In Hyde Park
The white mist walks between the trees
In silver gown;
Her mystic floating draperies
The branches drown;
And lurking there with eager leer
And wonder new,
The lamps inquisitively peer
Their fingers through.
The world sighs wearily, with pain
Drawing tired breath;
The stars are like a silver rain;
And down beneath
On Night's smooth garment running o'er
In sullen flood,
The city, like a festering sore,
Oozes warm blood.
The Garden Of The Sea
THE infinite garden of the sea is His
To play in. Gravely smiling He resigns
To man his choice—this rugged plot of earth,
Watches man tear it with his deep canals,
Wound it with iron rails, scar it with roads,
And spot its pleasant freshness with the sore
Of festering cities, oozing heavy smoke.
He sees and He forgives. Then gently takes
His pliant sea into His yearning hands—
As an old mother might caress a doll
When all her sons are dead—and wistfully
He moulds it. O, that He might so thrust man—
That interloping soul of stubbornness—
The solitary irreconcilable
Of His subservient Universe—within
The grim, unalterable grooves of law!
But, ah! the sea, the fecund woman-sea,
Is His to fashion as He wills! He girds
It round with whitely gleaming paths of beach;
Then, at His word, the blossoms of the spray
Rise on their swaying wave-stalks, bloom and break,
And scatter desolate petals on the foam.
League-long His flower-bordered avenues
In bending sward of blossom run. Lo, now
A winter comes unwonted, heaping high
His garden world with snow of wasted blooms.
Or Spring sweeps in resistless, and the sea
Shimmers—an orchard in her nuptial white!
And sometimes He will smooth His garden plot,
And cover with trim tapestry of grass
Its restless beauty, till there shyly break
The daisies through, like pale hands timorous
And fragile, groping blindly to the sun.
Sometimes he plans great curving pathways, where
'Neath sullen shoulders of cool greenery
The shadows crouch, and high above the sun
Whispers his sunny secrets to the boughs
That sway and ripple everlastingly.
And sometimes, hidden by a moving ridge
From ships that flit like furtive white moths by,
The Master of the garden gravely walks
The cool green paths in reverie along:
Ah, what if I could turn into that lane
Of pulsing wave, and see Him pacing there,
As once of old they saw Him, with that look
Of wistful sadness on His old kind face!
Bayswater.W.
About me leagues of houses lie,
Above me, grim and straight and high,
They climb; the terraces lean up
Like long grey reefs against the sky.
Packed tier on tier the people dwell;
Each narrow, hollow wall is full;
And in that hive of honeycomb,
Remote and high, I have one cell.
And when I turn into my street
I hear in murmurous retreat
A tide of noises flowing out --
The city ebbing from my feet!
And lo! two long straight walls between,
There dwells a little park serene,
Where blackened trees and railings hem
A little handkerchief of green!
Yet I can see across the roof
The sun, the stars and . . . God! For proof --
Between the twisting chimney-pots
A pointing finger, old, aloof!
The traffic that the city rends
Within my quiet haven ends
In a deep murmur, or across
My pool a gentle ripple sends.
A chime upon the silence drab
Paints music; hooting motors stab
The pleasant peace; and, far and faint,
The jangling lyric of the cab!
And when I wander, proud and free,
Through my domain, unceasingly
The endless pageant of the shops
Marches along the street with me.
About me ever blossoming
Like rich parterres the hoardings fling
An opulence of hue, and make
Within my garden endless Spring.
The droning tram-cars spitting light:
And like great bees in drunken flight
Burly and laden deep with bloom,
The 'busses lumbering home at night!
Sometimes an afternoon will fling
New meaning on each sombre thing,
And low upon the level roofs
The sultry sun lies smouldering.
Sometimes the fog -- that faery girl --
Her veil of wonder will unfurl,
And crescent gaunt and looming flat
Are sudden mysteries of pearl!
New miracles the wet streets show;
On stems of flame the gas-lamps glow.
I walk upon the wave and see
Another London drowned below!
And when night comes strange jewels strew
The winding streets I wander through:
Like pearls upon a woman's throat
The street-lamps' swerving avenue!
In every face that passes mine
Unfathomed epics I divine:
Each figure on the pavement is
A vial of untasted wine!
Through lands enchanted wandering,
To all a splendour seems to cling.
Lo! from a window-beacon high
Hope still the Night is questioning!
And so, ere sleep, I lie and mark
Romance's stealthy footsteps. Hark!
The rhythm of the horse's hoof
Bears some new drama through the dark!
So in this tall and narrow street
I lie as in Death's lone retreat
And hear, loud in the pulse of Life,
Eternity upon me beat!
