To William Watson

After reading "The Purple East."

That hour you put the wreath of England by
To shake her guilty heart with song sublime,
The mighty Muse that watches from the sky
Laid on your head the larger wreath of Time.

Keats A-Dying

Often of that Last Hour I lie and think;

I see thee, Keats, nearing the Deathway dimSee Severn in his noiseless hurry, him

Who leaned above thee fading on the brink.

What is that wild light through the window chink?

Is it the burning feet of cherubim ?

Or is it the white moon on western rimSaint Agnes' moon beginning now to sink?

How did Death come-with sounds of waterstir?

With forms of beauty breaking at the lips? With field pipes and the scent of blowing fir? Or came it hurrying like a last eclipse, Sweeping the world away like gossamer,

Blotting the moon, the mountains, and the ships?

Man

Out of the deep and endless universe
There came a greater Mystery, a Shape,
A Something sad, inscrutable, august

One to confront the worlds and question them.

The Cricket

The twilight is the morning of his day, While sleep drops seaward from the fading shore,

With purpling sail and dip of silver oar, He cheers the shadowed time with roundelay, Until the dark east softens into gray.

Now as the noisy hours are coming — hark! His song dies gently it is growing dark — His night, with its one star, is on the way!

Faintly the light breaks over the blowing oats
Sleep, little brother, sleep: I am astir.
We worship Song, and servants are of her —
I in the bright hours, thou in shadow-time;
Lead thou the starlit night with merry notes,
And I will lead the clamoring day with rhyme.

In High Sierras

There at a certain hour of the deep night,
A gray cliff with a demon face comes up,
Wrinkled and old, behind the peaks, and with
An anxious look peers at the Zodiac.