Little men hurrying, running here and there, Within the dark and stifling walls, dissent From every sound, and shoulder empty hods: 'The god's great altar should stand in the crypt Among our earth's foundations'--'The god's great altar Must be the last far coping of our work'-- It should inaugurate the broad main stair'-- 'Or end it'--'It must stand toward the East!' But here a grave contemptuous youth cries out 'Womanish babblers, how can we build god's altar Ere we divine its foreordained true shape?' Then one 'It is a pedestal for deeds'-- ''Tis more and should be hewn like the king's brow'-- 'It has the nature of a woman's bosom'-- 'The tortoise, first created, signifies it'-- 'A blind and rudimentary navel shows The source of worship better than horned moons.' Then a lean giant 'Is not a calyx needful?'-- 'Because round grapes on statues well expressed Become the nadir of incense, nodal lamps, Yet apes have hands that cut and carved red crystal'-- 'Birds molten, touchly talc veins bronze buds crumble Ablid ublai ghan isz rad eighar ghaurl ...' Words said too often seemed such ancient sounds That men forgot them or were lost in them; The guttural glottis-chasms of language reached, A rhythm, a gasp, were curves of immortal thought. Man with his bricks was building, building yet, Where dawn and midnight mingled and woke no birds, In the last courses, building past his knowledge A wall that swung--for towers can have no tops, No chord can mete the universal segment, Earth has not basis. Yet the yielding sky, Invincible vacancy, was there discovered-- Though piled-up bricks should pulp the sappy balks, Weight generate a secrecy of heat, Cankerous charring, crevices' fronds of flame. * * * * * RUPERT BROOKE THE OLD VICARAGE, GRANTCHESTER [Cafe des Westens, Berlin] Just now the lilac is in bloom, All before my little room; And in my flower-beds, I think, Smile the carnation and the pink; And down the borders, well I know, The poppy and the pansy blow ... Oh! there the chestnuts, summer through, Beside the river make for you A tunnel of green gloom, and sleep Deeply above; and green and deep The stream mysterious glides beneath, Green as a dream and deep as death.-- Oh, damn! I know it! and I know How the May fields all golden show, And when the day is young and sweet, Gild gloriously the bare feet That run to bathe ... 'Du lieber Gott!' Here am I, sweating, sick, and hot, And there the shadowed waters fresh Lean up to embrace the naked flesh. 'Temperamentvoll' German Jews Drink beer around; and 'there' the dews Are soft beneath a morn of gold. Here tulips bloom as they are told; Unkempt about those hedges blows An English unofficial rose; And there the unregulated sun Slopes down to rest when day is done, And wakes a vague unpunctual star, A slippered Hesper; and there are Meads towards Haslingfield and Coton Where 'das Betreten's' not 'verboten' ...