Poetry
Forests
TURN, now, tired mind unto your rest, Within your secret camber lie,
Doors shut, and windows curtained, lest Footfall or moonbeam, stealing by, Wake you, or night-wind sigh.
Now, Self, we are at peace—we twain ; The house is silent, except that—hark ! — Against its walls walls out again That rapture in the empty dark ; Where, softly beaming, spark by spark, The glow-worms stud the leaves with light ; And unseen flowers, refreshed with dew— Jasmine, convolvulus, glimmering white, The air with their still life endue, And sweeten night for me and you.
Be mute all speech.; and not of love Talk we, nor call on hope, but be— Calm as the constant stars above— The friends of fragile memory, Shared only now by you and me.
Thus hidden, thus silent, while the hours From gloom to gloom their wings beat on, Shall not a moment's peace be ours, Till, faint with day, the east is wan, And terrors of the dark are gone ?
Nay—in the forests of the mind Lurk beasts as fierce as those that tread Earth's rock-strown wilds to night resigned. There stars of heaven no radiance shed- Bleak-eyed Remorse, Despair becowled in lead.
With dawn these ravening shapes will go—r Though One at watch will still remain : Till knells the sunset hour, and lo- I The listening soul once more will know Death and his pack are hot afield again.
WALTER DE LA MARE.
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