Thin Gnat Voices.

The Jolly Company
Rupert Brooke

THE stars, a jolly company,
I envied, straying late and lonely;
And cried upon their revelry:
"O white companionship! You only
In love, in faith unbroken dwell,
Friends radiant and inseparable!"
Light-heart and glad they seemed to me
And merry comrades (even so
God out of heaven may laugh to see
The happy crowds; and never know
That in his lone obscure distress
Each walketh in a wilderness).
But I, remembering, pitied well
And loved them, who, with lonely light,
In empty infinite spaces dwell,
Disconsolate. For, all the night,
I heard the thin gnat-voices cry,
Star to faint star, across the sky.

Finding You

Finding You

I love to find you in the night-time,
When your toes rest, child-like, upon my legs;
To be stirred by the warmth of your body -
Naked, smooth, slow-breathing, sleeping ...
The smell of your hair, your pillowed head
Sheltering under my arm.
So we cheat the waking, working hours.

The green-glow figures of time
Play gooseberry in the dark,
Unmasking each newborn minute
In the silence of bird-sleeping hours.

Time will not stand still for us
Nor life be more than earth;
Yet more ancient hearts than ours knew,
Like us, the intimate quiet of night.

Poet unknown.
From another time.