I

The hills of Wales burned only dimmer gold
Beneath gold skies, as over the green shires
I looked from my high window on the fires
Of sunset kindling; but they could not hold
My vagrant thought that in an instant leapt
To a window overseas, that from a height
Looks down an alley where a girl one night
Was done to death while, knowing naught, I slept

And, brooding in my chair, I wonder why
The golden uplands and the golden sky
Should bring that horror of the dark to mind,
And in my consciousness I seek to trace
The ray that glimmers through dark ways and blind
Between the sunset and a dead girl's face.

II

If I could live within the ray of light
That runs through all things everlastingly —
Not only glimpse in moments of clear sight
The glancing of the golden shuttles that ply
'Twixt things diverse in seeming, stars and mud,
Innocence and the deed in darkness done,
The victim and the spiller of the blood —
The light that weaves the universe in one,

Then might my heart have ease and rest content
On the golden upland under the clear sky:
But ever must my restless days be spent
Following the fugitive gleam until I die —
Light-shotten darkness, glory struck from strife,
Terror to beauty kindling, death to life.