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Aglavaine
Aglavaine came to the inn:
They gave him the foulest room.
He, with a heart to win
Love like the rose for bloom,
Slept with the rustling straw for bed
And cobwebbed rafters overhead.
Aglavaine's red-faced host
Kept revel all night long.
The bar-maid was their toast,
The devil's flings their song.
Still through the noise he heard the leaves
Tossed in the wind against the eaves.
Aglavaine heard the choir
Chant in the church unseen,
Then, with a heart of fire
For beauty fine and clean,
Ate where a clown might loathe to dine,
While all his fellows reeled with wine.
Aglavaine came to the inn:
Short was their speech and curt.
He of the tender chin,
Lonely and worn and hurt,
Saw through his window-round of sky
God's pageantry of stars go by.
Aglavaine sang in the sun,
Taking the morning road.
His was the course begun,
His but the firstling load.
They travel far and sup with sin
Who find good quarters at an inn.
DRIFTWOOD
Like driftwood burning in the grate-
Salt with the boundless sea,
Glowing with all the changing: fate
"That drove it far and held it late-
Broken and beaten you may be,
But sad experience leaps and flies
To light and color in your eyes.
Like wreckage tossing with the tide,
Borne from we know not where,
The wildness of the wayes you ride,
However much your face may hide,
Has left its mark of foul and fair;
And brave experience leaps and plays
About my dreams of your dead days.