Or the
passion for fruitage tinge
That dream, for your parricide imps
To 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 weed
That 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 pay
The small coin, whitens red blood.
But the young
ethereal seed
Shall bring you the bread no buyer
Can have for his
craving supreme;
To my quenchless quick shall speed
The soul at her
wrestle rude
With devil, with angel more dire;
With the flesh, with the Fates, enringed.
The dream of the
blossom of Good
Is your
banner of battle unrolled
In its waver and current and curve
(Choir over choir white-winged,
White-bosomed fold within fold):
Hopeful of
victory most
When hard is the task to sustain
Assaults of the
fearful sense
At a mind in
desolate mood
With 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 main
Uproarious, bursting its dyke.
For back do you look, and lo,
Forward the
harvest of grain! -
Numbers in council, awake
To 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 alike
To 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 aim
Supernal of Reason, to find
The great Over-Reason we name
Beneficence: 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 host
The 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.'
CHANGE IN RECURRENCE
I
I stood at the gate of the cot
Where my
darling, with side-glance demure,
Would spy, on her trim garden-plot,
The busy wild things chase and lure.
For these with their ways were her feast;
They had surety no enemy lurked.
Their deftest of tricks to their least
She gathered in watch as she worked.
II
When berries were red on her ash,
The
blackbird would rifle them rough,
Till the ground
underneath looked a gash,
And her rogue grew the round of a chough.
The
squirrel cocked ear o'er his hoop,
Up the
spruce, quick as eye, trailing brush.
She knew any tit of the troop
All as well as the snail-tapping
thrush.
III
I gazed: 'twas the scene of the frame,
With the face, the dear life for me, fled.
No window a lute to my name,
No watcher there plying the thread.
But the
blackbird hung peeking at will;
The
squirrel from cone hopped to cone;
The
thrush had a snail in his bill,
And tap-tapped the shell hard on a stone.
HYMN TO COLOUR
I
With Life and Death I walked when Love appeared,
And made them on each side a shadow seem.
Through
wooded vales the land of dawn we neared,
Where down smooth rapids whirls the helmless dream
To fall on
daylight; and night puts away
Her darker veil for grey.
II
In that grey veil green grassblades brushed we by;
We came where woods breathed sharp, and overhead
Rocks raised clear horns on a transforming sky:
Around, save for those shapes, with him who led
And linked them, desert
varied by no sign
Of other life than mine.
III
By this the dark-winged
planet, raying wide,
From the mild pearl-glow to the rose upborne,
Drew in his fires, less faint than far descried,
Pure-fronted on a stronger wave of morn:
And those two shapes the splendour interweaved,
Hung web-like, sank and heaved.
IV
Love took my hand when
hidden stood the sun
To fling his robe on shoulder-heights of snow.
Then said: There lie they, Life and Death in one.
Whichever is, the other is: but know,
It is thy
craving self that thou dost see,
Not in them
seeing me.
V
Shall man into the
mystery of breath,
From his quick
beating pulse a
pathway spy?
Or learn the secret of the shrouded death,
By lifting up the lid of a white eye?
Cleave thou thy way with fathering desire
Of fire to reach to fire.
VI
Look now where Colour, the soul's
bridegroom, makes
The house of heaven splendid for the bride.
To him as leaps a
fountain she awakes,
In knotting arms, yet
boundless: him beside,
She holds the flower to heaven, and by his power
Brings heaven to the flower.
VII
He gives her homeliness in desert air,
And
sovereignty in spaciousness; he leads
Through widening chambers of surprise to where
Throbs
rapture near an end that aye recedes,
Because his touch is
infinite and lends
A yonder to all ends.
VIII
Death begs of Life his blush; Life Death persuades
To keep long day with his caresses graced.
He is the heart of light, the wing of shades,
The crown of beauty: never soul embraced
Of him can harbour unfaith; soul of him
Possessed walks never dim.
IX
Love eyed his rosy memories: he sang:
O bloom of dawn, breathed up from the gold sheaf
Held springing beneath Orient! that dost hang
The space of dewdrops
running over leaf;
Thy fleetingness is bigger in the ghost
Than Time with all his host!
X
Of thee to say behold, has said adieu:
But love remembers how the sky was green,
And how the grasses glimmered lightest blue;
How saint-like grey took fervour: how the screen
Of cloud grew
violet; how thy moment came
Between a blush and flame.
XI
Love saw the emissary eglantine
Break wave round thy white feet above the gloom;
Lay finger on thy star; thy
raiment line
With
cherub wing and limb; wed thy soft bloom,
Gold-quivering like sunrays in thistle-down,
Earth under rolling brown.
XII
They do not look through love to look on thee,
Grave heavenliness! nor know they joy of sight,
Who deem the wave of rapt desire must be
Its wrecking and last issue of delight.
Dead seasons
quicken in one petal-spot
Of colour unforgot.
XIII
This way have men come out of brutishness
To spell the letters of the sky and read
A reflex upon earth else meaningless.
With thee, O fount of the Untimed! to lead,
Drink they of thee, thee eyeing, they unaged
Shall on through brave wars waged.
XIV
More gardens will they win than any lost;
The vile plucked out of them, the unlovely slain.
Not forfeiting the beast with which they are crossed,
To
stature of the Gods will they attain.
They shall
uplift their Earth to meet her Lord,
Themselves the attuning chord!
XV
The song had ceased; my
vision with the song.
Then of those Shadows, which one made descent
Beside me I knew not: but Life ere long
Came on me in the public ways and bent
Eyes deeper than of old: Death met I too,
And saw the dawn glow through.
MEDITATION UNDER STARS
What links are ours with orbs that are
So
resolutely far:
The
solitary asks, and they
Give
radiance as from a shield:
Still at the death of day,