ON VEXIN.

(From Larus.)

The world arranged in high places,
Thibet, Dartmoor, Véxin de la Normandie
Is usually a stage too high for use;
There are no players, or some dots scampering
Across beauty glorifying itself to death
By seasons, over-praised by dazed spectators
Of the seasons each with its teeth in the other's
tail.

O play without beginning or end
Perpetual epiphany!
The crowned months, preparation for another coronation
And another. It is all coronation,
All death - And never a good certain
Or a hope it will stop. Or try something else.

Our chin once over the rim of the high lands
It is all repetition for us:
Life and death running into one another,
Running out,
ROUND.

Our feet once up on the high lands
There is a chance
That admiration may turn joy,
Joy when we round off a scene of the play without
certain,

2.

Curl the feathers of the monotony of splendour,
Preen up the cap
With a feather of our own that fits.

There was no moon on the morn of the fourteenth night
For the Persian or the Russian or any of the seven races
We would not duplicate for our party.
Cloud-quilt curled over Véxin
Waiting for the morn to rise.

There was no Véxin,
Bottles on the short grass and a single candle
Stuck in a bottle, flame inside a ring.
A single candle for the moon attended
To shew us the way.

And put seven races in the mind to say
I love.

Round went the food and drink
Round the circle of seven outside the candle -
Inside the bottle: until another
Filled with the wine of the colour of the moon
unrisen
Disappeared.

The Persian had said
'Shall I come in court dress?'
We were admiring
A silhouette and a mark

3.

tipped with red feet,
crowned with blue folded and re-folded,
tipped with an trembling:

Eyes drawn into the hair,

Mouth into two moons of the first night
Scarlet, United

On Véxin, with Véxin, by Véxin.

Lost with the bottle and the Russian together,
(Two ways of looking at young cats)

Found by the Frenchman born on Véxin

The moment that the moon swung free -

As the light of the moon of the fourteenth night
walked out

On Véxin de la Normandie -

Over the Russian and the Persian
(Two ways of looking at a piece of jade)

Under a wild-apple tree -

When the french boy took the tree to his breast,
Shook down the green stone apples

Where they lay with their prize,
Who had waited for the moon to rise.