Chapter I: =A Snowy Day in School=

All the slow school hours, round the irregular hum of the class, Have pressed immeasurable spaces of hoarse silence Muffling my mind, as snow muffles the sounds that pass Down the soiled street. We have pattered the lessons ceaselessly--

But the faces of the boys, in the brooding, yellow light Have shone for me like a crowded constellation of stars, Like full-blown flowers dimly shaking at the night, Like floating froth on an ebbing shore in the moon.

Out of each star, dark, strange beams that disquiet: In the open depths of each flower, dark restless drops: Twin bubbles, shadow-full of mystery and challenge in the foam's whispering riot: --How can I answer the challenge of so many eyes!

The thick snow is crumpled on the roof, it plunges down Awfully. Must I call back those hundred eyes?--A voice Wakes from the hum, faltering about a noun-- My question! My God, I must break from this hoarse silence

That rustles beyond the stars to me.--There, I have startled a hundred eyes, and I must look Them an answer back. It is more than I can bear.

The snow descends as if the dull sky shook In flakes of shadow down; and through the gap Between the ruddy schools sweeps one black rook.

The rough snowball in the playground stands huge and still With fair flakes settling down on it.--Beyond, the town Is lost in the shadowed silence the skies distil.

And all things are possessed by silence, and they can brood Wrapped up in the sky's dim space of hoarse silence Earnestly--and oh for me this class is a bitter rood.