Sword Blades
------------

The Captured Goddess
Over the housetops,

Above the rotating chimney-pots,
I have seen a shiver of amethyst,

And blue and cinnamon have flickered
A moment,

At the far end of a dusty street.
Through sheeted rain

Has come a lustre of crimson,
And I have watched moonbeams

Hushed by a film of palest green.
It was her wings,

Goddess!
Who stepped over the clouds,

And laid her rainbow feathers
Aslant on the currents of the air.

I followed her for long,
With gazing eyes and stumbling feet.

I cared not where she led me,
My eyes were full of colours:

Saffrons, rubies, the yellows of beryls,
And the indigo-blue of quartz;

Flights of rose, layers of chrysoprase,
Points of orange, spirals of vermilion,

The spotted gold of tiger-lily petals,
The loud pink of bursting hydrangeas.

I followed,
And watched for the flashing of her wings.

In the city I found her,
The narrow-streeted city.

In the market-place I came upon her,
Bound and trembling.

Her fluted wings were fastened to her sides with cords,
She was naked and cold,

For that day the wind blew
Without sunshine.

Men chaffered for her,
They bargained in silver and gold,

In copper, in wheat,
And called their bids across the market-place.

The Goddess wept.
Hiding my face I fled,

And the grey wind hissed behind me,
Along the narrow streets.

The Precinct. Rochester
The tall yellow hollyhocks stand,

Still and straight,
With their round blossoms spread open,

In the quiet sunshine.
And still is the old Roman wall,

Rough with jagged bits of flint,
And jutting stones,

Old and cragged,
Quite still in its antiquity.

The pear-trees press their branches against it,
And feeling it warm and kindly,

The little pears ripen to yellow and red.
They hang heavy, bursting with juice,

Against the wall.
So old, so still!

The sky is still.
The clouds make no sound

As they slide away
Beyond the Cathedral Tower,

To the river,
And the sea.

It is very quiet,
Very sunny.

The myrtle flowers stretch themselves in the sunshine,
But make no sound.

The roses push their little tendrils up,
And climb higher and higher.

In spots they have climbed over the wall.
But they are very still,

They do not seem to move.
And the old wall carries them

Without effort, and quietly
Ripens and shields the vines and blossoms.

A bird in a plane-tree
Sings a few notes,

Cadenced and perfect
They weave into the silence.

The Cathedral bell knocks,
One, two, three, and again,

And then again.
It is a quiet sound,

Calling to prayer,
Hardly scattering the stillness,

Only making it close in more densely.
The gardener picks ripe gooseberries

For the Dean's supper to-night.
It is very quiet,

Very regulated and mellow.
But the wall is old,

It has known many days.
It is a Roman wall,

Left-over and forgotten.
Beyond the Cathedral Close

Yelp and mutter the discontents of people not mellow,
Not well-regulated.

People who care more for bread than for beauty,
Who would break the tombs of saints,

And give the painted windows of churches
To their children for toys.

People who say:
"They are dead, we live!

The world is for the living."
Fools! It is always the dead who breed.

Crush the ripe fruit, and cast it aside,
Yet its seeds shall fructify,

And trees rise where your huts were standing.
But the little people are ignorant,

They chaffer, and swarm.
They gnaw like rats,

And the foundations of the Cathedral are honeycombed.
The Dean is in the Chapter House;

He is reading the architect's bill
For the completed restoration of the Cathedral.

He will have ripe gooseberries for supper,
And then he will walk up and down the path

By the wall,
And admire the snapdragons and dahlias,

Thinking how quiet and peaceful
The garden is.

The old wall will watch him,
Very quietly and patiently it will watch.

For the wall is old,
It is a Roman wall.

The Cyclists
Spread on the roadway,

With open-blown jackets,
Like black, soaring pinions,

They swoop down the hillside,
The Cyclists.

Seeming dark-plumaged
Birds, after carrion,

Careening and circling,
Over the dying

Of England.
She lies with her bosom

Beneath them, no longer
The Dominant Mother,

The Virile -- but rotting
Before time.

