Ineffable and useable, as near Solidity as human life can be: So grandly fashion these rude elements Into some newer nature, a consciousness Like naked light seizing the all-eyed soul, Oppressing with its gorgeous tyranny Until they take it thus—or die. [_While speaking, he places his hand on the unsuspecting Egyptian’s head and gently, caressingly, pulls his hair back until his chin is above his forehead, and holds him so till he is suffocated. In the darkness ahead is seen the glimmer of javelins and spears: it is Prince Imra’s cohorts come to arrest_ MOSES.] THE END. POEMS FROM CAMP AND TRENCH And like the artist who creates From dying things what never dies.... _Fragment._ DAUGHTERS OF WAR Space beats the ruddy freedom of their limbs, Their naked dances with man’s spirit naked By the root side of the tree of life (The under side of things And shut from earth’s profoundest eyes). I saw in prophetic gleams These mighty daughters in their dances Beckon each soul aghast from its crimson corpse To mix in their glittering dances: I heard the mighty daughters’ giant sighs In sleepless passion for the sons of valour And envy of the days of flesh, Barring their love with mortal boughs across— The mortal boughs, the mortal tree of life. The old bark burnt with iron wars They blow to a live flame To char the young green days And reach the occult soul; they have no softer lure, No softer lure than the savage ways of death. We were satisfied of our lords the moon and the sun To take our wage of sleep and bread and warmth— These maidens came—these strong everliving Amazons, And in an easy might their wrists Of night’s sway and noon’s sway the sceptres brake, Clouding the wild, the soft lustres of our eyes. Clouding the wild lustres, the clinging tender lights; Driving the darkness into the flame of day With the Amazonian wind of them Over our corroding faces That must be broken—broken for evermore, So the soul can leap out Into their huge embraces. Though there are human faces Best sculptures of Deity, And sinews lusted after By the Archangels tall, Even these must leap to the love-heat of these maidens From the flame of terrene days, Leaving grey ashes to the wind—to the wind. One (whose great lifted face, Where wisdom’s strength and beauty’s strength And the thewed strength of large beasts Moved and merged, gloomed and lit) Was speaking, surely, as the earth-men’s earth fell away; Whose new hearing drank the sound Where pictures, lutes, and mountains mixed With the loosed spirit of a thought, Essenced to language thus—