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Night in March

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<h2>A NIGHT IN MARCH</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> At eve the fiery sun went forth Flooding the clouds with ruby blood, Up roared a war-wind from the north And crashed at midnight through the wood. </div> <div class="stanza"> The demons danced about the trees, The snow slipped singing over the wold, And ever when the wind would cease A lynx cried out within the cold. </div> <div class="stanza"> A spirit walked the ringing rooms, Passing the locked and secret door, Heavy with divers ancient dooms, With dreams dead laden to the core. </div> <div class="stanza"> ‘Spirit, thou art too deep with woe, I have no harbour place for thee, Leave me to lesser griefs, and go, Go with the great wind to the sea.’ </div> <div class="stanza"> I faltered like a frightened child, That fears its nurse’s fairy brood, And as I spoke, I heard the wild Wind plunging through the shattered wood. </div> <div class="stanza"> ‘Hast thou betrayed the rest of kings, With tragic fears and spectres wan, My dreams are lit with purer things, With humbler ghosts, begone, begone.’ </div> <div class="stanza"> The noisy dark was deaf and blind, Still the strange spirit strayed or stood, And I could only hear the wind Go roaring through the riven wood. </div> <div class="stanza"> ‘Art thou the fate for some wild heart, That scorned his cavern’s curve and bars, That leaped the bounds of time and art, And lost thee lingering near the stars?’ </div> <div class="stanza"> It was so still I heard my thought, Even the wind was very still, The desolate deeper silence brought The lynx-moan from the lonely hill. </div> <div class="stanza"> ‘Art thou the thing I might have been, If all the dead had known control, Risen through the ages’ trembling sheen, A mirage of my desert soul?’ </div> <div class="stanza"> The wind rushed down the roof in wrath, Then shrieked and held its breath and stood, Like one who finds beside his path, A dead girl in the marish wood. </div> <div class="stanza"> ‘Or have I ceased, as those who die And leave the broken word unsaid, Art thou the spirit ministry That hovers round the newly dead?’ </div> <div class="stanza"> The auroras rose in solitude, And wanly paled within the room, The window showed an ebon rood, Upon the blanched and ashen gloom. </div> <div class="stanza"> I heard a voice within the dark, That answered not my idle word, I could not choose but pause and hark, It was so magically stirred. </div> <div class="stanza"> It grew within the quiet hour, With the rose shadows on the wall, It had a touch of ancient power, A wild and elemental fall; </div> <div class="stanza"> Its rapture had a dreaming close: The dawn grew slowly on the wold, Spreading in fragile veils of rose, In tender lines of lemon-gold. </div> <div class="stanza"> The world was turning into light, Was sweeping into life and peace, And folded in the fading night, I felt the dawning sink and cease. </div> </div></div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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