Like a new sense these venture In the veins and lo, All the blood is musical In its beat and flow; And we wait wondering What new thing we know. III TO A POET Woo a little choir of words, Teach them to sing; Let them thrill the air like birds Love-summoning. Thread the silence with a lute, Sound the spiral of a flute. ... Vain, but vain. The words are mute. Open now your own heart Where a rose may be; Live your love and use your art, Make melody, For your joy, your joy is there, Sing the secret thing you bear! ... Only silence everywhere. ... Show the ancient pain that lies With remembered things Down the dark within your eyes Where nothing sings. Now at last there throng Images that waited long, And the silence flowers in song. EXERCISE IN SPENSERIANS The air is purged of gold and in its stead Is poured a fire of silver on the green; And now the moon new-risen from the dead Of dearer nights than this finds her demesne Lonely of stars, as they to greet their queen Had rushed in argent riot from the blue To spill themselves like flowers or waste unseen In stealing perfumes that elude and woo As now eludes now woos the wind the sweet night through. Down from her turret when the dusk was new The Lady Margot stepped and lured by wile Of faint near things that croon of what they do With wandering touch she thought to walk the while The hours were printless on the idle dial. Deep in a garden lamped with lily bells Which hold the light as does some opal vial She took her way near where a fountain wells And wakes its rainbow ribbons into madrigals. Fluttering she peered within the hollow gloom That cloistered a wild wood beyond the wall; For shapes are woven by the troubled loom Of night; and tremulous tapestries oft fall Across familiar paths and make them all Astir with effigies that snarl and grin And take strange steps along a horrid hall Which is by day a lane of leaves within; As if at night a holy nun should dream of sin. At length she reached a little windless glade Fragrant with natal April not long flown And dreamful of the days when lips were laid On lips that trembled as they found their own. There where the mooned close was thickest sown With shadows was the lady met with one Who sat with drooping head and made soft moan. He was a stranger knight whose armour shone Bright as the molten golden javelins of the sun.