C. H. B. KITCHIN

For you at least, sweet wanderers in the dark, There is no cause to cry from cypress-trees To a forgetful world; since you are seen Of all twice nightly at the cinema, While the munition-makers clap their hands.

Before the final darkness, side by side We watched the huge red sun glow in the sky Malevolently dim, longing to die, As though his dull and sullen face would chide Slow-footed time that forced him to abide Unnumbered ages in death-agony, While at our feet the sea bore sluggishly The burden of a salt-encumbered tide. No word we spoke, but gazed with solemn eyes Where the last sunset slowly passed away And left the sky a sheet of endless grey, Seeing the world, God's careful sacrifice, The victim of an infinite decay, And thinking of the worm that never dies.

We are the silk which other limbs have worn, Those passive folds admired and kept with care, Till fashion changes, and, no longer rare, The garment is dishonoured, swept with scorn Into the massive wardrobe of the night, Where neither hands shall fondle preciously Nor eyes shall gaze on us in charity— The wasted fabric of an old delight. The night is huge and rich with hidden song Of its eternal victims grandly singing A threnody, whose fragrance ever clinging To night's embroidery still hands along The endless chain of unrepentant years, Rejoicing in the gift of human tears.

Ruler of infinite austerity From whom, long listening through ecstatic hours, Men seek a spiritual mutilation And guidance to the unperturbed serene, Yours was the voice at which our grasping hands Refrained from clutching at iniquity Still warm with flame that licks the roof of hell, But having will of us you are transfigured With an attractive aureole whose glare Is colder than a mist around the moon; Wherefore in wisdom meditate on this That when outworn incessantly with kneeling On penitential stone, the flesh of man, Delirious with fasting and sweet wounds Self-loved and self-inflicted, cries for peace, It is for you the spirit sings with joy The chant ineffable of hidden spheres; For you it finds delight voluptuous In weakness through the curtains of the night, —Not for the abstract law which you devise.