Later Poems

								

I go to meet him as he goes;

   I know his note, his lay,
His colour and his morning rose;

   And I confess his day.
My window waits; at dawn I hark

   His call; at morn I meet
His haste around the tossing park

   And down the softened street;
The gentler light is his; the dark,

   The grey--he turns it sweet.
So too, so too, do I confess

   My poet when he sings.
He rushes on my mortal guess

   With his immortal things.
I feel, I know him.  On I press--

   He finds me 'twixt his wings.

NOVEMBER BLUE

   The colour of the electric lights has a strange effect in giving a

   complementary tint to the air in the early evening.--ESSAY ON LONDON.
O, Heavenly colour!  London town

   Has blurred it from her skies;
And hooded in an earthly brown,

   Unheaven'd the city lies.
No longer standard-like this hue

   Above the broad road flies;
Nor does the narrow street the blue

   Wear, slender pennon-wise.
But when the gold and silver lamps

   Colour the London dew,
And, misted by the winter damps,

   The shops shine bright anew--
Blue comes to earth, it walks the street,

   It dyes the wide air through;
A mimic sky about their feet,

   The throng go crowned with blue.

CHIMES

Brief, on a flying night,
From the shaken tower,
A flock of bells take flight,
And go with the hour.
Like birds from the cote to the gales,
Abrupt--O hark!
A fleet of bells set sails,
And go to the dark.
Sudden the cold airs swing.
Alone, aloud,
A verse of bells takes wing
And flies with the cloud.

UNTO US A SON IS GIVEN

      Given, not lent,

   And not withdrawn--once sent--
This Infant of mankind, this One,
Is still the little welcome Son.



      New every year,

   New-born and newly dear,
He comes with tidings and a song,
The ages long, the ages long.



      Even as the cold

   Keen winter grows not old;
As childhood is so fresh, foreseen,
And spring in the familiar green;



      Sudden as sweet

   Come the expected feet.
All joy is young, and new all art,
And He, too, Whom we have by heart.

A DEAD HARVEST
[IN KENSINGTON GARDENS]

Along the graceless grass of town
They rake the rows of red and brown,
Dead leaves, unlike the rows of hay,
Delicate, neither gold nor grey,
Raked long ago and far away.
A narrow silence in the park;
Between the lights a narrow dark.
One street rolls on the north, and one,
Muffled, upon the south doth run.
Amid the mist the work is done.
A futile crop; for it the fire
Smoulders, and, for a stack, a pyre.
So go the town's lives on the breeze,
Even as the sheddings of the trees;
Bosom nor barn is filled with these.

THE TWO POETS

      Whose is the speech
That moves the voices of this lonely beech?
Out of the long West did this wild wind come--
Oh strong and silent!  And the tree was dumb,

      Ready and dumb, until
The dumb gale struck it on the darkened hill.



      Two memories,