And anchor queen of the strange ship- His little spring, that sweet we found, ping there, Thy sails for awnings spread, thy masts bare; So deep in summer floods is drowned, I wonder, bathed in joy complete, How love so young could be so sweet. 10 These I have loved: RUPERT BROOKE (1887-1915) THE GREAT LOVER I have been so great a lover: filled my days White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust; Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust So proudly with the splendor of Love's Of friendly bread; and many-tasting Our hearts at random down the dark of Dreaming of moths that drink them under life. the moon; Now, ere the unthinking silence on that Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that "We are Earth's best, that learnt her They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead, They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed. I wept, as I remembered, how often you and I Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky. And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest, A handful of gray ashes, long long ago at rest, Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake; For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take. WILLIAM H. DAVIES (1870- ) THE RAIN I hear leaves drinking Rain; 'Tis a sweet noise to hear These green leaves drinking near. 20 That goes down to the empty hall, Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken By the lonely Traveler's call. And he felt in his heart their strangeness, Their stillness answering his cry, While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, 'Neath the starred and leafy sky; For he suddenly smote on the door, even Louder, and lifted his head:"Tell them I came, and no one answered, That I kept my word," he said. Never the least stir made the listeners, Though every word he spake Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house 30 From the one man left awake: Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup, And the sound of iron on stone, And how the silence surged softly backward, When the plunging hoofs were gone. NOD Softly along the road of evening, Old Nod, the shepherd, goes. His drowsy flock streams on before him, |