(_For Anthony Bertram_)
We swing our swords against the bare
Bleak brows of granite. Yea, we dare.
We of clay limbs, armed with frail rhyme,
To taunt the passive globes that stare
From the eye-sockets of stern Time.
Though our long anguish may not dint
His towering flanks, yet from this flint
Our swords strike such fierce sparks of light,
The moon is blanched, the fool stars stint
Their weak flames at the crest of night.
Yea though we bleed from crown to heel,
Yea though the points of our split steel
Make futile glories and then die
Against Time's blear immensity,
Yet for black woe there shall be weal!
Stauncher than Time our dream is built.
Despair not, human dreamers, for
We shall prevail after much war.
Yea, the poor stump of our sword's hilt
At length shall be Time's conqueror!
A number of these poems are reprinted from _Voices_, _Coterie_, the
_Nation_, the _English Review_, the _Englishwoman_, _To-day_, _Colour_,
the _Apple_, the _New Witness_, the _Sphere_, the _Saturday
Westminster_, and other journals; and from "A Queen's College
Miscellany," "The Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany," and Messrs. Palmer
and Hayward's "Miscellany of Poetry."