At Night
Was it the whisper of the rain—
The odour of drenched air—
Unlocked some chamber of my brain,
Brown eyes, bronze hair?
Some sound, some odour caught my sense,
A breathless interlude
Held me an instant, rapt and tense,
In strange clairvoyant mood.
Here, just a little while ago,
I sat with dull content
In gloom suffused with ruddy glow
From embers nearly spent,
When, swift, remote as in a trance,
Remote, but visioned plain,
A fragment of our strained romance
Surged back to me again.
The wan dawn glimmered bleak and bare
From close, rain-sodden skies,
And lit upon the drift of hair
Across your sleep-sealed eyes.
Tapping a rhythmic, harsh refrain
To my heart's monody,
page 120 I heard, a-beat against the pane,
The draggled lemon-tree.
The moment's poignant vision stirred
And went so eerily—
The vivid light flared out and blurred;
Dull glints of memory
Flickered through darkness darker made.
Now, crowding everywhere,
Are ghosts of deeds and dreams decayed—
Ghosts of what once we were.

Our laughing days with sun dispersed,
Our weary days with care
Are blown away—they are all dead,
Brown eyes, bronze hair,
Nothing is stable, nothing stays—
As listless leaves are we,
Adrift upon Time's windy ways
Across Eternity.

Rondel
"Still there's sunshine on the wall."
If there lacked of wine or bread
It was thus that Sancho shed
Every care that might befall.

Are you wiser, you who call
Sancho fool?  Could you have said:
"Still there's sunshine on the wall,"
If there lacked of wine or bread?

page 121

Though your wisdom would appal
Sancho Panza's clownish head,
Wisest he who sang, instead,
Of the cares that irk us all,
"Still there's sunshine on the wall."

Ships that Pass
From Fantasy's bright isles
Careening galleys stream;
Hope waits through weary whiles—
But no long-oared trireme
Filled full with precious freight,
Anchors where, desolate,
She waits her ships of dream.

Though she may call and cry
They will not pause or stay—
Wind-fresh, they thunder by,
Grow dim, and drive away
To quiet seas that lave
With faint and restless wave
A twilight land of grey.

She sees with wistful eyes
Great barques blow gallantly
From where the fading skies
Bend down to kiss the sea—
Surging they come, and pass,
But none draw in, alas!
Towards her weedy quay.

page 122

To lands of legendry
The brave ships make their way;
In grave futility
Hope watches night and day
For ships that come not in.…
With face and pulse grown thin
She only waits to pray.

Dick Harris.