Anniversaries

Once more the windless days are here,     Quiet of autumn, when the year     Halts and looks backward and draws breath     Before it plunges into death.     Silver of mist and gossamers,     Through-shine of noonday's glassy gold,     Pale blue of skies, where nothing stirs     Save one blanched leaf, weary and old,     That over and over slowly falls     From the mute elm-trees, hanging on air     Like tattered flags along the walls     Of chapels deep in sunlit prayer.     Once more ... Within its flawless glass     To-day reflects that other day,     When, under the bracken, on the grass,     We who were lovers happily lay     And hardly spoke, or framed a thought     That was not one with the calm hills     And crystal sky. Ourselves were nought,     Our gusty passions, our burning wills     Dissolved in boundlessness, and we     Were almost bodiless, almost free.     The wind has shattered silver and gold.     Night after night of sparkling cold,     Orion lifts his tangled feet     From where the tossing branches beat     In a fine surf against the sky.     So the trance ended, and we grew     Restless, we knew not how or why;     And there were sudden gusts that blew     Our dreaming banners into storm;     We wore the uncertain crumbling form     Of a brown swirl of windy leaves,     A phantom shape that stirs and heaves     Shuddering from earth, to fall again     With a dry whisper of withered rain.     Last, from the dead and shrunken days     We conjured spring, lighting the blaze     Of burnished tulips in the dark;     And from black frost we struck a spark     Of blue delight and fragrance new,     A little world of flowers and dew.     Winter for us was over and done:     The drought of fluttering leaves had grown     Emerald shining in the sun,     As light as glass, as firm as stone.     Real once more: for we had passed     Through passion into thought again;     Shaped our desires and made that fast     Which was before a cloudy pain;     Moulded the dimness, fixed, defined     In a fair statue, strong and free,     Twin bodies flaming into mind,     Poised on the brink of ecstasy.