Be then the little bird that hops to feed.
Lame falls the cry to
kindle days
Of
radiant orb and
daring gaze.
It does but clank our
mortal chain.
For Earth reads through her felon old
The many-numbered of her fold,
Who forward tottering
backward strain,
And would be
thieves of treasure spent,
With their grey season soured.
She could write out their history in their thirst
To have again the much devoured,
And be the bud at burst;
In honey fancy join the flow,
Where Youth swims on as once they went,
All choiric for
spontaneous glee
Of active eager lungs and thews;
They now bared roots beside the river bent;
Whose
privilege themselves to see;
Their place in yonder tideway know;
The current glass peruse;
The depths
intently sound;
And sapped by each returning flood
Accept for monitory nourishment
Those worn roped features under crust of mud,
Reflected in the
silvery smooth around:
Not less the branching and high singing tree,
A home of nests, a
landmark and a tent,
Until their hour for losing hold on ground.
Even such good
harvest of the things that flee
Earth offers her subjected, and they choose
Rather of Bacchic Youth one beam to drink,
And warm slow
marrow with the sensual wink.
So block they at her source the Mother of the Muse.
Who
cheerfully the little bird becomes,
Without a fall, and pipes for peck at crumbs,
May have her dolings to the lightest touch;
As where some
cripple muses by his crutch,
Unwitting that the spirit in him sings:
'When I had legs, then had I wings,
As good as any born of eggs,
To feed on all
aerial things,
When I had legs!'
And if not to
embrace he sighs,
She gives him
breath of Youth awhile,
Perspective of a breezy mile,
Companionable hedgeways, lifting skies;
Scenes where his nested dreams upon their hoard
Brooded, or up to empyrean soared:
Enough to link him with a dotted line.
But cravings for an eagle's flight,
To top white peaks and serve wild wine
Among the rosy undecayed,
Bring only flash of shade
From her full throbbing breast of day in night.
By what they crave are they betrayed:
And cavernous is that young dragon's jaw,
Crimson for all the fiery
reptile saw
In time now coveted, for teeth to flay,
Once more
consume, were Life recurrent May.
They to their moment of drawn
breath,
Which is the life that makes the death,
The death that makes
ethereal life would bind:
The death that breeds the spectre do they find.
Darkness is
wedded and the waste regrets
Beating as dead leaves on a fitful gust,
By souls no longer dowered to climb
Beneath their pack of dust,
Whom envy of a lustrous prime,
Eclipsed while yet invoked, besets,
And dooms to sink and water sable flowers,
That never gladdened eye or loaded bee.
Strain we the arms for Memory's hours,
We are the seized Persephone.
Responsive never to the soft desire
For one prized tune is this our chord of life.
'Tis clipped to deadness with a
wanton knife,
In wishes that for ecstasies aspire.
Yet have we glad
companionship of Youth,
Elysian meadows for the mind,
Dare we to face deeds done, and in our tomb
Filled with the parti-coloured bloom
Of loved and hated, grasp all human truth
Sowed by us down the mazy paths behind.
To feel that heaven must we that hell sound through:
Whence comes a line of continuity,
That brings our middle station into view,
Between those poles; a novel Earth we see,
In
likeness of us, made of banned and blest;
The sower's bed, but not the reaper's rest:
An Earth alive with meanings,
wherein meet
Buried, and
breathing, and to be.
Then of the
junction of the three,
Even as a heart in brain, full sweet
May sense of soul, the sum of music, beat.
Only the soul can walk the dusty track
Where hangs our flowering under vapours black,
And bear to see how these
pervade, obscure,
Quench
recollection of a
spacious pure.
They take phantasmal forms, divide, convolve,
Hard at each other point and gape,
Horrible ghosts! in agony dissolve,
To
reappear with one they drape
For
criminal, and, Father! shrieking name,
Who such distorted issue did beget.
