When you are old and dancing shadows play Around the sky-blown laughter in your eyes Shall I, unworthy of your new disguise, Forget the sacrament and go away? Shall I adore, like sorrowed men to-day, The child who gurgled in first ecstasies At oxen (Mary said) that mooed surprise And snuffed with wondering muzzles in the hay? O leave the past--the living world is mine Warm, passionate, and breathing. Even so Shall Life in after years make Earth divine And fire shall burn as long as embers glow. But he who babbled to the wondering kine Is dead, long dead, two thousand years ago. KEATS Touch me, O Lord, and let my sonnet ring With echoes. Now his words of crowned belief In raging hours of pain and suffering Too high for praise, too terrible for grief, Ring loud and clear. Last night his chariot rolled And I beheld him urge amid the stars Cloud-fashioned steeds of snow moon-aureoled, Himself a charioteer equipped for wars. Faster and faster--men of Blood and Pain Opposed in vast battalions, but he Rolled back their army to the dark again And triumphed while he sang exultingly As now he sings. Boy of the glowing brain, Dear Keats your name is Paradise to me! MEETING HER IN THE STREET She’s coming down the road! You know Those laughter-woken eyes? I beckon at the stars--But O If she should recognise: Nearer and nearer yet she trod Till (mad blood-dancing joy) Down from the planet-fields of God She nodded, “Hullo, Boy.” HER HOMAGE Silence outlives the argument of kings And best is dumb applause. Behold, she moves: No soft-winged owlets blink, no cricket sings, Before she greets the murmuring world she loves. Now twirling parachutes of sycamore Hang waiting, and the rippled trout-rings die, The murmur round a jasmine honey store Is still--a linnet falters suddenly. From out the reeds an awe-struck otter peers As eerie quiet speeds from bush to bush: High Summer stands on tip-toe as She nears The woods, and magic numbs the missel-thrush: Above still grasses prick the listening ears Of rabbits, and a squirrel whispers “Hush!” REACTION Afraid, afraid, I sought the kindly night In fear that mocking fools should scrutinise The beauty I discovered in men’s eyes, And mock me as a dreaming anchorite. For long in fear I sinned against the light And shrouded Poetry with vain disguise; Before I sang, unconscious as the skies, Self-chanting songs to me supreme delight. But now, O littlest of all little minds, High-browed, alone, aloof, you little know How like you are to Brown, who lifts the blinds Of his suburban villa, just to show That he alone is up, but always finds The neighbourhood awoke an hour ago! APRIL