Poems. Volume 2

THE APPEASEMENT OF DEMETER

IDemeter devastated our good land,In blackness for her daughter snatched below.Smoke-pillar or loose hillock was the sand,Where soil had been to clasp warm seed and throwThe wheat, vine, olive, ripe to Summer’s ray.Now whether night advancing, whether day,         Scarce did the baldness show:The hand of man was a defeated hand.IINecessity, the primal goad to growth,Stood shrunken; Youth and Age appeared as one;Like Winter Summer; good as labour sloth;Nor was there answer wherefore beamed the sun,Or why men drew the breath to carry pain.High reared the ploughshare, broken lay the wain,         Idly the flax-wheel spunUnridered: starving lords were wasp and moth.IIILean grassblades losing green on their bent flags,Sang chilly to themselves; lone honey-beesPursued the flowers that were not with dry bags;Sole sound aloud the snap of sapless trees,More sharp than slingstones on hard breastplates hurled.Back to first chaos tumbled the stopped world,         Careless to lure or please.A nature of gaunt ribs, an earth of crags.IVNo smile Demeter cast: the gloom she saw,Well draped her direful musing; for in gloom,In thicker gloom, deep down the cavern-maw,Her sweet had vanished; liker unto whom,And whose pale place of habitation mute,She and all seemed where Seasons, pledged for fruit         Anciently, gaped for bloom:Where hand of man was as a plucked fowl’s claw.VThe wrathful Queen descended on a vale,That ere the ravished hour for richness heaved.Iambe, maiden of the merry tale,Beside her eyed the once red-cheeked, green-leaved.It looked as if the Deluge had withdrawn.Pity caught at her throat; her jests were gone.         More than for her who grieved,She could for this waste home have piped the wail.VIIambe, her dear mountain-rivuletTo waken laughter from cold stones, beheldA riven wheatfield cracking for the wet,And seed like infant’s teeth, that never swelled,Apeep up flinty ridges, milkless round.Teeth of the giants marked she where thin ground         Rocky in spikes rebelledAgainst the hand here slack as rotted net.VIIThe valley people up the ashen scoopShe beckoned, aiming hopelessly to winHer Mistress in compassion of yon groupSo pinched and wizened; with their aged grin,For lack of warmth to smile on mouths of woe,White as in chalk outlining little O,         Dumb, from a falling chin;Young, old, alike half-bent to make the hoop.VIIITheir tongues of birds they wagged, weak-voiced as whenDark underwaters the recesses choke;With cluck and upper quiver of a henIn grasp, past peeking: cry before the croak.Relentlessly their gold-haired Heaven, their fountBountiful of old days, heard them recount         This and that cruel stroke:Nor eye nor ear had she for piteous men.IXA figure of black rock by sunbeams crownedThrough stormclouds, where the volumed shades enfoldAn earth in awe before the claps resoundAnd woods and dwellings are as billows rolled,The barren Nourisher unmelted shedDeath from the looks that wandered with the dead         Out of the realms of gold,In famine for her lost, her lost unfound.XIambe from her Mistress tripped; she raisedThe cattle-call above the moan of prayer;And slowly out of fields their fancy grazed,Among the droves, defiled a horse and mare:The wrecks of horse and mare: such ribs as viewSeas that have struck brave ships ashore, while through         Shoots the swift foamspit: bareThey nodded, and Demeter on them gazed.XIHowbeit the season of the dancing blood,Forgot was horse of mare, yea, mare of horse:Reversed, each head at either’s flank, they stood.Whereat the Goddess, in a dim remorse,Laid hand on them, and smacked; and her touch pricked.Neighing within, at either’s flank they licked;         Played on a moment’s forceAt courtship, withering to the crazy nod.XIIThe nod was that we gather for consent;And mournfully amid the group a dame,Interpreting the thing in nature meant,Her hands held out like bearers of the flame,And nodded for the negative sideways.Keen at her Mistress glanced Iambe: rays         From the Great Mother came:Her lips were opened wide; the curse was rent.XIIIShe laughed: since our first harvesting heard noneLike thunder of the song of heart: her face,The dreadful darkness, shook to mounted sun,And peal on peal across the hills held chase.She laughed herself to water; laughed to fire;Laughed the torrential laugh of dam and sire         Full of the marrowy race.Her laughter, Gods! was flesh on skeleton.XIVThe valley people huddled, broke, afraid,Assured, and taking lightning in the veins,They puffed, they leaped, linked hands, together swayed,Unwitting happiness till golden rainsOf tears in laughter, laughter weeping, smoteKnowledge of milky mercy from that throat         Pouring to heal their pains:And one bold youth set mouth at a shy maid.XVIambe clapped to see the kindly lustsInspire the valley people, still on seas,Like poplar-tops relieved from stress of gusts,With rapture in their wonderment; but these,Low homage being rendered, ran to plough,Fed by the laugh, as by the mother cow         Calves at the teats they tease:Soon drove they through the yielding furrow-crusts.XVIUprose the blade in green, the leaf in red,The tree of water and the tree of wood:And soon among the branches overheadGave beauty juicy issue sweet for food.O Laughter! beauty plumped and love had birth.Laughter!  O thou reviver of sick Earth!         Good for the spirit, goodFor body, thou! to both art wine and bread!

