Philip Henry Savage Poems

I Left the city to the north and walked
Against a southwest wind; the hurtling rain
Showered the empty streets in noisy gusts,
...

I love to walk against the yellow light,
The lemon-yellow of the first daylight,
When cold and clear above the frozen earth
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I mark you coming the accustomed way,
As light as grace, your head uplift and high,
Gray subtlety of flame in either eye,
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I stood at the hedge as a hearse went by
And passed me along the way;
The sun broke in through a silver sky
And scattered a golden ray.
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If ever I have thought or said
In all the seasons of the past
One word at which thy heart has bled
Believe me, it will be the last.
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In long, slow silences of soul
Beneath the sunset on the sea
I think I hear the numbers roll
That tell my conquest over thee;
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In the first pale flush of even
When the sun is hardly down,
Ere the stars are in the heaven,
Ere the shadows turn to brown;
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It is long waiting for the dear companions,
The friends that come not, though God knows I need them.
I smile and wait; and yet
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Like a dead leaf that rolls along the ground,
Driven by a wind that wanders round and round,
I see my heart, with edges cut and curled,
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Love is a life you cannot trace
Nor find by gazing in the face.
You cannot sum it, pence by pence,
Nor find it in its elements.
...