Poems By Arjava

ACROSS the sea a vision fled

With fluttering wings ; and overhead

The invisible ultimate Supreme

Above the token towers of dream

In a builder's sleep did countervail

The shadow-pull of earthdom pale.

Then rose with hieratic grace

The massy grandeurs of that place

That men call Nineveh.

Across the sea a shadow fled

With painter-like precision led

To the unrest of one square inch

North-eastward on the sapphire squinch

Crowning the stillness of a fane

Where timeless echoes seem to gain,

Beyond the brabbling rush of tears

And efforts of forgotten years,

Their shrine—Byzantium.

Across the sea a whisper fled,

Heard in the seasons' chiming tread

Of nesting birds or falling fruit,

Or heard more surely in the mute

Smoke-rise of rivers in the air

Or where the moon's unbraided hair

Twined with the foam of a waterfall :

And built the fairy palace wall

In a limpid ether—Baudelaire.