EARTH AND A WEDDED WOMAN

IThe shepherd, with his eye on hazy South,Has told of rain upon the fall of day.But promise is there none for Susan’s drouth,That he will come, who keeps in dry delay.The freshest of the village three years gone,She hangs as the white field-rose hangs short-lived;      And she and Earth are one      In withering unrevived.Rain!  O the glad refresher of the grain!And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain!IIAh, what is Marriage, says each pouting maid,When she who wedded with the soldier hidesAt home as good as widowed in the shade,A lighthouse to the girls that would be brides:Nor dares to give a lad an ogle, norTo dream of dancing, but must hang and moan,      Her husband in the war,      And she to lie alone.Rain!  O the glad refresher of the grain!And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain!IIIThey have not known; they are not in the stream;Light as the flying seed-ball is their play,The silly maids! and happy souls they seem;Yet Grief would not change fates with such as they.They have not struck the roots which meet the firesBeneath, and bind us fast with Earth, to know      The strength of her desires,      The sternness of her woe.Rain!  O the glad refresher of the grain!And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain!IVNow, shepherd, see thy word, where without showerA borderless low blotting Westward spreads.The hall-clock holds the valley on the hour;Across an inner chamber thunder treads:The dead leaf trips, the tree-top swings, the floorOf dust whirls, dropping lumped: near thunder speaks,      And drives the dames to door,      Their kerchiefs flapped at cheeks.Rain!  O the glad refresher of the grain!And welcome waterspouts of blessed rain!VThrough night, with bedroom window wide for air,Lay Susan tranced to hear all heaven descend:And gurgling voices came of Earth, and rare,Past flowerful, breathings, deeper than life’s end,From her heaved breast of sacred common mould;Whereby this lone-laid wife was moved to feel      Unworded things and old      To her pained heart appeal.Rain!  O the glad refresher of the grain!And down in deluges of blessed rain!VIAt morn she stood to live for ear and sight,Love sky or cloud, or rose or grasses drenched.A lureful devil, that in glow-worm lightSet languor writhing all its folds, she quenched.But she would muse when neighbours praised her face,Her services, and staunchness to her mate:      Knowing by some dim trace,      The change might bear a date.Rain!  O the glad refresher of the grain!Thrice beauteous is our sunshine after rain!

MOTHER TO BABE

IFleck of sky you are,Dropped through branches dark,   O my little one, mine!Promise of the star,Outpour of the lark;   Beam and song divine.IISee this precious gift,Steeping in new birth   All my being, for signEarth to heaven can lift,Heaven descend on earth,   Both in one be mine!IIILife in light you glassWhen you peep and coo,   You, my little one, mine!Brooklet chirps to grass,Daisy looks in dew   Up to dear sunshine.

WOODLAND PEACE

Sweet as Eden is the air,   And Eden-sweet the ray.No Paradise is lost for themWho foot by branching root and stem,And lightly with the woodland share   The change of night and day.Here all say,We serve her, even as I:We brood, we strive to sky,We gaze upon decay,We wot of life through death,How each feeds each we spy;And is a tangle round,Are patient; what is dumbWe question not, nor askThe silent to give sound,The hidden to unmask,The distant to draw near.And this the woodland saith:I know not hope or fear;I take whate’er may come;I raise my head to aspects fair,From foul I turn away.Sweet as Eden is the air,   And Eden-sweet the ray.

