And yet--sometimes I seem to know I shall not 'scape his phantom bow; More paramount than death or pain, This ghost will follow where I go. In some well-kept untroubled hell Where frustrate souls like mine may dwell, I shall look up and hear his note Coming across the asphodel. No shades will gather at his tune To dance their ghostly rigadoon, Only that lonely voice will cleave The everlasting afternoon. FALSTAFF'S PAGE _To Reginald Sheffield_ In blaze of curls and cowslip-colored coat He pranks a way before the wheezing Knight. Tall Windsor shows no blossom like this wight By park or sedgy pool or bearded moat; A skylark burbles in that milk-white throat, And I have heard him down a singing stream, Ere the brute morn shattered my happy dream Upon the sill, and weeping I awoke. We had a music once; a poesie Sweet as a maiden, lissome as this lad, Full of rich merriment and gentle joy; That other England lives and laughs in thee, A peal of morris-music, blithe and glad, Thou spray of bloom! Thou flower of a boy! A DULL SUNDAY (_After Debussy_) It has been a long day, A long, long day; And now in floods of twilight, In long green waves of sunset softly flowing, Evening. It is evening over the great towns, It is evening in our hearts. And though the last frail tendrils And flowers of incense Have long ago uncurled themselves around The cynical Cathedral, I hear the thin white voices of children, Little girls and little boys, Calling the name of Jesus And His most Sacred Heart, Singing about a kind of parish heaven, A little walled city, all golden and lilac, Like the one seen by Francois Villon's mother In an old, bituminous, smoke-bitten painting Of the Middle Ages. And in this faith she wished to live and die. * * * * * [Transcriber's Note: Untitled poems whose titles are omitted in the body of the text as originally published have had their conventional "first line" titles (as seen in the table of contents) added to the body of this transcription. They are enclosed in square brackets as an indication to the reader.]