Page:Selected Poems (Huxley).djvu/62

 II.

Mottled and grey and brown they pass, The wood-moths, wheeling, fluttering; And we chase and they vanish; and in the grass Are starry flowers, and the birds sing Faint broken songs of the dying spring. And on the beech-hole, smooth and grey, Some lover of an older day Has carved in time-blurred lettering One world only:—"Alas."

III.

Lutes, I forbid you! You must never play, When shimmeringly, glimpse by glimpse Seen through the leaves, the silken figures sway In measured dance. Never at shut of day, When Time perversely loitering limps Through endless twilights, should your strings Whisper of light remembered things That happened long ago and far away: Lutes, I forbid you! You must never play