s hastily wiping
The face of the youngest rose.

And oh, my heart, cease apprehending!
The hawk is gone, a rose is tapping
The window-sash as the west-wind blows.

Knock, knock, 'tis no more than a red rose rapping,
And fear is a plash of wings.
What, then, if a scarlet rose goes flapping
Down the bright-grey ruin of things!

PARLIAMENT HILL IN THE
EVENING

THE houses fade in a melt of mist
Blotching the thick, soiled air
With reddish places that still resist
The Night's slow care.

The hopeless, wintry twilight fades,
The city corrodes out of sight
As the body corrodes when death invades
That citadel of delight.

Now verdigris smoulderings softly spread
Through the shroud of the town, as slow
Night-lights hither and thither shed
Their ghastly glow.

PICCADILLY CIRCUS AT NIGHT

_Street-Walkers_.

WHEN into the night the yellow light is roused like
dust above the towns,
Or like a mist the moon has kissed from off a pool in
the midst of the downs,

Our faces flower for a little hour pale and uncertain
along the street,
Daisies that waken all mistaken white-spread in ex-
pectancy to meet

The luminous mist which the poor things wist was
dawn arriving across the sky,
When dawn is far behind the star the dust-lit town
has driven so high.

All the birds are folded in a silent ball of sleep,
All the flowers are faded from the asphalt isle in
the sea,
Only we hard-faced creatures go round and round,
and keep
The shores of this innermost ocean alive and
illusory.

Wanton sparrows that twittered when morning
looked in at their eyes
And the Cyprian's pavement-roses are gone, and
now it is we
Flowers of illusion who shine in our gauds, make a
Paradise
On the shores of this ceaseless ocean, gay birds of
the town-dark sea.

TARANTELLA

SAD as he sits on the white sea-stone
And the suave sea chuckles, and turns to the moon,
And the moon significant smiles at the cliffs and
the boulders.
He sits like a shade by the flood alone
While I dance a tarantella on the rocks, and the
croon
Of my mockery mocks at him over the waves'
bright shoulders.

What can I do but dance alone,
Dance to the sliding sea and the moon,
For the moon on my breast and the air on my limbs
and the foam on my feet?
For surely this earnest man has none
Of the night in his soul, and none of the tune
Of the waters within hi