THE QUESTION WHITHER

IWhen we have thrown off this old suit,   So much in need of mending,To sink among the naked mute,   Is that, think you, our ending?We follow many, more we lead,   And you who sadly turf us,Believe not that all living seed   Must flower above the surface.IISensation is a gracious gift,   But were it cramped to station,The prayer to have it cast adrift   Would spout from all sensation.Enough if we have winked to sun,   Have sped the plough a season;There is a soul for labour done,   Endureth fixed as reason.IIIThen let our trust be firm in Good,   Though we be of the fasting;Our questions are a mortal brood,   Our work is everlasting.We children of Beneficence   Are in its being sharers;And Whither vainer sounds than Whence,   For word with such wayfarers.

OUTER AND INNER

IFrom twig to twig the spider weaves   At noon his webbing fine.So near to mute the zephyrs flute   That only leaflets dance.The sun draws out of hazel leaves   A smell of woodland wine.I wake a swarm to sudden storm   At any step’s advance.IIAlong my path is bugloss blue,   The star with fruit in moss;The foxgloves drop from throat to top   A daily lesser bell.The blackest shadow, nurse of dew,   Has orange skeins across;And keenly red is one thin thread   That flashing seems to swell.IIIMy world I note ere fancy comes,   Minutest hushed observe:What busy bits of motioned wits   Through antlered mosswork strive.But now so low the stillness hums,   My springs of seeing swerve,For half a wink to thrill and think   The woods with nymphs alive.IVI neighbour the invisible   So close that my consentIs only asked for spirits masked   To leap from trees and flowers.And this because with them I dwell   In thought, while calmly bentTo read the lines dear Earth designs   Shall speak her life on ours.VAccept, she says; it is not hard   In woods; but she in townsRepeats, accept; and have we wept,   And have we quailed with fears,Or shrunk with horrors, sure reward   We have whom knowledge crowns;Who see in mould the rose unfold,   The soul through blood and tears.

NATURE AND LIFE

ILeave the uproar: at a leapThou shalt strike a woodland path,Enter silence, not of sleep,Under shadows, not of wrath;Breath which is the spirit’s bathIn the old Beginnings find,And endow them with a mind,Seed for seedling, swathe for swathe.That gives Nature to us, thisGive we her, and so we kiss.IIFruitful is it so: but hearHow within the shell thou art,Music sounds; nor other nearCan to such a tremor start.Of the waves our life is part;They our running harvests bear:Back to them for manful air,Laden with the woodland’s heart!That gives Battle to us, thisGive we it, and good the kiss.

DIRGE IN WOODS

A wind sways the pines,         And belowNot a breath of wild air;Still as the mosses that glowOn the flooring and over the linesOf the roots here and there.The pine-tree drops its dead;They are quiet, as under the sea.Overhead, overheadRushes life in a race,As the clouds the clouds chase;         And we go,And we drop like the fruits of the tree,         Even we,         Even so.

