Volume Ii Part 7 (1/2)
Are they parted, then expect Some one sailing will be wrecked: Separate hunting are they sped, Scan the morsel coveted.
Earth that Triad is: she hides Joy from him who that divides; Showers it when the three are one Gla.s.sing her in union.
Earth your haven, Earth your helm, You command a double realm; Labouring here to pay your debt, Till your little sun shall set; Leaving her the future task: Loving her too well to ask.
Eglantine that climbs the yew, She her darkest wreathes for those Knowing her the Ever-new, And themselves the kin o' the rose.
Life, the chisel, axe and sword, Wield who have her depths explored: Life, the dream, shall be their robe Large as air about the globe; Life, the question, hear its cry Echoed with concordant Why; Life, the small self-dragon ramped, Thrill for service to be stamped.
Ay, and over every height Life for them shall wave a wand: That, the last, where sits affright, Homely shows the stream beyond.
Love the light and be its lynx, You will track her and attain; Read her as no cruel Sphinx In the woods of Westermain, Daily fresh the woods are ranged; Glooms which otherwhere appal, Sounded: here, their worths exchanged Urban joins with pastoral: Little lost, save what may drop Husk-like, and the mind preserves.
Natural overgrowths they lop, Yet from nature neither swerves, Trained or savage: for this cause: Of our Earth they ply the laws, Have in Earth their feeding root, Mind of man and bent of brute.
Hear that song; both wild and ruled.
Hear it: is it wail or mirth?
Ordered, bubbled, quite unschooled?
None, and all: it springs of Earth.
O but hear it! 'tis the mind; Mind that with deep Earth unites, Round the solid trunk to wind Rings of clasping parasites.
Music have you there to feed Simplest and most soaring need.
Free to wind, and in desire Winding, they to her attached Feel the trunk a spring of fire, And ascend to heights unmatched, Whence the tidal world is viewed As a sea of windy wheat, Momently black, barren, rude; Golden-brown, for harvest meet, Dragon-reaped from folly-sown; Bride-like to the sickle-blade: Quick it varies, while the moan, Moan of a sad creature strayed, Chiefly is its voice. So flesh Conjures tempest-flails to thresh Good from worthless. Some clear lamps Light it; more of dead marsh-damps.
Monster is it still, and blind, Fit but to be led by Pain.
Glance we at the paths behind, Fruitful sight has Westermain.
There we laboured, and in turn Forward our blown lamps discern, As you see on the dark deep Far the loftier billows leap, Foam for beacon bear.
Hither, hither, if you will, Drink instruction, or instil, Run the woods like vernal sap, Crying, hail to luminousness!
But have care.
In yourself may lurk the trap: On conditions they caress.
Here you meet the light invoked Here is never secret cloaked.
Doubt you with the monster's fry All his...o...b..t may exclude; Are you of the stiff, the dry, Cursing the not understood; Grasp you with the monster's claws; Govern with his truncheon-saws; Hate, the shadow of a grain; You are lost in Westermain: Earthward swoops a vulture sun, Nighted upon carrion: Straightway venom wine-cups shout Toasts to One whose eyes are out: Flowers along the reeling floor Drip henbane and h.e.l.lebore: Beauty, of her tresses shorn, Shrieks as nature's maniac: Hideousness on hoof and horn Tumbles, yapping in her track: Haggard Wisdom, stately once, Leers fantastical and trips: Allegory drums the sconce, Impiousness nibblenips.
Imp that dances, imp that flits, Imp o' the demon-growing girl, Maddest! whirl with imp o' the pits Round you, and with them you whirl Fast where pours the fountain-rout Out of Him whose eyes are out: Mult.i.tudes on mult.i.tudes, Drenched in wallowing devilry: And you ask where you may be, In what reek of a lair Given to bones and ogre-broods: And they yell you Where.
Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare.
A BALLAD OF PAST MERIDIAN
I
Last night returning from my twilight walk I met the grey mist Death, whose eyeless brow Was bent on me, and from his hand of chalk He reached me flowers as from a withered bough: O Death, what bitter nosegays givest thou!
II
Death said, I gather, and pursued his way.
Another stood by me, a shape in stone, Sword-hacked and iron-stained, with b.r.e.a.s.t.s of clay, And metal veins that sometimes fiery shone: O Life, how naked and how hard when known!
III
Life said, As thou hast carved me, such am I.
Then memory, like the nightjar on the pine, And sightless hope, a woodlark in night sky, Joined notes of Death and Life till night's decline Of Death, of Life, those inwound notes are mine.
THE DAY OF THE DAUGHTER OF HADES
I