Of the waning lamp you shift from phase to phase
Your rose-golds melting into silver blues
And to all subtle, all bewildering hues,
Crocus or apricot or chrysoprase.
And now displaying in unbroken swirl
Clear-edged, opaque, such polished bronze and pearl
As the lagoon in stormy twilights shows.
Now laced and globed and shot with tints that run
Through the still water when the sinking sun
Behind Saint George's of the Seaweed glows.
Your rose-golds melting into silver blues
And to all subtle, all bewildering hues,
Crocus or apricot or chrysoprase.
And now displaying in unbroken swirl
Clear-edged, opaque, such polished bronze and pearl
As the lagoon in stormy twilights shows.
Now laced and globed and shot with tints that run
Through the still water when the sinking sun
Behind Saint George's of the Seaweed glows.
THE FOREST OF COMPIÈGNE
I
Through the forest of old Compiègne we rode
When all the ground was a shimmer of white,
A glare, a dazzle, for it had snowed
The whole of the long November night.
Yet, the leaves were a flicker of palest gold
On a sky of such faint and limpid blue
As an aqua-marine unflawed might hold
With a hint of the sea's green dullness too,
—And I thought of Radegonde, Queen of Clotaire,
With the gold of her pale Thuringian hair
Bound smoothly over her forehead's snow,
In silk and vair and in ermine clad,
With her cold blue eyes of a saint that had
No gleam of sorrow or wrath to show.
When all the ground was a shimmer of white,
A glare, a dazzle, for it had snowed
The whole of the long November night.
Yet, the leaves were a flicker of palest gold
On a sky of such faint and limpid blue
As an aqua-marine unflawed might hold
With a hint of the sea's green dullness too,
—And I thought of Radegonde, Queen of Clotaire,
With the gold of her pale Thuringian hair
Bound smoothly over her forehead's snow,
In silk and vair and in ermine clad,
With her cold blue eyes of a saint that had
No gleam of sorrow or wrath to show.
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