A FAITH ON TRIAL

On the morning of May,Ere the children had entered my gateWith their wreaths and mechanical lay,A metal ding-dong of the date!I mounted our hill, bearing heartThat had little of life save its weight:The crowned Shadow poising dartHung over her: she, my own,My good companion, mate,Pulse of me: she who had shownFortitude quiet as Earth’sAt the shedding of leaves.  And aroundThe sky was in garlands of cloud,Winning scents from unnumbered new births,Pointed buds, where the woods were brownedBy a mouldered beechen shroud;Or over our meads of the vale,Such an answer to sun as he,Brave in his gold; to a sound,None sweeter, of woods flapping sail,With the first full flood of our year,For their voyage on lustreful sea:Unto what curtained haven in chief,Will be writ in the book of the sere.But surely the crew are we,Eager or stamped or bowed;Counted thinner at fall of the leaf.Grief heard them, and passed like a bier.Due Summerward, lo, they were set,In volumes of foliage proud,On the heave of their favouring tides,And their song broadened out to the cheerWhen a neck of the ramping surfRattles thunder a boat overrides.All smiles ran the highways wet;The worm drew its links from the turf;The bird of felicity loudSpun high, and a South wind blew.Weak out of sheath downy leavesOf the beech quivered lucid as dew,Their radiance asking, who grieves;For nought of a sorrow they knew:No space to the dread wrestle vowed,No chamber in shadow of night.At times as the steadier breezeFlutter-huddled their twigs to a crowd,The beam of them wafted my sightTo league-long sun upon seas:The golden path we had crossedMany years, till her birthland swungRecovered to vision from lost,A light in her filial glance.And sweet was her voice with the tongue,The speechful tongue of her France,Soon at ripple about us, like rillsEver busy with little: awayThrough her Normandy, down where the millsDot at lengths a rivercourse, greyAs its bordering poplars bentTo gusts off the plains above.Old stone château and farms,Home of her birth and her love!On the thread of the pasture you trace,By the river, their milk, for miles,Spotted once with the English tent,In days of the tocsin’s alarms,To tower of the tallest of piles,The country’s surveyor breast-high.Home of her birth and her love!Home of a diligent race;Thrifty, deft-handed to plyShuttle or needle, and wooSun to the roots of the pearFrogging each mud-walled cot.The elders had known her in arms.There plucked we the bluet, her hueOf the deeper forget-me-not;Well wedding her ripe-wheat hair.I saw, unsighting: her heartI saw, and the home of her loveThere printed, mournfully rent:Her ebbing adieu, her adieu,And the stride of the Shadow athwart.For one of our Autumns there! . . .Straight as the flight of a doveWe went, swift winging we went.We trod solid ground, we breathed air,The heavens were unbroken.  Break they,The word of the world is adieu:Her word: and the torrents are round,The jawed wolf-waters of prey.We stand upon isles, who stand:A Shadow before us, and back,A phantom the habited land.We may cry to the Sunderer, spareThat dearest! he loosens his pack.Arrows we breathe, not air.The memories tenderly boundTo us are a drifting crew,Amid grey-gapped waters for ground.Alone do we stand, each one,Till rootless as they we strewThose deeps of the corse-like stareAt a foreign and stony sun.Eyes had I but for the sceneOf my circle, what neighbourly grew.If haply no finger lay outTo the figures of days that had been,I gathered my herb, and endured;My old cloak wrapped me about.Unfooted was ground-ivy blue,Whose rustic shrewd odour alluredIn Spring’s fresh of morning: unseenHer favourite wood-sorrel bellAs yet, though the leaves’ green floorAwaited their flower, that would tellOf a red-veined moist yestreen,With its droop and the hues it wore,When we two stood overnightOne, in the dark van-glowOn our hill-top, seeing beneathOur household’s twinkle of lightThrough spruce-boughs, gem of a wreath.Budding, the service-tree, whiteAlmost as whitebeam, threw,From the under of leaf upright,Flecks like a showering snowOn the flame-shaped junipers green,On the sombre mounds of the yew.Like silvery tapers brightBy a solemn cathedral screen,They glistened to closer view.Turf for a rooks’ revel stripedPleased those devourers astute.Chorister blackbird and thrushTogether or alternate piped;A free-hearted harmony large,With meaning for man, for brute,When the primitive forces are brimmed.Like featherings hither and yonOf aëry tree-twigs over marge,To the comb of the winds, untrimmed,Their measure is found in the vast.Grief heard them, and stepped her way on.She has but a narrow embrace.Distrustful of hearing she passed.They piped her young Earth’s Bacchic rout;The race, and the prize of the race;Earth’s lustihead pressing to sprout.But sight holds a soberer space.Colourless dogwood lowCurled up a twisted root,Nigh yellow-green mosses, to flushRedder than sun upon rocks,When the creeper clematis-shootShall climb, cap his branches, and show,Beside veteran green of the box,At close of the year’s maple blush,A bleeding greybeard is he,Now hale in the leafage lush.Our parasites paint us.  