Cloudy ammonia, camels in your bath: The earth hath bubbles as the water hath: He was not of them, too, too solidly Always himself. What foam of kissing lips, Pouting, parting with the ghost of the seven sips One smacks for hiccoughs! Pitiable to be Quite so deplorably naked when one strips. There was his scar, a panel of old rose Slashed in the elegant buff of his trunk hose; Adonis punctured by his amorous boar, Permanent souvenir of the Great War. One of God’s jokes, typically good, That wound of his. How perfect that he should Have suffered it for—what? II OH, the dear front page of the _Times_! Chronicle of essential history: Marriage, birth, and the sly mysteriousness Of lovers’ greetings, of lovers’ meetings, And dirty death, impartially paid To courage and the old decayed. But nobody had been born to-day, Nobody married that he knew, Nobody died and nobody even killed; He felt a little aggrieved— Nobody even killed. But, to make up: “Tuesday, Colchester train: Wanted Brown Eyes’ address, with a view to meeting again.” Dear Brown Eyes, it had been nice of her To talk so friendly to a lonely traveller! Why is it nobody ever talks to me? And now, here was a letter from Helen. Better to open it rather than thus Dwell in a long muse and maze Over the scrawled address and the postmark, Staring stupidly. Love—was there no escape? Was it always there, always there? The same huge and dominant shape, Like Windsor Castle leaning over the plain; And the letter a vista cut through the musing forest, At the end the old Round Tower, Singing its refrain: Here we are, here we are, here we are again! The life so short, so vast love’s science and art, So many conditions of felicity. “Darling, will you become a part Of my poor physiology? And, my beloved, may I have The latchkey of your history? And while this corpse is what it is Dear, we must share geographies.” So many conditions of felicity. And now time was a widening gulf and space, A fixed between, and fate still kept them apart. Her voice quite gone; distance had blurred her face. The life so short, so vast love’s science and art. So many conditions—and yet, once, Four whole days, Four short days of perishing time, They had fulfilled them all. But that was long ago, ah! long ago, Like the last horse bus, or the Christmas pantomime, Or the Bells, oh, the Bells, of Edgar Allan Poe.