FAERIE by CHARLES WILLIAMS

UNDER the edge of midnight
While my love is far away,
A wind from the world of faerie
Blows between day and day.

And wandering thoughts possess me,
Such as no wise man knows,
Death and a thousand accidents,
And high impossible woes.

Whether now in her pastime
She turned a little, sighed
With the heaviness of breathing,
And even in turning died:

Or whether some cloud covers
The lobes of the conscious brain
And all that she knew aforetime
She shall never know again,

But her friends shall bring her to me,
Bewildered and afraid
Lest a stranger's hand should touch her,
A shrinking alien maid,—

Yet such distress in patience
And faith an end may find,
And a more fantastic peril
Moves in my dreaming mind:

None knows how deep within us
Lies hid a secret flaw,
Where spins the mad world ever
On the very edge of law.

Under the chance that rules us
Anarchic terrors stir,
Lest what to me has happened
Has never happened to her.

First love in our first meeting,
Changed eyes, and bridal vows,
The incredible years together
Lived in a single house,

The kisses born of custom
That are sweeter and stranger still
Than any clasp of passion,
And the shaping of one will,—

Was it some wraith deceived me,
And lives she still apart
In her father's house contented,
With an unwakened heart?

Now at this striking midnight
Through the chink between day and day,
Has a wind from the world of faerie
Blown all my life away?

Here am I now left naked
Of the vapour that was she:
While the true maid 'midst her kindred
Has never thought of me?

For ten long years together
Can a thing be and not be,
Till it ceases to be for ever,—
And has this chanced to me?

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

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