Classic Poem

To G. H. LUCE , with a Book of Plays

When in some heavy airless Eastern night,
That does not stir the flame by which you read
Lost tongues and give them life that is your life,
You hear a sudden far and lonely bell
From a dark temple or Pagan pagode,
Think of another deep and distant bell
That tolled but in the darkness of my mind
And in the silent pages of my book;
And, thence, of me, lover of cold and snow,
Far-off upon a lonely pine-maned crag
Next to the ocean of the North of the world
(As strange to all that is the Burmese land
As Leda to Orion, constellations),
Yet near to you by the deep permeation
Of poetry and that other, sympathy,
The synchronising breathing of men's minds.