks and hear the wind,And feel the darkness fumbling at their souls.They lie in rows as stiff as tombs or trees,Their eyeballs imageless, like marble still;And secretly they feel that roof and wallsAre gone and that they stare into the sky.It is so black, so black, so black, so black,Those black-winged shapes have stretched across the world,Have swallowed up the stars, and if the sunRises again, it will be black, black, black.A RITUAL DANCEI—THE DANCEIn the black glitter of night the grey vapour forestLies a dark Ghost in the water, motionless, dark,Like a corpse by the bank fallen, and hopelessly rottingWhere the thin silver soul of the stars silently dances.The flowers are closed, the birds are carved on the trees,When out of the forest glide hundreds of spear-holding shadows,In smooth dark ivory bodies their eyeballs gleamingForming a gesturing circle beneath the Moon.The bright-eyed shadows, the tribe in ritual gathered,Are dancing and howling, the embryo soul of a nation:In loud drum-beating monotonous the tightly stretched skinsOf oxen that stared at the stars are singing wild paeans:Wild paeans for food that magically grew in the clearingsWhen he that was slain was buried and is resurrected,And a green mist arose from the mud and shone in the Moon,A great delirium of faces, a new generation.The thin wafer Moon it is there, it is there in the sky,The hand-linked circle raise faces of mad exaltation—Dance, O you Hunters, leap madly upon the flung shields,Shoot arrows into the sky, thin moon-seeking needles:Now you shall have a harvest, a belly-full rapture,There shall be many fat women, full grown, and smoother than honey,Their limbs like ivory rounded, and firm as a berry,Their lips full of food and their eyes full of hunger for men!The heat of the earth arises, a faint love mistWan with over-desiring, and in the marshesBlindly the mud stirs, clouding the dark shining water,And troubling the still soft swarms of fallen stars.There is bright sweat upon the bodies of cattle,Great vials of life motionless in the moonlight,Breathing faint mists over the warm, damp ground;And the cry of a dancer rings through the shadowy forest.The tiger is seeking his mate and his glassy eyesAre purple and shot with starlight in the grass shining,The fiery grass tortured out of the mud and writhingUnder the sun, now shivering and pale in the Moon.The shadows are dancing, dancing, dancing, dancing:The grey vapour amis of the forest lie dreaming around them;The cold, shining moonlight falls from their bodies and faces,But caught in their eyes lies prisoned and faintly gleaming:And they return to their dwellings within the grey forest,Into their dark huts, burying the moonlight with them,Burying the trees and the stars and the flowing river,And the glittering spears, and their dark, evocative gestures.II—SLEEPHollow the world in the moonlit hour when the birds are shadows small,Lost in the swarm of giant leaves and myriad branches tall;When vast thick boughs hang across the sky like solid limbs of night,Dug from still quarries of grey-black air by the pale transparent light,And the purple and golden blooms of the sun, each crimson andspotted flower,Are folded up or have faded away, as the still intangible powerFloats out of the sky, falls shimmering down, a silver-shadowy bloom,On the spear-pointed forest a fragile crown, in the soul a soft,bright gloom;Hollow the world when the shadow of man lies prone and still on its floor,And the moonlight shut from his empty heart weeps softly against his door,And his terror and joy but a little dream in the corner of his house,And his voice dead in the darkness 'mid the twittering of a mouse.III.Hollow the world! hollow the world!And its dancers shadow-grey;And the Moon a silver-shadowy bloomFading and fading away;And the forest's grey vapour, and all the trees