l wrapped perfectly
Upon you, wrapped in indomitable me.

READING A LETTER

SHE sits on the recreation ground
Under an oak whose yellow buds dot the pale
blue sky.
The young grass twinkles in the wind, and the sound
Of the wind in the knotted buds in a canopy.

So sitting under the knotted canopy
Of the wind, she is lifted and carried away as in
a balloon
Across the insensible void, till she stoops to see
The sandy desert beneath her, the dreary platoon.

She knows the waste all dry beneath her, in one
place
Stirring with earth-coloured life, ever turning and
stirring.
But never the motion has a human face
Nor sound, save intermittent machinery whirring.

And so again, on the recreation ground
She alights a stranger, wondering, unused to the
scene;
Suffering at sight of the children playing around,
Hurt at the chalk-coloured tulips, and the even-
ing-green.

TWENTY YEARS AGO

ROUND the house were lilacs and strawberries
And foal-foots spangling the paths,
And far away on the sand-hills, dewberries
Caught dust from the sea's long swaths.

Up the wolds the woods were walking,
And nuts fell out of their hair.
At the gate the nets hung, balking
The star-lit rush of a hare.

In the autumn fields, the stubble
Tinkled the music of gleaning.
At a mother's knees, the trouble
Lost all its meaning.

Yea, what good beginnings
To this sad end!
Have we had our innings?
God forfend!

INTIME

RETURNING, I find her just the same,
At just the same old delicate game.

Still she says: "Nay, loose no flame
To lick me up and do me harm!
Be all yourself!--for oh, the charm
Of your heart of fire in which I look!
Oh, better there than in any book
Glow and enact the dramas and dreams
I love for ever!--there it seems
You are lovelier than life itself, till desire
Comes licking through the bars of your lips
And over my face the stray fire slips,
Leaving a burn and an ugly smart
That will have the oil of illusion. Oh, heart
Of fire and beauty, loose no more
Your reptile flames of lust; ah, store
Your passion in the basket of your soul,
Be all yourself, one bonny, burning coal
That stays with steady joy of its own fire.
But do not seek to take me by desire.
Oh, do not seek to thrust on me your fire!
For in the firing all my porcelain
Of flesh does crackle and shiver and break in pain,
My ivory and marble black with stain,
My veil of sensitiv