Hard by,A wet yew-trunk flashed the peelOf our naked forefathers in fight;With stains of the fray sweating free;And him came no parasite nigh:Firm on the hard knotted knee,He stood in the crown of his dun;Earth’s toughest to stay her wheel:Under whom the full day is night;Whom the century-tempests call son,Having striven to rend him in vain.I walked to observe, not to feel,Not to fancy, if simple of eyeOne may be among images reapedFor a shift of the glance, as grain:Profitless froth you espyAshore after billows have leaped.I fled nothing, nothing pursued:The changeful visible faceOf our Mother I sought for my food;Crumbs by the way to sustain.Her sentence I knew past grace.Myself I had lost of us twain,Once bound in mirroring thought.She had flung me to dust in her wake;And I, as your convict dragsHis chain, by the scourge untaught,Bore life for a goad, without aim.I champed the sensations that makeOf a ruffled philosophy rags.For them was no meaning too blunt,Nor aspect too cutting of steel.This Earth of the beautiful breasts,Shining up in all colours aflame,To them had visage of hags:A Mother of aches and jests:Soulless, heading a huntAimless except for the meal.Hope, with the star on her front;Fear, with an eye in the heel;Our links to a Mother of grace;They were dead on the nerve, and deadFor the nature divided in three;Gone out of heart, out of brain,Out of soul: I had in their placeThe calm of an empty room.We were joined but by that thin thread,My disciplined habit to see.And those conjure images, those,The puppets of loss or gain;Not he who is bare to his doom;For whom never semblance playsTo bewitch, overcloud, illume.The dusty mote-images rose;Sheer film of the surface awag:They sank as they rose; their painDeclaring them mine of old days.Now gazed I where, sole upon gloom,As flower-bush in sun-specked crag,Up the spine of the double combeWith yew-boughs heavily cloaked,A young apparition shone:Known, yet wonderful, whiteSurpassingly; doubtfully known,For it struck as the birth of Light:Even Day from the dark unyoked.It waved like a pilgrim flagO’er processional penitents flownWhen of old they broke rounding yon spine:O the pure wild-cherry in bloom!For their Eastward march to the shrineOf the footsore far-eyed Faith,Was banner so brave, so fair,So quick with celestial signOf victorious rays over death?For a conquest of coward despair;—Division of soul from wits,And these made rulers;—full sure,More starlike never did shineTo illumine the sinister fieldWhere our life’s old night-bird flits.I knew it: with her, my own,Had hailed it pure of the pure;Our beacon yearly: but strangeWhen it strikes to within is the known;Richer than newness revealed.There was needed darkness like mine.Its beauty to vividness blownDrew the life in me forward, chased,From aloft on a pinnacle’s range,That hindward spidery line,The length of the ways I had paced,A footfarer out of the dawn,To Youth’s wild forest, where sprang,For the morning of May long gone,The forest’s white virgin; sheSeen yonder; and sheltered me, sang;She in me, I in her; what songsThe fawn-eared wood-hollows reviveTo pour forth their tune-footed throngs;Inspire to the dreaming of goodIllimitable to come:She, the white wild cherry, a tree,Earth-rooted, tangibly wood,Yet a presence throbbing alive;Nor she in our language dumb:A spirit born of a tree;Because earth-rooted alive:Huntress of things worth pursuitOf souls; in our naming, dreams.And each unto other was lute,By fits quick as breezy gleams.My quiver of aims and desiresHad colour that she would have owned;And if by humaner firesHued later, these held her enthroned:My crescent of Earth; my bloodAt the silvery early stir;Hour of the thrill of the budAbout to burst, and by herDirected, attuned, englobed:My Goddess, the chaste, not chill;Choir over choir white-robed;White-bosomed fold within fold:For so could I dream, breast-bare,In my time of blooming; dream stillThrough the maze, the mesh, and the wreck,Despite, since manhood was bold,The yoke of the flesh on my neck.She beckoned, I gazed, unawareHow a shaft of the blossoming treeWas shot from the yew-wood’s core.I stood to the touch of a keyTurned in a fast-shut door.They rounded my garden, content,The small fry, clutching their fee,Their fruit of the wreath and the pole;And, chatter, hop, skip, they were sent,In a buzz of young company glee,Their natural music, swift shoalTo the next easy shedders of pence.Why not? for they had me in tuneWith the hungers of my kind.Do readings of earth draw thence,Then a concord deeper than criesOf the Whither whose echo is Whence,To jar unanswered, shall riseAs a fountain-jet in the mindBowed dark o’er the falling and strewn.