Accept them, them and him, though hiss thy sweat
Off brow on breast, whose
furnace flame
Has eaten, and old Self
consumes.
Out of the purification will they leap,
Thee renovating while new light illumes
The dusky web of evil, known as pain,
That heavily up healthward mounts the steep;
Our fleshly road to beacon-fire of brain:
Midway the tameless oceanic brute
Below, whose heave is topped with foam for fruit,
And the fair heaven reflecting inner peace
On
righteouswarfare, that asks not to cease.
Forth of such passage through black fire we win
Clear
hearing of the simple lute,
Whereon, and not on other, Memory plays
For them who can in quietness receive
Her restorative airs: a ditty thin
As note of hedgerow bird in ear of eve,
Or wave at ebb, the
shallow catching rays
On a
transparent sheet, where curves a glass
To truer heavens than when the
breaker neighs
Loud at the
plunge for bubbly wreck in roar.
Solidity and bulk and
martial brass,
Once tyrants of the senses,
faintly score
A mark on pebbled sand or fluid slime,
While present in the spirit, vital there,
Are things that seemed the phantoms of their time;
Eternal as the recurrent cloud, as air
Imperative, refreshful as dawn-dew.
Some evanescent hand on vapour scrawled
Historic of the soul, and heats anew
Its coloured lines where deeds of flesh stand bald.
True of the man, and of mankind 'tis true,
Did we stout battle with the Shade, Despair,
Our
cowardice, it blooms; or haply warred
Against the primal beast in us, and flung;
Or cleaving mists of Sorrow, left it starred
Above self-pity slain: or it was Prayer
First taken for Life's cleanser; or the tongue
Spake for the world against this heart; or rings
Old
laughter, from the founts of
wisdom sprung;
Or clap of wing of joy, that was a throb
From breast of Earth, and did no creature rob:
These quickening live. But deepest at her springs,
Most
filial, is an eye to love her young.
And had we it, to see with it, alive
Is our lost garden, flower, bird and hive.
Blood of her blood, aim of her aim, are then
The green-robed and grey-crested sons of men:
She
tributary to her aged restores
The living in the dead; she will inspire
Faith homelier than on the Yonder shores,
Abhorring these as mire,
Uncertain steps, in dimness gropes,
With
mortal tremours pricking hopes,
And, by the final Bacchic of the lusts
Propelled, the Bacchic of the spirit trusts:
A fervour drunk from
mystic hierophants;
Not utterly misled, though
blindly led,
Led round fermenting eddies. Faith she plants
In her own
firmness as our
midway road:
Which
rightly Youth has read, though
blindly read;
Her
essencereading in her toothsome goad;
Spur of bright dreams experience disenchants.
But love we well the young, her road
midwayThe darknesses runs consecrated clay.
Despite our
feeble hold on this green home,
And the vast outer strangeness void of dome,
Shall we be with them, of them, taught to feel,
Up to the moment of our
prostrate fall,
The life they deem voluptuously real
Is more than empty echo of a call,
Or shadow of a shade, or swing of tides;
As brooding upon age, when veins congeal,
Grey palsy nods to think. With us for guides,
Another step above the animal,
To views in Alpine thought are they helped on.
Good if so far we live in them when gone!
And there the arrowy eagle of the height
Becomes the little bird that hops to feed,
Glad of a crumb, for tempered appetite
To make it
wholesome blood and
fruitful seed.
Then Memory strikes on no slack string,
Nor sectional will
varied Life appear:
Perforce of soul discerned in mind, we hear
Earth with her Onward chime, with Winter Spring.
And ours the
mellow note, while sharing joys
No more subjecting
mortals who have learnt
To build for happiness on equipoise,
The Pleasures read in sparks of substance burnt;
Know in our seasons an integral wheel,
That rolls us to a mark may yet be willed.
This, the truistic
rubbish under heel
Of all the world, we peck at and are filled.
PENETRATION AND TRUST
I
Sleek as a
lizard at round of a stone,