POETRY.
THE CHEST.
ONE day, leaning over the chest In the musk-scented dark of my mind, My fingers, trembling, at last Will learn there's no treasure to find.
When the god who moves in the dusk Has emptied the secret cache, And even the scent of the musk Has quietly faded, I'll wish Not for the day when lanterns, I had not kindled, lit A secret life, that the sun turns To stone with white dust on it, Nor for the whispered token That opened a hidden door On a moor where gorse and bracken Bloomed, and there was no moor.
I shall not wish nor wonder
When cold, serene, august The daylight lays my slender Victories in the dust.
For though I shall be blind then
And nothing for me will happen, Others of my own kind then Will be throwing my windows open On stranger lights than my lights To tunes I left unspoken, And watch through lovelier twilights
Stars, that I knew not, beckon.
HUMBERT WOLFE;
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