Page:The Dial (Volume 75).djvu/624



The dark road journeys to the darkening sky,
 * The twilight settles like a circling pool,

The railway bridge is lifted up on high,
 * And the unerring lines are beautiful.

A soldier and his girl in casual walk
 * Pass heavily, their garments creased with woe,

Like stiff slow-labouring statues; yet they talk
 * In peace and gather comfort as they go.

In the small cabin by the railway-side
 * A lonely concertina by some priest

Of guileless joy is played; its sound goes wide
 * Like the blunt brumming of a vague-voiced beast.

I stand, and thin-toned anguish frets my heart
 * Over the cabin-boy who all the night

Sits in his thoughtless paradise apart And in his lonely monologue finds delight;

And over these two who, in half-dumb talk,
 * With broken gestures and half-shapen speech,

In unintelligible rapture walk,
 * Too far for vain and longing thought to reach.

Oh, why should fading form and falling sound
 * Such sculptured shapes of deep division take?

Why do we walk with muted footsteps round
 * In this strong trance called life from which none wake?

Whither do these blind-journeying lovers go?
 * What does he wait, the boy with idle hands?