Poems By Arjava

NIGHT was closing on the traveller

When he came

To the empty eerie courtyard

With no name.

Loud he called ; no echo answered ;

Nothing stirred :

But a crescent moon swung wanly,

White as curd.

When he flashed his single sword-blade

Through the gloom,

None resisted—till he frantic,

Filled with doom,

Hurled his weapon through the gloaming,

Took no aim ;

Saw his likenesses around him

Do the same :

Viewed a thousand sword less figures

Like his own—

Then first knew in that cold starlight

Hell, alone.

SUDDENLY within a globe of dew

The universe made manifest a white

Significance of effortlessly new

To-morrows in one marble-gleaming height.

It rose with flawless and with unpierced flank

Two hundred cubits from the level ground :

And near its plinth the grass had grown less rank,

And brighter sunrays seemed to glitter round.

O happy feet which gain that silken sward ;

Most happy lips that send their waves of song

To cleave the golden hush and blithely ford

All moats of doom that part the comrades in that throng.