57278: Dusk and the Mirror

Where the room seems ponder-
ing,
Shadowy hovering,
Pictured walls and dove-dim
ceiling,
Edgeless, lost and spectral,
In a quaint half farewell
Away the things familiar fall
In some limbo to a spell.
Mutation of slipped moment
When nothing and solid is blent.
O! dusk palpitant!
Prank fantastical!
You hide and steal from
morning
What you give back from
hiding,
You prank before the dawning
And run from her frail chiding,
And all my household Gods
When he who worships nods
You tweak and pinch and hide
And dabble under your side
To drop upon the shores
Of an old tomorrow
Shut with the same old doors
Of sleep and shame and sorrow.
But naked you have left
One jewel, dripping still
From plundering plashless
fingers.
Lying in a cleft
Of your own surging-bosomed
hill,
It dreams of dreams bereft
And warm dishevelled singers,
Safe from your placeless will.
Or you are like a tree now,
And that is like a lake,
Sinister to thee now
Its glimmer is awake.
Like vague undrowning boughs
Above the pool
You float your gloom in its low
light
Where Narcissian augurs browse,
Dreaming from its cool
Apparition a fear;
Behind the wall of hours you
hear
The tread of the arch light.