mp of feet,
Louder than the crash of bells,
Louder than the blare of bands, victorious,
Shrieks the inextinguishable laughter of the gods.

The old houses rock with it,
And wag their great peaked heads,
The old gates shake,
And the pavings ring with it,
As with the iron tramp of old fighters,
As with the clank of heels of the victorious,
By long ages vanquished.
The spouts in the gurgling fountains
Wrinkle their shiny griffin faces,
Splash the rhythm in their ice-fringed basins--
Of the inextinguishable laughter of the gods.

And far up into the inky sky,
Where great trailing clouds stride across the world,
Darkening the spired cities,
And the villages folded in the hollows of hills,
And the shining cincture of railways,
And the pale white twining roads,
Sounds with the stir of quiet monotonous breath
Of men and women stretched out sleeping,
Sounds with the thin wail of pain
Of hurt things huddled in darkness,
Sounds with the victorious racket
Of speeches and soldiers drinking,
Sounds with the silence of the swarming dead--
The inextinguishable laughter of the gods.

IX

O I would take my pen and write
In might of words
A pounding dytheramb
Alight with teasing fires of hate,
Or drone to numbness in the spell
Of old loves long lived away
A drowsy vilanelle.
O I would build an Ark of words,
A safe ciborium where to lay
The secret soul of loveliness.
O I would weave of words in rhythm
A gaudily wrought pall
For the curious cataphalque of fate.

But my pen does otherwise.

All I can write is the orange tinct with crimson
of the beaks of the goose
and of the wet webbed feet of the geese
that crackle the skimming of ice
and curve their white plump necks to the water
in the manure-stained rivulet
that runs down the broad village street;
and of their cantankerous dancings and hissings,
with beaks tilted up, half open
and necks stiffly extended;
and the cure's habit blowing in the stinging wind
and his red globular face
like a great sausage burst in the cooking
that smiles
as he takes the shovel hat off his head with a gesture,
the hat held at arm's length,
sweeping a broad curve, like a censor well swung;
and, beyond the last grey gabled house in the villag