Page:Poems and ballads (IA poemsballads00swinrich).pdf/91

 Like me shall be the shuddering calm of night, When all the winds of the world for pure delight Close lips that quiver and fold up wings that ache; When nightingales are louder for love's sake, And leaves tremble like lute-strings or like fire; Like me the one star swooning with desire Even at the cold lips of the sleepless moon, As I at thine; like me the waste white noon, Burnt through with barren sunlight; and like me The land-stream and the tide-stream in the sea. I am sick with time as these with ebb and flow, And by the yearning in my veins I know The yearning sound of waters; and mine eyes Burn as that beamless fire which fills the skies With troubled stars and travailing things of flame; And in my heart the grief consuming them Labours, and in my veins the thirst of these, And all the summer travail of the trees And all the winter sickness; and the earth, Filled full with deadly works of death and birth, Sore spent with hungry lusts of birth and death, Has pain like mine in her divided breath; Her spring of leaves is barren, and her fruit Ashes; her boughs are burdened, and her root Fibrous and gnarled with poison; underneath Serpents have gnawn it through with tortuous teeth Made sharp upon the bones of all the dead, And wild birds rend her branches overhead.