Thy hand my hand, Thine eyes my eyes, All of thee Caught and confused with me: My hand thy hand, My eyes thine eyes, All of me Sunken and discovered anew in thee.... No: still A foreign mind, A thought By other yet uncaught; A secret will Strange as the wind: The heart of thee Bewildering with strange fire the heart in me. Hand touches hand, Eye to eye beckons, But who shall guess Another's loneliness? Though hand grasp hand, Though the eye quickens, Still lone as night Remain thy spirit and mine, past touch and sight. NIGHT AND NIGHT The earth is purple in the evening light, The grass is graver green. The gold among the meadows darker glows, In the quieted air the blackbird sings more loud. The sky has lost its rose-- Nothing more than this candle now shines bright. Were there but natural night, how easy were The putting-by of sense At the day's end, and if no heavier air Came o'er the mind in a thick-falling cloud. But now there is no light Within; and to this innocent night how dark my night! THE HERD The roaming sheep, forbidden to roam far, Were stayed within the shadow of his eye. The sheep-dog on that unseen shadow's edge Moved, halted, barked, while the tall shepherd stood Unmoving, leaned upon a sarsen stone, Looking at the rain that curtained the bare hills And drew the smoking curtain near and near!-- Tawny, bush-faced, with cloak and staff, and flask And bright brass-ribb'd umbrella, standing stone Against the veinless, senseless sarsen stone. The Roman Road hard by, the green Ridge Way, Not older seemed, nor calmer the long barrows Of bones and memories of ancient days Than the tall shepherd with his craft of days Older than Roman or the oldest caveman, When, in the generation of all living, Sheep and kine flocked in the Aryan valley and The first herd with his voice and skill of water Fleetest of foot, led them into green pastures, From perished pastures to new green. I saw The herdsmen everywhere about the world, And herdsmen of all time, fierce, lonely, wise, Herds of Arabia and Syria And Thessaly, and longer-winter'd climes; And this lone herd, ages before England was, Pelt-clad, and armed with flint-tipped ashen sap, Watching his flocks, and those far flocks of stars Slow moving as the heavenly shepherd willed And at dawn shut into the sunny fold. * * * * * WILFRID WILSON GIBSON WINGS As a blue-necked mallard alighting in a pool Among marsh-marigolds and splashing wet Green leaves and yellow blooms, like jewels set In bright, black mud, with clear drops crystal-cool, Bringing keen savours of the sea and stir Of windy spaces where wild sunsets flame To that dark inland dyke, the thought of her Into my brooding stagnant being came.