ZEPPELINSMIDNIGHT
SUDDENLY
Shutting our lips upon a jest
As we are sipping thoughts from little glasses,
A gun bursts thunder and the echoing streets
Quiver with startled terrors—
How swift runs fear: quicksilver that is free!
Now every muscle weakens, every pulse
Is set at gallop-pace and every nerve
Stretched taut with horror and a wild revolt. . . .
How sweetly spins the world to noise of music,
How sweet to live life's arrogant adventure!
Live in a vain world wracked with a thousand pangs,
Limp in a dull street housed with crumbling dreams,
To breathe and eat and sleep and love and sigh
A little longer, oh a little year!
Forgotten prayers rise up in resurrection,
And resolutions of new wondrous lives
Choke up our hearts and fling us to our knees. . . .
Worms creep in dreadful hunger from the ground,
The lurid silent people loved by death,
And peer into our eyes with sly forebodings
To drag our body's glory from the light.
Though all the world should fall into their cells
And lie within their larders shelf on shelf—
Yet will I toss the sheets of dust away,
Yet will I be the mistress of the sun!
······
1 A.M.
Look how they struggle in a mist of fire,
Those hunchbacked chimneys and distorted domes—
Now gloat on Hell, the colour seems to roar,
An army fierce upon its own destruction,
A famished monster tearing in its claws
Gigantic foods to glut its lean desire
Shutting our lips upon a jest
As we are sipping thoughts from little glasses,
A gun bursts thunder and the echoing streets
Quiver with startled terrors—
How swift runs fear: quicksilver that is free!
Now every muscle weakens, every pulse
Is set at gallop-pace and every nerve
Stretched taut with horror and a wild revolt. . . .
How sweetly spins the world to noise of music,
How sweet to live life's arrogant adventure!
Live in a vain world wracked with a thousand pangs,
Limp in a dull street housed with crumbling dreams,
To breathe and eat and sleep and love and sigh
A little longer, oh a little year!
Forgotten prayers rise up in resurrection,
And resolutions of new wondrous lives
Choke up our hearts and fling us to our knees. . . .
Worms creep in dreadful hunger from the ground,
The lurid silent people loved by death,
And peer into our eyes with sly forebodings
To drag our body's glory from the light.
Though all the world should fall into their cells
And lie within their larders shelf on shelf—
Yet will I toss the sheets of dust away,
Yet will I be the mistress of the sun!
······
1 A.M.
Look how they struggle in a mist of fire,
Those hunchbacked chimneys and distorted domes—
Now gloat on Hell, the colour seems to roar,
An army fierce upon its own destruction,
A famished monster tearing in its claws
Gigantic foods to glut its lean desire
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