The smell of her, tainted,
Has bitten their nostrils.

Exultant they hover,
And shadow the sun with

Foreboding.
Sunshine through a Cobwebbed Window

What charm is yours, you faded old-world tapestries,
Of outworn, childish mysteries,

Vague pageants woven on a web of dream!
And we, pushing and fighting in the turbid stream

Of modern life, find solace in your tarnished broideries.
Old lichened halls, sun-shaded by huge cedar-trees,

The layered branches horizontal stretched, like Japanese
Dark-banded prints. Carven cathedrals, on a sky

Of faintest colour, where the gothic spires fly
And sway like masts, against a shifting breeze.

Worm-eaten pages, clasped in old brown vellum, shrunk
From over-handling, by some anxious monk.

Or Virgin's Hours, bright with gold and graven
With flowers, and rare birds, and all the Saints of Heaven,

And Noah's ark stuck on Ararat, when all the world had sunk.
They soothe us like a song, heard in a garden, sung

By youthful minstrels, on the moonlight flung
In cadences and falls, to ease a queen,

Widowed and childless, cowering in a screen
Of myrtles, whose life hangs with all its threads unstrung.

A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M.
They have watered the street,

It shines in the glare of lamps,
Cold, white lamps,

And lies
Like a slow-moving river,

Barred with silver and black.
Cabs go down it,

One,
And then another.

Between them I hear the shuffling of feet.
Tramps doze on the window-ledges,

Night-walkers pass along the sidewalks.
The city is squalid and sinister,

With the silver-barred street in the midst,
Slow-moving,

A river leading nowhere.
Opposite my window,

The moon cuts,
Clear and round,

Through the plum-coloured night.
She cannot light the city;

It is too bright.
It has white lamps,

And glitters coldly.
I stand in the window and watch the moon.

She is thin and lustreless,
But I love her.

I know the moon,

• shiver [´ʃivə] v.&n.(使)颤抖；碎片 (初中英语单词)
• copper [´kɔpə] n.铜 a.铜制的 (初中英语单词)
• goddess [´gɔdis] n.女神 (初中英语单词)
• cathedral [kə´θi:drəl] n.大教堂 (初中英语单词)
• mutter [´mʌtə] v.&n.咕哝；嘀咕 (初中英语单词)
• reading [´ri:diŋ] n.(阅)读；朗读；读物 (初中英语单词)
• childish [´tʃaildiʃ] a.孩子的；幼稚的 (初中英语单词)
• anxious [´æŋkʃəs] a.担忧的；渴望的 (初中英语单词)
• youthful [´ju:θfəl] a.年轻的；青年的 (初中英语单词)
• moonlight [´mu:nlait] n.&a.月光(的) (初中英语单词)
• rainbow [´reinbəu] n.彩虹 (高中英语单词)
• gardener [´gɑ:dnə] n.园艺家；园林工人 (高中英语单词)
• restoration [,restə´reiʃən] n.恢复；复辟；重建(物) (高中英语单词)
• patiently [´peiʃəntli] ad.有耐心地；坚韧地 (高中英语单词)
• soothe [su:ð] vt.安慰；镇定；减轻 (高中英语单词)
• cinnamon [´sinəmən] n.樟属植物；黄棕色 (英语四级单词)
• precinct [´pri:siŋkt] n.(教堂等的)围地 (英语四级单词)
• dominant [´dɔminənt] a.统治的；占优势的 (英语四级单词)
• bitten [´bitn] bite的过去分词 (英语四级单词)
• horizontal [,hɔri´zɔntl] a.水平的，横的 (英语四级单词)
• gothic [´gɔθik] a.哥特人(语)的 (英语四级单词)
• myrtle [´mə:tl] n.桃金娘科 (英语六级单词)
• solace [´sɔləs] n.&vt.安慰(物)；缓和 (英语六级单词)
• thoroughfare [´θʌrəfeə] n.大路；干道；通道 (英语六级单词)