Do you remember How night after night swept level and low Overhead, at home, and had not one star, Nor one narrow gate for the moon to go Forth to her field of November. And you remember, How towards the north a red blot on the sky Burns like a blotch of anxiety Over the forges, and small flames ply Like ghosts the shadow of the ember. Those were the days When it was awful autumn to me, When only there glowed on the dark of the sky The red reflection of her agony, My beloved smelting down in the blaze Of death--my dearest Love who had borne, and was now leaving me. And I at the foot of her cross did suffer My own gethsemane. So I came to you, And twice, after great kisses, I saw The rim of the moon divinely rise And strive to detach herself from the raw Blackened edge of the skies. Strive to escape; With her whiteness revealing my sunken world Tall and loftily shadowed. But the moon Never magnolia-like unfurled Her white, her lamp-like shape. For you told me no, And bade me not to ask for the dour Communion, offering--"a better thing." So I lay on your breast for an obscure hour Feeling your fingers go Like a rhythmic breeze Over my hair, and tracing my brows, Till I knew you not from a little wind: --I wonder now if God allows Us only one moment his keys. If only then You could have unlocked the moon on the night, And I baptized myself in the light Of your love; we both have entered then the white Pure passion, and never again. I wonder if only You had taken me then, how different Life would have been: should I have spent Myself in waste, and you have bent Your pride, through being lonely? BEI HENNEF The little river twittering in the twilight, The wan, wondering look of the pale sky, This is almost bliss. And everything shut up and gone to sleep, All the troubles and anxieties and pain Gone under the twilight. Only the twilight now, and the soft "Sh!" of the river That will last for ever. And at last I know my love for you is here, I can see it all, it is whole like the twilight, It is large, so large, I could not see it before Because of the little lights and flickers and interruptions, Troubles, anxieties and pains. You are the call and I am the answer, You are the wish, and I the fulfilment, You are the night, and I the day. What else--it is perfect enough, It is perfectly complete, You and I, What more----? Strange, how we suffer in spite of this! LIGHTNING I felt the lurch and halt of her heart Next my breast, where my own heart was beating; And I laughed to feel it plunge and bound, And strange in my blood-swept ears was the sound Of the words I kept repeating, Repeating with tightened arms, and the hot blood's blindfold art.