* * *Unwitting where it might lead,How it came, for the anguish to cease,And the Questions that sow not nor spin,This wisdom, rough-written, and black,As of veins that from venom bleed,I had with the peace within;Or patience, mortal of peace,Compressing the surgent strifeIn a heart laid open, not mailed,To the last blank hour of the rack,When struck the dividing knife:When the hand that never had failedIn its pressure to mine hung slack.But this in myself did I know,Not needing a studious brow,Or trust in a governing star,While my ears held the jangled shoutThe children were lifting afar:That natures at interflowWith all of their past and the now,Are chords to the Nature without,Orbs to the greater whole:First then, nor utterly thenTill our lord of sensations at war,The rebel, the heart, yields placeTo brain, each prompting the soul.Thus our dear Earth we embraceFor the milk, her strength to men.And crave we her medical herb,We have but to see and hear,Though pierced by the cruel acerb,The troops of the memories armedHostile to strike at the nestThat nourished and flew them warmed.Not she gives the tear for the tear.Weep, bleed, rave, writhe, be distraught,She is moveless.  Not of her breastAre the symbols we conjure when FearTakes leaven of Hope.  I caught,With Death in me shrinking from Death,As cold from cold, for a signOf the life beyond ashes: I cast,Believing the vision divine,Wings of that dream of my YouthTo the spirit beloved: ’twas unglassedOn her breast, in her depths austere:A flash through the mist, mere breath,Breath on a buckler of steel.For the flesh in revolt at her laws,Neither song nor smile in ruth,Nor promise of things to reveal,Has she, nor a word she saith:We are asking her wheels to pause.Well knows she the cry of unfaith.If we strain to the farther shore,We are catching at comfort near.Assurances, symbols, saws,Revelations in legends, lightTo eyes rolling darkness, theseDesired of the flesh in affright,For the which it will swear to adore,She yields not for prayers at her knees;The woolly beast bleating will shear.These are our sensual dreams;Of the yearning to touch, to feelThe dark Impalpable sure,And have the Unveiled appear;Whereon ever black she beams,Doth of her terrible deal,She who dotes over ripeness at play,Rosiness fondles and feeds,Guides it with shepherding crook,To her sports and her pastures alway.Not she gives the tear for the tear:Harsh wisdom gives Earth, no more;In one the spur and the curb:An answer to thoughts or deeds;To the Legends an alien look;To the Questions a figure of clay.Yet we have but to see and hear,Crave we her medical herb.For the road to her soul is the Real:The root of the growth of man:And the senses must traverse it freshWith a love that no scourge shall abate,To reach the lone heights where we scanIn the mind’s rarer vision this flesh;In the charge of the Mother our fate;Her law as the one common weal.We, whom the view benumbs,We, quivering upward, each hourKnow battle in air and in groundFor the breath that goes as it comes,For the choice between sweet and sour,For the smallest grain of our worth:And he who the reckoning sumsFinds nought in his hand save Earth.Of Earth are we stripped or crowned.The fleeting Present we crave,Barter our best to wed,In hope of a cushioned bower,What is it but Future and PastLike wind and tide at a wave!Idea of the senses, bredFor the senses to snap and devour:Thin as the shell of a soundIn delivery, withered in light.Cry we for permanence fast,Permanence hangs by the grave;Sits on the grave green-grassed,On the roll of the heaved grave-mound.By Death, as by Life, are we fed:The two are one spring; our bondWith the numbers; with whom to uniteHere feathers wings for beyond:Only they can waft us in flight.For they are Reality’s flower.Of them, and the contact with them,Issues Earth’s dearest daughter, the firmIn footing, the stately of stem;Unshaken though elements lour;A warrior heart unquelled;Mirror of Earth, and guideTo the Holies from sense withheld:Reason, man’s germinant fruit.She wrestles with our old wormSelf in the narrow and wide:Relentless quencher of lies,With laughter she pierces the brute;And hear we her laughter peal,’Tis Light in us dancing to scourThe loathed recess of his dens;Scatter his monstrous bed,And hound him to harrow and plough.She is the world’s one prize;Our champion, rightfully head;The vessel whose piloted prow,Though Folly froth round, hiss and hoot,Leaves legible print at the keel.Nor least is the service she does,That service to her may cleanseThe well of the Sorrows in us;For a common delight will drainThe rank individual fensOf a wound refusing to healWhile the old worm slavers its root.I bowed as a leaf in rain;As a tree when the leaf is shedTo winds in the season at wane:And when from my soul I said,May the worm be trampled: smite,Sacred Reality! powerFilled me to front it aright.I had come of my faith’s ordeal.It is not to stand on a towerAnd see the flat universe reel;Our mortal sublimities dropLike raiment by glisterlings worn,At a sweep of the scythe for the crop.Wisdom is won of its fight,The combat incessant; and driesTo mummywrap perching a height.It chews the contemplative cudIn peril