Part 3 (1/2)
The great blue Night so clear and kindly, The little stars so wide-eyed and so still, Open a door for souls that blindly Had wandered, tunnelling the endless hill;
They draw the long-untraversed portal, Our souls slip out and tremble and expand, The immortal feels for the immortal, The eternal holds the eternal by the hand.
Impalpably we are led and lifted, Softly we shake into the gulf of blue, The last environing veil is rifted And lost horizons float into our view.
Lost lands, lone seas, lands that afar gleam With a miraculous beauty, faint yet clear, Forgotten lands of night and star-gleam, Seas that are somewhere but that are not here.
Borne without effort or endeavour, Swifter and more ethereal than the wind, In level track we stream, whilst ever The fair pale panorama rolls behind.
Now fleets below a tranced moorland, A sweep of glimmering immobility; Now craggy cliff and dented foreland Pa.s.s back and there beyond unfolds the sea.
Now wastes of water heaving, drawing, Great darkling tracts of patterned restlessness, With whitened waves round rough rocks mawing And licking islands in their fierce caress.
Now coasts with capes and ribboned beaches Set silent 'neath the canopy sapphirine, And estuaries and river reaches Phantasmal silver in the night's soft s.h.i.+ne.
Ah, these fair woods the spirit crosses, These quiet lakes, these stretched dreaming fields, These undulate downs with piny bosses Pointing the ridges of their sloping s.h.i.+elds.
These valleys and these heights that screen them, These tawnier sands where gra.s.s and tree are not, Ah, we have known them, we have seen them Long, long ago or ever we forgot;
We know them all, these placid countries, And what the pathway is and what the goal; These are the gates and these the sentries That guard the ancient fortress of the soul.
And onward speed we flying, flying, Over the sundering worlds of hill and plain To where they rear their heads undying The unnamed mountains of old days again.
The snows upon their calm still summits, The chasms, the lines of trees that foot the snow, Curving like inky frozen comets, Into the forest-ocean spread below.
The glisten where the peaks are h.o.a.rest, The soundless darkness of the sunken vales, The folding leagues of shadowy forest, Wave beyond wave till all distinctness fails.
So invulnerable it is, so deathless, So floods the air the loveliness of it, That we stay dazzled, rapt and breathless, Our beings ebbing to the infinite.
There as we pause, there as we hover, Moveless in ecstasy, a sudden light Breaks in our eyes, and we discover We sit at windows gazing to the night.
Wistful and tired, with eyes a-tingle Where still the sting of Beauty faintly smarts, But with our mute regrets there mingle Thanks for the resurrection of our hearts.
O night so great that will not mock us!
O stars so wise that understand the weak!
O vast consoling hands that rock us!
O strong and perfect tongues that speak!
O night enrobed in azure splendour!
O whispering stars whose radiance falls like dew!
O mighty presences and tender, You have given us back the dreams our childhood knew!
Lulled by your visions without number, We seek our beds content and void of pain, And dreaming drowse and dreaming slumber And dreaming wake to see the day again.
A MEMORIAL
(F.T.)
The cord broke, and the tent Slipped, and the silken roof Lay p.r.o.ne beneath the viewless hoof Of the deliberate firmament.
Yet cared we not; how should we care?