The Bird-Catcher Read Free Page A

notes with fainter notes
    Sepulchral, far, whose clear reveille shakes
    The dark unfretted waters of the mind
    Till all the surface quivers with keen pain
    And depth to depth the searching trouble stirs
    Till all that watery world
    Thrills with new life that urges to the top
    Layers of dim memory hidden long from light,
    And years long dead, victories, endurances,
    And terrible happenings live again. Again
    In rainswept darkness down the broken roads
    The drenched and sweating troops swarm towards the line,
    Stumbling with burdened backs and burdened hearts
    Into their new ordeal: on and on
    Through tunnels of the blind and timeless night,
    By wallowing lorries thrust into the ditch
    And pulsing tractors hauling monstrous guns,
    Or in cold rain interminably impeded
    By some unknown obstruction miles ahead:
    Through fields that stink of carnage, yawn with holes
    Full of pale stagnant water; thicket-snares
    Of sharp-fanged wire, through roar of murderous shells
    And gas and blood and flame, till the shocked mind
    Flares up in terror and the memory dies
    In tumult and blown smoke. Then slowly rise
    The pale forgotten faces of the dead,
    Cast off the rust of Time, the mould of Earth,
    And speak again and laugh and sing gay songs
    And eat and drink in warm light of the sun
    In the good fellowship of adventurous souls
    Who have purged their hearts of fear. Too happy vision,
    Vainly denying death and the iron fact
    For those poor slaves of clay
    And us sad children of mortality.
    For the buglers take the bugles from their lips
    And Time and Death return with the failing light
    To numb the leaves and blind the lake’s clear eyes
    And shroud the water with a film of frost.
    And the heart takes up its sure mechanic beat
    And the dulled eyesight shrinks
    To outward things and the narrow pen of Space.
    Layer under layer, sluggish as falling snow,
    The settling sediment of memory sinks
    Till the mind is tranquil as a block of ice.

Epitaph
    These are the unthrifty souls
    Who watered dusty streets with wine;
    Gathered pearls from Indian shoals
    And cast them royally to swine;
    Their most precious love who strowed
    To be trampled by the crowd;
    Freely broached their hearts’ red blood
    To dye the garments of the proud;
    Who have sung away their years
    To soothe the perjurer and the thief;
    Poured for the heartless, healing tears;
    Fed the tyrant with their grief;
    Paid the price they never owed;
    Prayed to gods who claim no prayer;
    Climbed the high encumbered road
    Never asking why or where.

Man Seeks to Cage Delight
    Man seeks to cage delight
    In vain, not seeing
    That her strong-pinioned flight
    Is all her being,
    And sets about to frame
    Dead fantasies—
    Eternity, Infinity—to tame
    The ecstasy that flies;
    And vexed by bonds of Space,
    By veils of Time,
    He dreams a special grace,
    A power sublime,
    In these abstractions, vain
    Unbodied signs,
    Frail shadows of the ecstasy and pain
    With which Orion shines,
    With which the rose unwinds
    Each scented fold,
    With which man grows and finds
    The note of gold
    Hid in the heart of laughter,
    Heart of sighs,
    In measured golden music flying after
    The golden voice that flies,
    In love from marble wrought,
    In love that chimes
    Over clear-ringing thought
    And well-tuned rhymes,
    In love become a fact
    Keen, swift, and fell,
    When the whole self leaps forward to the act
    Clean as the whistling shell.
    For when the body and mind,
    Fused in one fire,
    Leap, like tiger on hind,
    On the one desire,
    Then the careful thoughts and schemes
    Of barren years
    Go down into the pit of ruined dreams
    And crumbling hopes and fears.
    For to be single, sure,
    In one swift flash,
    Pure flame or diamond pure;
    To slough the ash
    Of things burnt out; to gain
    The fountain’s powers
    Gathered in little compass to attain
    Its crown of glittering showers;
    This is the eternal, this
    The infinite,
    The gods’ immortal kiss
    Set warm and bright
    On heroes’ brows. In these brief