What words that move on wings in a long drift...

What words that move on wings in a long drift

Can waft this silence into weary ears,

And steal into the veins and fingertips

Of restless bodies, like magnificent ships

Proud from the seas that calmly sail through fears,

Mean streets, and miseries, with passage swift.

What words pricked from the stars and shimmering together,

Or swept like little winds through leaves alert,

Can filter through the chinks of bolted doors

Deaf to the clamours knocking without pause,

Steeled with indifference against all hurt,

Deaf to the cry of man, and rack of weather:

To sing the hubbub of this glittering night,

Where all the lamps each with a separate soul

Throb to the ecstasies of dancing life;

And Beauty, gleaming high her magic knife

Cuts free the tethered heart from long control

And flings it like a ball with mad delight

Into the silver lap of the young moon.

What needles quick, what threads, what fingers fine

Can broider tapestries as rich as these,

Stranger than dreams and drifting melodies,

Transparent as the gods we half divine,

Frail as the thoughts that dwindle in a swoon

Ghostly before begetting. Tinged with pain

That glimmers pale on hands we cannot find,

And visioned faces that our dreams create

Born in the land forbidden us of fate

And longed for all our lives... What words can bind

Forever Joy, that never comes again!