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 feel

The 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 fresh
With a love that no scourge shall abate,

To reach the lone heights where we scan
In 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 hour

Know battle in air and in ground
For 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 sums
Finds 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 Past
Like wind and tide at a wave!

Idea of the senses, bred
For the senses to snap and devour:

Thin as the shell of a sound
In 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 bond

With the numbers; with whom to unite
Here 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 firm

In footing, the stately of stem;
Unshaken though elements lour;

A warrior heart unquelled;
Mirror of Earth, and guide

To the Holies from sense withheld:
Reason, man's germinant fruit.

She wrestles with our old worm
Self 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 scour

The 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 cleanse

The well of the Sorrows in us;
For a common delight will drain

The rank individual fens
Of a wound refusing to heal

While the old worm slavers its root.
I bowed as a leaf in rain;

As a tree when the leaf is shed
To winds in the season at wane:

And when from my soul I said,
May the worm be trampled: smite,

Sacred Reality! power
Filled me to front it aright.

I had come of my faith's ordeal.
It is not to stand on a tower

And see the flat universe reel;
Our mortal sublimities drop

Like raiment by glisterlings worn,
At a sweep of the scythe for the crop.

Wisdom is won of its fight,
The combatincessant; and dries

To mummywrap perching a height.
It chews the contemplative cud

In peril of isolate scorn,
Unfed of the onward flood.

Nor view we a different morn
If 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 new

In the language of nakedness write,
Rejoice we to know not shame,

Not a dread, not a doubt: to have done
With the tortures of thought in the throes,

Our animal tangle, and grasp
Very sap of the vital in this:

That from flesh unto spirit man grows
Even 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; discerned
In thought mid-ferry between

The 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--insane

At a stroke of the terrified nerve;
And out of the sensual hive

Grown 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 alive
To the living, the falling and strewn.

But the Questions, the broods that haunt
Sensation insurgent, may drive,

The way of the channelling mole,
Head in a ground-vault gaunt

As your telescope's skeleton moon.
Barren comfort to these will she dole;

Dead is her face to their cries.
Intelligence pushing to taste

A lesson from beasts might heed.
They scatter a voice in the waste,

Where any dry swish of a reed
By 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 hewn

Desires not; neither desires
The 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 knit

The clear to the loftier Clear.
'Tis Reason herself, tiptoe

At 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 astray
I touch with no key of gold

For the wealth of the secret nook;
Though I dote over ripeness at play,

Rosiness fondle and feed,
Guide it with shepherding crook

To 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 vanishcorrupt at a glimpse,
And mock as the wild echoes mock,

Soulless in mimic, doth Greed

• wisdom [´wizdəm] n.智慧，聪明，才智 (初中英语单词)
• medical [´medikəl] a.医学的；医疗的 (初中英语单词)
• vision [´viʒən] n.视觉；想象力；幻影 (初中英语单词)
• charge [tʃɑ:dʒ] v.收费；冲锋 n.费用 (初中英语单词)
• upward [´ʌpwəd] a.&ad.向上(的)；以上 (初中英语单词)
• breath [breθ] n.呼吸；气息 (初中英语单词)
• contact [´kɔntækt] n.接触；联系 v.联络 (初中英语单词)
• warrior [´wɔriə] n.勇士，战士 (初中英语单词)
• laughter [´lɑ:ftə] n.笑，笑声 (初中英语单词)
• champion [´tʃæmpiən] n.冠军 vt.拥护 (初中英语单词)
• vessel [´vesəl] n.容器；船；脉管 (初中英语单词)
• harness [´hɑ:nis] vt.上马具 n.马具 (初中英语单词)
• infant [´infənt] n.&a.婴(幼)儿 (初中英语单词)
• scarce [skeəs, skers] a.缺乏的；稀有的 (初中英语单词)
• humanity [hju:´mæniti] n.人类；人性；仁慈 (初中英语单词)
• wealth [welθ] n.财富，财产 (初中英语单词)
• shriek [ʃri:k] v.&n.尖叫(声) (初中英语单词)
• vanish [´væniʃ] vi.消失；消散；消灭 (初中英语单词)
• traverse [´trævə:s] vt.横越，穿过 (高中英语单词)
• scourge [skə:dʒ] v.&n.鞭(打)；严惩 (高中英语单词)
• delivery [di´livəri] n.送交；分娩；交货 (高中英语单词)
• stately [´steitli] a.庄严的，雄伟的 (高中英语单词)
• recess [ri´ses] n.休息；休会 (高中英语单词)
• monstrous [´mɔnstrəs] a.怪异的；庞大的 (高中英语单词)
• universe [´ju:nivə:s] n.天地；全人类；银河系 (高中英语单词)
• mortal [´mɔ:tl] a.致命的 n.凡人 (高中英语单词)
• combat [´kɔmbæt] v.&n.斗争；战斗；争斗 (高中英语单词)
• isolate [´aisəleit] vt.隔离；孤立 (高中英语单词)
• onward [´ɔnwəd] ad.&a.向前(的) (高中英语单词)
• historian [his´tɔ:riən] n.历史学家 (高中英语单词)
• tangle [´tæŋgəl] n.&vt.(使)缠结；纠纷 (高中英语单词)
• skeleton [´skelitən] n.骨骼；骷髅 (高中英语单词)
• likeness [´laiknis] n.相似；肖像；外表 (高中英语单词)
• ultimate [´ʌltimit] a.最终的 n.终极；顶点 (高中英语单词)
• corrupt [kə´rʌpt] a.腐败的 v.败坏；贿赂 (高中英语单词)
• nought [nɔ:t] n.=naught (英语四级单词)
• raiment [´reimənt] n.衣饰 (英语四级单词)
• morality [mə´ræliti] n.道德；教训；伦理学 (英语四级单词)
• shuffle [´ʃʌf(ə)l] v.洗(牌) n.搅乱 (英语四级单词)
• reckoning [´rekəniŋ] n.计算；算帐；估计 (英语六级单词)
• fleeting [´fli:tiŋ] a.飞逝的，疾驰的 (英语六级单词)
• footing [´futiŋ] n.立脚点；基础；地位 (英语六级单词)
• harrow [´hærəu] n.&v.耙(地) (英语六级单词)
• scythe [saið] n.长柄大镰刀 (英语六级单词)
• incessant [in´sesənt] a.不断的，不停的 (英语六级单词)
• magical [´mædʒikəl] a.有魔术的，神奇的 (英语六级单词)