of isolate scorn,Unfed of the onward flood.Nor view we a different mornIf we gaze with the deeper sight,With the deeper thought forewise:The world is the same, seen through;The features of men are the same.But let their historian newIn the language of nakedness write,Rejoice we to know not shame,Not a dread, not a doubt: to have doneWith the tortures of thought in the throes,Our animal tangle, and graspVery sap of the vital in this:That from flesh unto spirit man growsEven here on the sod under sun:That she of the wanton’s kiss,Broken through with the bite of an asp,Is Mother of simple truth,Relentless quencher of lies;Eternal in thought; discernedIn thought mid-ferry betweenThe Life and the Death, which are one,As our breath in and out, joy or teen.She gives the rich vision to youth,If we will, of her prompting wise;Or men by the lash made lean,Who in harness the mind subserve,Their title to read her have earned;Having mastered sensation—insaneAt a stroke of the terrified nerve;And out of the sensual hiveGrown to the flower of brain;To know her a thing alive,Whose aspects mutably swerve,Whose laws immutably reign.Our sentencer, clother in mist,Her morn bends breast to her noon,Noon to the hour dark-dyed,If we will, of her promptings wise:Her light is our own if we list.The legends that sweep her aside,Crying loud for an opiate boon,To comfort the human want,From the bosom of magical skies,She smiles on, marking their source:They read her with infant eyes.Good ships of morality they,For our crude developing force;Granite the thought to stay,That she is a thing aliveTo the living, the falling and strewn.But the Questions, the broods that hauntSensation insurgent, may drive,The way of the channelling mole,Head in a ground-vault gauntAs your telescope’s skeleton moon.Barren comfort to these will she dole;Dead is her face to their cries.Intelligence pushing to tasteA lesson from beasts might heed.They scatter a voice in the waste,Where any dry swish of a reedBy grey-glassy water replies.‘They see not above or below;Farthest are they from my soul,’Earth whispers: ‘they scarce have the thirst,Except to unriddle a rune;And I spin none; only show,Would humanity soar from its worst,Winged above darkness and dole,How flesh unto spirit must grow.Spirit raves not for a goal.Shapes in man’s likeness hewnDesires not; neither desiresThe sleep or the glory: it trusts;Uses my gifts, yet aspires;Dreams of a higher than it.The dream is an atmosphere;A scale still ascending to knitThe clear to the loftier Clear.’Tis Reason herself, tiptoeAt the ultimate bound of her wit,On the verges of Night and Day.But is it a dream of the lusts,To my dustiest ’tis decreed;And them that so shuffle astrayI touch with no key of goldFor the wealth of the secret nook;Though I dote over ripeness at play,Rosiness fondle and feed,Guide it with shepherding crookTo my sports and my pastures alway.The key will shriek in the lock,The door will rustily hinge,Will open on features of mould,To vanish corrupt at a glimpse,And mock as the wild echoes mock,Soulless in mimic, doth GreedOr the passion for fruitage tingeThat dream, for your parricide impsTo wing through the body of Time,Yourselves in slaying him slay.Much are you shots of your prime,You men of the act and the dream:And please you to fatten a weedThat perishes, pledged to decay,’Tis dearth in your season of need,Down the slopes of the shoreward way;—Nigh on the misty stream,Where Ferryman under his hood,With a call to be ready to payThe small coin, whitens red blood.But the young ethereal seedShall bring you the bread no buyerCan have for his craving supreme;To my quenchless quick shall speedThe soul at her wrestle rudeWith devil, with angel more dire;With the flesh, with the Fates, enringed.The dream of the blossom of GoodIs your banner of battle unrolledIn its waver and current and curve(Choir over choir white-winged,White-bosomed fold within fold):Hopeful of victory mostWhen hard is the task to sustainAssaults of the fearful senseAt a mind in desolate moodWith the Whither, whose echo is Whence;And humanity’s clamour, lost, lost;And its clasp of the staves that snap;And evil abroad, as a mainUproarious, bursting its dyke.For back do you look, and lo,Forward the harvest of grain!—Numbers in council, awakeTo love more than things of my lap,Love me; and to let the types break,Men be grass, rocks rivers, all flow;All save the dream sink alikeTo the source of my vital in sap:Their battle, their loss, their ache,For my pledge of vitality know.The dream is the thought in the ghost;The thought sent flying for food;Eyeless, but sprung of an aimSupernal of Reason, to findThe great Over-Reason we nameBeneficence: mind seeking Mind.Dream of the blossom of Good,In its waver and current and curve,With the hopes of my offspring enscrolled!Soon to be seen of a hostThe flag of the Master I serve!And life in them doubled on Life,As flame upon flame, to behold,High over Time-tumbled sea,The bliss of his headship of strife,Him through handmaiden me.’