Page:Crome Yellow.djvu/225
a long, long way ahead. He would think of Thursday morning when Thursday morning arrived. Meanwhile there was Gobley, meanwhile Zenobia.
In the visitors’ book at Crome Ivor had left, according to his invariable custom in these cases, a poem. He had improvised it magisterially in the ten minutes preceding his departure. Denis and Mr. Scogan strolled back together from the gates of the courtyard, whence they had bidden their last farewells; on the writing-table in the hall they found the visitors’ book, open, and Ivor’s composition scarcely dry. Mr. Scogan read it aloud:
“The magic of those immemorial kings,
Who webbed enchantment on the bowls of night,
Sleeps in the soul of all created things;
In the blue sea, th’ Acroceraunian height,
In the eyed butterfly’s auricular wings
And orgied visions of the anchorite;
In all that singing flies and flying sings,
In rain, in pain, in delicate delight.
But much more magic, much more cogent spells
Weave here their wizardries about my soul.
Crome calls me like the voice of vesperal bells,
Haunts like a ghostly-peopled necropole.
Fate tears me hence. Hard fate! since far from
Crome
My soul must weep, remembering its Home.”
“Very nice and tasteful and tactful,” said Mr. Scogan, when he had finished.