The darkness in the loft is sweet and warm With the stored hay ... darkness intensified By one bright shaft that enters through the wide Tall doors from under fringes of a storm Which makes the doomed sun brighter. On the hay, Perched mountain-high they sit, and silently Watch the motes dance and look at the dark sky And mark how heartbreakingly far away And yet how close and clear the distance seems, While all at hand is cloud--brightness of dreams Unrealisable, yet seen so clear, So only just beyond the dark. They wait, Scarce knowing what they wait for, half in fear; Expectance draws the curtain from their fate. VII. The silence of the storm weighs heavily On their strained spirits: sometimes one will say Some trivial thing as though to ward away Mysterious powers, that imminently lie In wait, with the strong exorcising grace Of everyday's futility. Desire Becomes upon a sudden a crystal fire, Defined and hard:--If he could kiss her face, Could kiss her hair! As if by chance, her hand Brushes on his ... Ah, can she understand? Or is she pedestalled above the touch Of his desire? He wonders: dare he seek From her that little, that infinitely much? And suddenly she kissed him on the cheek. VIII. MOUNTAINS. A stronger gust catches the cloud and twists A spindle of rifted darkness through its heart, A gash in the damp grey, which, thrust apart, Reveals black depths a moment. Then the mists Shut down again; a white uneasy sea Heaves round the climbers and beneath their feet. He strains on upwards through the wind and sleet, Poised, or swift moving, or laboriously Lifting his weight. And if he should let go, What would he find down there, down there below The curtain of the mist? What would he find Beyond the dim and stifling now and here, Beneath the unsettled turmoil of his mind? Oh, there were nameless depths: he shrank with fear. IX. The hills more glorious in their coat of snow Rise all around him, in the valleys run Bright streams, and there are lakes that catch the sun, And sunlit fields of emerald far below That seem alive with inward light. In smoke The far horizons fade; and there is peace On everything, a sense of blessed release From wilful strife. Like some prophetic cloak The spirit of the mountains has descended On all the world, and its unrest is ended. Even the sea, glimpsed far away, seems still, Hushed to a silver peace its storm and strife. Mountains of vision, calm above fate and will, You hold the promise of the freer life. X. IN THE LITTLE ROOM.