The Woman of Sorrows

Or look in the eyes of the dead that cannot look,
You may think of my baby and the breast it forsook.

DEATH AND THE JESTER

Black crow, art thou come
For Dagonet's wit?

It is quick as the light
Or the dragon-fly's dart.
It is born in a smile,

It is bred in the heart,

It is light, it is laughter.

It took life when Eve laughed
At the lion-cub's play;

It slept then awhile,

When her sorrow came after

With the son of the snake.

Eve's joy was my mother,
Not Eve's sorrow;

And the bird is my brother
That sings as he may.

In the close of my day,
Lies curl'd up the morrow

Like the fox in his bed.

And my wit, if I die,

Yet shall wake and shall fly

Take music and live

When Dagonet's dead.

Ernest Rhys

UNIVERSITY SKETCHES

THE PROFESSOR MUSES

Physics Lecture Room-before Class

I am afraid, O Lord, I am afraid!

These instruments so curiously formed,
This dynamo and meter, that machine
Cunning to grasp and hold with delicate hands

Your unchained lightnings . . Lord, I am afraid— Here in the empty silence of my room!

This lecture hall is oddly like a mouth-
Myself the tongue in it, myself the voice,
Shrill, thin across the empty chairs-how queer,
How skeleton-like appear these empty chairs!
Blank walls, blank platform (ineffectual things)
And bleak, bare windows where the startled day
On tiptoe stands, too lovely to come in. .

A mouth it seems, a maw, huge, grim, slow, sure
Some day to close and crush me!

Lord, Lord, Lord,

Am I the thing the daylight falters from,

Spinning my dusty web of dusty words

To catch the plunging star we call the world,
Hanging it so a period? Fool, twice fool,

Who spider-like weave cosmic theories
In gossamer nets to trap the universe!
Spun but to tear a thousand tattered ways
And hang on every lilac, if a girl-

A red-lipped, shallow, care-free freshman girl-
Laugh at the sallies of a boy!

Afraid! . .

Problems of sound and light, of light and sound,
Experiments, materials, theories,

The laws of motion, problems of sound and light,
Problems of sound and light.

And presently

A gong will ring here like a doomsday bell

And through these doors, like winds that shake the woods,
Sons of the wind and daughters of the dawn,
Eternal, joyous, unafraid, comes youth:
Youth from a million colored realms of joy,
Youth storming up the world with flying hair
And laughter like a rose-red deluge spilled
Down dawn-lit heavens, burning all the sea!

Problems of light and sound! . Why, what care they, These bright-eyed Chloes of our later date

For theories of sound-themselves the sound,

Themselves the light that brightens all the day?

The Professor Muses

Round every corner flits a flying foot,
Alluring laughter shaken fancy-free

In silver bells that break upon the air
Evoe-evoe! Pan and the nymphs! With lips
Parted, and sparkling eyes, the young men follow-
Follow the swift-foot, laughter-loving nymphs
Whose eye-lids hold the world! Problems of light,
Problems of light-I am sick of light and sound!

Youth storming up the world! Hot, eager youth—
Youth with a question ever on its lips,

Impatient of the answer! youth with eyes
Implacable, remorseless, passionless,

Crying, "I thirst divinely-quench my thirst!"
Crying, "I thirsted and ye helped me not!"
And brushing past me. Amperes, dynamos,
Questions of voltage, coils, transformers, watts
Shall these things reach them, teach them to be wise,
Temperate, noble? Surely greater texts
Lie in the lips and laughter of young girls,
Who look at me with pity scarce concealed
And curious wonder-me the dusty spider
Spinning my web in this obdurate room,
While

eager tongues can scarcely pause an hour From ripples of speech.

Ah, Lord, I am afraid!

For when I think to have them they elude me,