hem
To make them lie still,
And send you a wreath of lolling corpses
To turn putrid and soft
On your forehead
While you dance?

BULLION

My thoughts
Chink against my ribs
And roll about like silver hail-stones.
I should like to spill them out,
And pour them, all shining,
Over you.
But my heart is shut upon them
And holds them straitly.

Come, You! and open my heart;
That my thoughts torment me no longer,
But glitter in your hair.

SOLITAIRE

When night drifts along the streets of the city,
And sifts down between the uneven roofs,
My mind begins to peek and peer.
It plays at ball in old, blue Chinese gardens,
And shakes wrought dice-cups in Pagan temples,
Amid the broken flutings of white pillars.
It dances with purple and yellow crocuses in its hair,
And its feet shine as they flutter over drenched grasses.
How light and laughing my mind is,
When all the good folk have put out their bed-room candles,
And the city is still!

THE BOMBARDMENT

Slowly, without force, the rain drops into the city. It stops a moment on
the carved head of Saint John, then slides on again, slipping and
trickling over his stone cloak. It splashes from the lead conduit of a
gargoyle, and falls from it in turmoil on the stones in the Cathedral
square. Where are the people, and why does the fretted steeple sweep about
in the sky? Boom! The sound swings against the rain. Boom, again! After
it, only water rushing in the gutters, and the turmoil from the spout of
the gargoyle. Silence. Ripples and mutters. Boom!

The room is damp, but warm. Little flashes swarm about from the firelight.
The lustres of the chandelier are bright, and clusters of rubies leap in
the bohemian glasses on the _etagere_. Her hands are restless, but the
white masses of her hair are quite still. Boom! Will it never cease to
torture, this iteration! Boom! The vibration shatters a glass on the
_etagere_. It lies there formless and glowing, with all its crimson gleams
shot out of pattern, spilled, flowing red, blood-red. A thin bell-note
pricks through the silence. A door creaks. The old lady speaks: "Victor,
clear away that broken glass." "Alas! Madame, the bohemian glass!" "Yes,
Victor, one hundred years ago my father brought it--" Boom! The room
shakes, the servitor quakes. Another goblet shivers and breaks. Boom!

It rustles at the window-pane, the smooth, streaming rain, and he is shut
within i