POETRY.
ON A NAME SCRATCHED UPON A WINDOW.
DEEP do the letters bite that spell the name,
Though the last strokes waver as the hand grows weak, Holding firm the diamond lest it slip and fall.
Did fruit like a lodestone hang outside the window, Or were the shining fences of the rain pitched there ?
When it rains—
Like the spider's web linking leaf to leaf The name glitters out and links the lines of rain ;
When the sun burns free—
The letters like a pattern of the frost stay on the glass.
Here, where he traced it, will the name still live Dwelling like a mote in the eye of all who see it, As though he had fixed it in the very eye of time,
Till time breaks, shattered, as a sheet of glass.
Deep do the letters bite, they mark the sky, Till you open wide the window and the letters find their shadow That hides in the wall until it calls out in this echo As a cave will shout the name back in answer out of its dark- ness, Though all else is dead there save your rattling tongue.
The letters find their shadow and the thin echo calls to them, Misty is the glass as though a breath had tarnished it.
For he stands once more in the window while he cuts the name, And turning lets his hand fall, and feels the light beside him, And in that moment, till echo answers emptily,
The name becomes the body for as long as time stands still.
SACHEVERELL SITWELL.
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