Of summer evening chases in the garden When you dodged us all about with a bone: We were three boys, and you were the cleverest, But now we're two alone. When summer comes again, And the long sunsets fade, We shall have to go on playing the feeble game for two That since the war we've played. And though you run expectant as you always do To the uniforms we meet, You'll never find Willy among all the soldiers In even the longest street, Nor in any crowd; yet, strange and bitter thought, Even now were the old words said, If I tried the old trick and said 'Where's Willy?' You would quiver and lift your head, And your brown eyes would look to ask if I was serious, And wait for the word to spring. Sleep undisturbed: I shan't say 'that' again, You innocent old thing. I must sit, not speaking, on the sofa, While you lie asleep on the floor; For he's suffered a thing that dogs couldn't dream of, And he won't be coming here any more. THE LILY OF MALUD The lily of Malud is born in secret mud. It is breathed like a word in a little dark ravine Where no bird was ever heard and no beast was ever seen, And the leaves are never stirred by the panther's velvet sheen. It blooms once a year in summer moonlight, In a valley of dark fear full of pale moonlight: It blooms once a year, and dies in a night, And its petals disappear with the dawn's first light; And when that night has come, black small-breasted maids, With ecstatic terror dumb, steal fawn-like through the shades To watch, hour by hour, the unfolding of the flower. When the world is full of night, and the moon reigns alone And drowns in silver light the known and the unknown, When each hut is a mound, half blue-silver and half black, And casts upon the ground the hard shadow of its back, When the winds are out of hearing and the tree-tops never shake, When the grass in the clearing is silent but awake 'Neath a moon-paven sky: all the village is asleep And the babes that nightly cry dream deep: From the doors the maidens creep, Tiptoe over dreaming curs, soft, so soft, that not one stirs, And stand curved and a-quiver, like bathers by a river, Looking at the forest wall, groups of slender naked girls, Whose black bodies shine like pearls where the moonbeams fall. They have waked, they knew not why, at a summons from the night, They have stolen fearfully from the dark to the light, Stepping over sleeping men, who have moved and slept again: And they know not why they go to the forest, but they know, As their moth-feet pass to the shore of the grass And the forest's dreadful brink, that their tender spirits shrink: They would flee, but cannot turn, for their eyelids burn With still frenzy, and each maid, ere she leaves the moonlit space, If she sees another's face is thrilled and afraid.