Failing sometimes to understand Why there are folk whose flesh should seem Like carrion puffed with noisome steam, Fly-blown to the eye that looks on it, Fly-blown to the touch of a hand; Why there are men without any legs, Whizzing along on little trollies With long long arms like apes': Failing to see why God the Topiarist Should train and carve and twist Men's bodies into such fantastic shapes: Yes, failing to see the point of it all, I sometimes wish That I were a fabulous thing in a fool's mind, Or, at the ocean bottom, in a world that is deaf and blind, Very remote and happy, a great goggling fish. ON THE BUS Sitting on the top of the 'bus, I bite my pipe and look at the sky. Over my shoulder the smoke streams out And my life with it. "Conservation of energy," you say. But I burn, I tell you, I burn; And the smoke of me streams out In a vanishing skein of grey. Crash and bump ... my poor bruised body! I am a harp of twittering strings, An elegant instrument, but infinitely second-hand, And if I have not got phthisis it is only an accident. Droll phenomena! POINTS AND LINES Instants in the quiet, small sharp stars, Pierce my spirit with a thrust whose speed Baffles even the grasp of time. Oh that I might reflect them As swiftly, as keenly as they shine. But I am a pool of waters, summer-still, And the stars are mirrored across me; Those stabbing points of the sky Turned to a thread of shaken silver, A long fine thread. PANIC The eyes of the portraits on the wall Look at me, follow me, Stare incessantly: I take it their glance means nothing at all? --Clearly, oh clearly! Nothing at all ... Out in the gardens by the lake The sleeping peacocks suddenly wake; Out in the gardens, moonlit and forlorn, Each of them sounds his mournful horn: Shrill peals that waver and crack and break. What can have made the peacocks wake? RETURN FROM BUSINESS Evenings in trains, When the little black twittering ghosts Along the brims of cuttings, Against the luminous sky, Interrupt with their hurrying rumour every thought Save that one is young and setting, Headlong westering, And there is no recapture. STANZAS Thought is an unseen net wherein our mind Is taken and vainly struggles to be free: Words, that should loose our spirit, do but bind New fetters on our hoped-for liberty: And action bears us onward like a stream Past fabulous shores, scarce seen in our swift course; Glorious--and yet its headlong currents seem Backwaters of some nobler purer force.