The Bird-Catcher Read Online Free Page A

houses round the square
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Look out upon grey lawns whose grass
    Is frozen to brittle blades of steel or glass;
    And on black beds through whose ice-welded crust,
    Hollow and hard, no gardener’s spade can thrust;
    And on black branches that forget to grow
    And hang benumbed and hypnotized as though
    The sap stood still. The very air seems dead,
    All sound dried out of it. No ringing tread
    Warms the numbed silence. Even the sun himself,
    An orange disk in a grey frost-laden sky,
    Hangs lightless, like a plate upon a shelf.
    This is not life. Some ghost of otherwhere
    Takes shadowy substance from the frozen air
    To hover briefly till the spell is broken,—
    A dream, a passing thought, a faint word spoken.
    But suddenly from a corner of the square
    A shimmering fount of sound leaps clear and rare,
    A small, thin, frosty cheer like tinkling glass.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Is it shouts of boys that pass
    Running in file to slide on the icy kerb,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Or Dryad, sick for spring,
    Wailing forlornly under the frozen herb?
    O light of youth, O flower of life in death!
    Â Â Â Â Â Â We listen with bated breath;
    So sad, so clear the delicate, wistful spell;
    Till frost lays hold on the sound and all is still.

The Naiad
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Frost-bound the garden stands.
    The claws of the frost are sharp upon my hands.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â On the harsh lawn each blade of grass
    Is tempered to a brittle spear of glass.
    The fountain is crystal-hung; its waters fail.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Wilted to colourless, frail
    Paper the tender flesh of the flowers.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â The Dryads are gone from the tree,
    For the leaves are gone, the delicate leafy towers
    Dismantled, bared to the iron anatomy
    Not even a bird could hide in. But hid within
    In the hollow trunk, the knees drawn up to the chin,
    Hugging herself each shivering Dryad sleeps,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â And frozen Echo leaps
    Â Â Â Â Â Â From her dream when my footfalls knock
    Â Â Â Â Â Â In a motionless, soundless world
    Â Â Â Â Â Â On a pathway hard as rock.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â No flutter, no song of bird
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Nor bubbling flute is heard,
    Nor laughter of green-eyed Satyr. The Satyr, curled
    In his ice-hung cave, is shaken with torpid fear;
    Â Â Â Â Â Â For the days of lust are over
    Â Â Â Â Â Â And cold are the loved and the lover
    Â Â Â Â Â Â And the birthday of Christ draws near.
    Smooth flows the stream, its shallow banks ice-coated,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â And the pool where the lilies floated
    Is glazed with a polished pane as black as flint
    Â Â Â Â Â Â And fringed with a delicate wreath
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Of crystal leaves. But a hint
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Of water moving beneath
    Draws my eyes. Pale, pale through the polished glass,
    Sweet naked body and wavering hair pass
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Pallid as death, fluid as water.
    O ghost of Arethusa, Spring’s first daughter,
    Beating vain hands against your crystal ceiling!
    O hands imploring, O white lips appealing
    Stirred and parted by syllables unheard!
    See, with a sharp-edged stone I crack the pane.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â The pale lips part again
    And the leafless garden thrills to the delicate ring
    Of a small, clear call from Naiad or hidden bird,
    From water or air, crying, “The Spring! The Spring!”

Christmas Eve
    Still falls the snow. White-thatched are all the groves.
    Lost field, sunk roadway, and the buried heather
    Lie in unbroken whiteness all together.
    This is not snow of any worldly weather,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â 
For now the Queen of Loves
    Drops to our earth feather on crystal feather
    Â Â Â Â Â Â 
Plucked from her team of doves.
    Cold in the moonlight cold the hoar-frost shines
    On forests lost in snow, a desolation
    Like seas of foam in frozen fluctuation.
    Those