You who made me With first ecstasy When I was sown, And lovely things at night I will not write And burdened moan, While veiny labyrinths with mystery ran Till time and blood were life And I began-- By holier things than God, Or any other shibboleth of man, Dead woman wan, By the thin, silver scream that winter morn In the dim, shuttered room where I was born, Be gone! Haunt me no more, Shroud Trailer, Go to bed. For the swift, golden wings I owe to you Flap in the dust like some loose, common shoe; Stay dead, stay dead! I fear your glimmering bust in utter air, The transparent eyes with shadowy stare, The sleepy, sleepy scent of flowers And the long hands-- They fill me with despair. Touch me no more at night. Borrow no form for me Of sound or sight; For all my days are spent by cluttered streams, Distracted by a thousand things and faces, And all unuttered die great dreams Among the stagnant places. I am not what you gave your life to buy, And God knows what I shall be by and by! The motes of habit sift down grain by grain, Till I am what I am in heart and brain, So young--so old-- Death keep you, darling, Deaf and blind and cold. VALE. I love the little vale between your breasts, But yet, farewell, for that is never still; My garden far from you will be at rest With lakes asleep beside a brooding hill And cedar swales in hollow valley lands With S-like streams between the O-shaped ponds, Where grow frail ferns with upturned Gothic hands And prayerful fronds. In gray half-lights 'twill be a lovely thing By Gypsy paths to wander at hearts-ease Near campaniles where the bell folk sing Down terraces of rustling linden trees, And two hills like your breasts will be in death, When lamps will cast their shadows silently, Will rise still blue above the yellow corn That ripples with a sleepy mystery. AFTERMATH. Under the placid surface of the days So seeming clear, Back of the habits of old ways, A quiet fear; The locked-up memories of war, Our Bluebeard's room, Where the blood creeps underneath the door. Never will come In streams of days that ring Like clean coins down the merry grooves of change, One without grief's alloy, Struck from pure gold of joy, Undimmed by unshed tears, Nor is it strange. For in the wraith-thronged brain Are private ghosts of pain, Aloof, like patient sick men in a crowd With half-veiled faces and old sorrow bowed-- Ah! The free days can never come again! They passed with the far, rolling drums, Died to the moan and thunder of the guns, And the mad, glad, clear, lyric birdsong never comes. HYLAS. _Theocritus, Idyll XIII._ _Where art thou, Hylas, Of the golden locks? Where art thou, Argive lad, That fed thy flocks In wind-swept Thessaly, Beside the sea? Alas! Alas! for thee, Hylas, Alas!_ I.