The Bird-Catcher Read Online Free PDF

saints above,
    Nor all the long corroding years,
    Nor envious death’s remorseless shears,
    Can ever vanquish or destroy
    The sure possession of our joy.
    Even God Himself can ne’er retract
    His gift of the accomplished fact
    Nor cancel by divine decree
    Our once-enjoyed eternity.
    Then let us keep forever fresh
    This warm eternity of flesh,
    This only true reality
    Of lip-to-lip and knee-to-knee;
    Knowing that, whatever years may bring
    Of dusty earth or golden wing,
    Once having loved, both you and I
    Have been immortal ere we die.

Fog in the Channel
    The sea is silent to-night. To our inland village,
    A mile from the Channel, comes never a sound of the seas.
    Windless night is heavy on pasture and tillage,
    On houses and herbs and trees.
    But suddenly over the silence, lone and far,
    Long-drawn, desolate, hovers a deep intoning,
    A measureless sadness; and soon, remote as a star,
    An answering voice. A multitudinous moaning
    Fills the night, and my heart shrinks cold, for I know
    That fog has closed on the sea in a blinding smother.
    O why do we suffer this craving for another
    To split our lives in two? Though my body lies
    So safe and warm beneath this low white ceiling,
    Dark terrors round me rise;
    For my heart is out in the Channel among the wheeling
    Wreaths of fog and the deep-tongued desolate cries
    Of fog-bound ships; and lying here I am lost
    In a darkness denser and stranger
    Than any darkness of mist. I am torn and tossed
    Upon the horns of a more than bodily danger,
    Yes, greater than yours, Beloved, who waken drifting
    In your blinded ship that utters its long lament
    From the soft, slow swell of the Channel, sinking, lifting,
    Out between France and Kent.

From the French
    Days of the Lilac and the days of Roses
    Come not again this spring, for all our sighing.
    The days of Lilac and days of Roses
    Are past, and all the scented Pinks are dying.
    The wind has changed. A sullen vapour closes
    The weeping skies. We may not gather now
    The Lilac-blossoms and early Roses.
    Sad is the spring and bloomless hangs the bough.
    O sweet and happy springtime that invaded
    Our fields last year to gladden loved and lover.
    So utterly our flower has faded
    That even your kiss, alas, can wake it never.
    And what of you, my love? No flower uncloses
    Nor sunlight blooms through the shadowy leaves above.
    Days of the Lilac and the days of Roses
    Lie dead for evermore with our dead love.

Cathedral at Night
    Huge as a precipice in the summer night
    The black porch yawned above him like a wave
    And swallowed him. Shrunk to a grain of sand
    He paused inside, bewildered at the sense
    Of so much height and darkness, till his eyes
    Gained strength, and in the emptiness dark shapes,
    Pinnacled rocks and towering trunks of stone,
    Loomed round him and, high hung like long pale banners,
    Tall windows showed. And it seemed the whole void cavern
    Vibrated sensitive as a strung harp,
    For his shy footfall woke a spreading trouble
    That echoed from furthest galleries and vaults
    Awareness of his presence. He crossed the transept,
    Climbed to the loft hung like a falcon’s nest
    On the sheer face of the triforium,
    From which the towering shafts of organ-pipes
    Shot up like tropic growths. There, round about him,
    The music books, the rows of stops, the close
    Familiar walls of oak glowed as a core
    Of radiance in the darkness; and he sought
    Books of old music, chose his stops, began.
    Vague tremors shook the stillness, voices woke,
    And the emptiness was peopled with the life
    Of crowding notes. Down the wide nave, along
    Cold aisles, through secret chapels, hanging vaults,
    Flowed the warm circulation of sweet sounds
    Like health into a body long diseased,
    While the august and ancient music-makers
    Woke from long sleep and their immortal voices
    Flooded the dark shrine with a golden beauty.
    And he, the player, with cunning fingers piling
    Sound upon sound, harmony on harmony,
    Launched out his spirit upon those tides of