Form: a quarterly of the arts (N.S. 1.1921/1922)

'WOODCUT

BY JOHN NASH

THE GARDEN

ITONE walls, dear trees,worn
paths of every day,
Because you have lived so
cleanly in my mind
Something of me for ever in
you shall stay,

When I the smaller acre yet shall find.
Whennoonis brightlshall be withyourflowers,
With you the snows of winter I shall wear,
And when, enchanted in the midnight hours,
You are a silver lake, I shall be there.

And none shall know, or few; yet, knowing
not,

The stranger here shall with your spirit take
Into his heart a kinship unforgot
That still you tell in numbers for my sake,
And in your mute occasion then shall be
Some whispered word that once you learnt of
me.

JOHN DRINKWATER

LOVE

j RE the pale bodies of these maidens
Wisps of the smoke of life
Burning in my brain,

Blown across the green fields of Spring
From the smouldering fires of Winter?
For I am a heap of dead generations
Smouldering in the sun.

I am pale as a candle-flame in the sunlight,
My body is as white as wax.

I am dim asa wave falling from a cliff of light,
A soundless invisible flame,

And those wisps of smoke wandering in the
daylight

Are the bodies of slender girls,

Incense of earth’s imagination.

It is blown among the walls of cities,

It floats curled along the streets
As though where earth touched invisible clouds
On the clear pavements their bright skirts
fluttered,

A snowy border of the clear day;

The earth dark as a still wood garden

About the feet of February snowdrops.

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