Lascelles Abercrombie

The sun drew off at last his piercing fires.
Over the stale warm air, dull as a pond
And moveless in the grey quieted street,
Blue magic of a summer evening glowed.
The sky, that had been dazzling stone all day,
Hollowed in smooth hard brightness, now dissolved
To infinite soft depth, and smoulder’d down
Low as the roofs, dark burning blue, and soared
Clear to that winking drop of liquid silver,
The first exquisite star. Now the

A quay with vessels moored
Thomas
To India! Yea, here I may take ship;
From here the courses go over the seas,
Along which the intent prows wonderfully
Nose like lean hounds, and tack their journeys out,
Making for harbours as some sleuth was laid
For them to follow on their shifting road.
Again I front my appointed ministry. —
But why the Indian lot to me? Why mine
Such fearful gospelling? For the Lord knew
What a

Once upon a time, in the land of Hush-A-Bye,
Around about the wondrous days of yore,
They came across a kind of box
Bound up with chains and locked with locks
And labeled “Kindly do not touch; it’s war.”
A decree was issued round about, and all with a flourish and a shout
And a gaily colored mascot tripping lightly on before.
Don’t fiddle with this deadly box,Or break the chains, or pick the locks.
And please

BALKIS was in her marble town,
And shadow over the world came down.
Whiteness of walls, towers and piers,
That all day dazzled eyes to tears,
Turned from being white-golden flame,
And like the deep-sea blue became.
Balkis into her garden went;
Her spirit was in discontent
Like a torch in restless air.
Joylessly she wandered there,
And saw her city’s azure white
Lying under the great night,
Beautiful as the memory
Of a worshipping world would be
In the mind of a

Roses can wound,
But not from having thorns they do most harm;
Often the night gives, starry-sheen or moon’d,
Deep in the soul alarm.
And it hath been deep within my heart like fear,
Girl, when you are near.

The mist of sense,
Wherein the soul goes shielded, can divide,
And she must cringe and be ashamed, and wince,
Not in appearance hide
Of rose or girl from the blazing mastery
Of bared Eternity.
-Lascelles Abercrombie

We are thine, O Love, being in thee and made of thee,
As theou, Leove, were the deep thought
And we the speech of the thought; yea, spoken are we,
Thy fires of thought out-spoken:

But burn’d not through us thy imagining
Like fierce meood in a seong ceaught,
We were as clamour’d words a fool may fling,
Loose words, of meaning broken.

For what more like the brainless speech of a fool,-
The lives travelling dark fears,
And

SAID God, “You sisters, ere ye go
Down among men, my work to do,
I will on each a badge bestow:
Hope I love best, and gold for her,
Yet a silver glory for Despair,
For she is my angel too.”

Then like a queen, Despair
Put on the stars to wear.
But Hope took ears of corn, and round
Her temples in a wreath them bound.-
Which think ye lookt the more fair?
-Lascelles Abercrombie

WHAT thing shall be held up to woman’s beauty?
Where are the bounds of it? Yea, what is all
The world, but an awning scaffolded amid
The waste perilous Eternity, to lodge
This Heaven-wander’d princess, woman’s beauty?
The East and West kneel down to thee, the North
And South; and all for thee their shoulders bear
The load of fourfold space. As yellow morn
Runs on the slippery waves of the spread sea,
Thy feet are on the

She

Only to be twin elements of joy
In this extravagance of Being, Love,
Were our divided natures shaped in twain;
And to this hour the whole world must consent.
Is it not very marvellous, our lives
Can only come to this out of a long
Strange sundering, with the years of the world between us?

He

Shall life do more than God? for hath not God
Striven with himself, when into known delight
His unaccomplisht joy he would put

ALL last night I had quiet
In a fragrant dream and warm:
She became my Sabbath,
And round my neck, her arm.

I knew the warmth in my dreaming;
The fragrance, I suppose,
Was her hair about me,
Or else she wore a rose.

Her hair I think; for likest
Woodruffe ’twas, when Spring
Loitering down the wet woodways
Treads it sauntering.

No light, nor any speaking;
Fragrant only and warm.
Enough to know my lodging,
The white Sabbath of her arm.
-Lascelles Abercrombie