You must love the light so wellThat no darkness will seem fell.Love it so you could accostFellowly a livid ghost.Whish! the phantom wisps away,Owns him smoke to cocks of day.In your breast the light must burnFed of you, like corn in quernEver plumping while the wheelSpeeds the mill and drains the meal.Light to light sees little strange,Only features heavenly new;Then you touch the nerve of Change,Then of Earth you have the clue;Then her two-sexed meanings meltThrough you, wed the thought and felt.Sameness locks no scurfy pondHere for Custom, crazy-fond:Change is on the wing to budRose in brain from rose in blood.Wisdom throbbing shall you seeCentral in complexity;From her pasture 'mid the beastsRise to her ethereal feasts,Not, though lightnings track your witStarward, scorning them you quit:For be sure the bravest wingPreens it in our common spring,Thence along the vault to soar,You with others, gathering more,Glad of more, till you rejectYour proud title of elect,Perilous even here while fewRoam the arched greenwood with you.Heed that snare.Muffled by his cavern-cowlSquats the scaly Dragon-fowl,Who was lord ere light you drank,And lest blood of knightly rankStream, let not your fair princessStray: he holds the leagues in stress,Watches keenly there.Oft has he been riven; slainIs no force in Westermain.Wait, and we shall forge him curbs,Put his fangs to uses, tame,Teach him, quick as cunning herbs,How to cure him sick and lame.Much restricted, much enringed,Much he frets, the hooked and winged,Never known to spare.'Tis enough: the name of SageHits no thing in nature, nought;Man the least, save when grave AgeFrom yon Dragon guards his thought.Eye him when you hearken dumbTo what words from Wisdom come.When she says how few are byListening to her, eye his eye.Self, his name declare.Him shall Change, transforming late,Wonderously renovate.Hug himself the creature may:What he hugs is loathed decay.Crying, slip thy scales, and slough!Change will strip his armour off;Make of him who was all maw,Inly only thrilling-shrewd,Such a servant as none sawThrough his days of dragonhood.Days when growling o'er his bone,Sharpened he for mine and thine;Sensitive within alone;Scaly as the bark of pine.Change, the strongest son of Life,Has the Spirit here to wife.Lo, their young of vivid breed,Bear the lights that onward speed,Threading thickets, mounting glades,Up the verdurous colonnades,Round the fluttered curves, and down,Out of sight of Earth's blue crown,Whither, in her central space,Spouts the Fount and Lure o' the chase.Fount unresting, Lure divine!There meet all: too late look most.Fire in water hued as wine,Springs amid a shadowy host,Circled: one close-headed mob,Breathless, scanning divers heaps,Where a Heart begins to throb,Where it ceases, slow, with leaps.And 'tis very strange, 'tis said,How you spy in each of themSemblance of that Dragon red,As the oak in bracken-stem.And, 'tis said, how each and each:Which commences, which subsides:First my Dragon! doth beseechHer who food for all provides.And she answers with no sign;Utters neither yea nor nay;Fires the water hued as wine;Kneads another spark in clay.Terror is about her hid;Silence of the thunders locked;Lightnings lining the shut lid;Fixity on quaking rocked.Lo, you look at Flow and DroughtInterflashed and interwrought:Ended is begun, begunEnded, quick as torrents run.Young Impulsion spouts to sink;Luridness and lustre link;'Tis your come and go of breath;Mirrored pants the Life, the Death;Each of either reaped and sown:Rosiest rosy wanes to crone.See you so? your senses drift;'Tis a shuttle weaving swift.Look with spirit past the sense,Spirit shines in permanence.That is She, the view of whomIs the dust within the tomb,Is the inner blush above,Look to loathe, or look to love;Think her Lump, or know her Flame;Dread her scourge, or read her aim;Shoot your hungers from their nerve;Or, in her example, serve.Some have found her sitting grave;Laughing, some; or, browed with sweat,Hurling dust of fool and knaveIn a hissing smithy's jet.More it were not well to speak;Burn to see, you need but seek.Once beheld she gives the keyAiring every doorway, she.Little can you stop or steerEre of her you are the seer.On the surface she will witch,Rendering Beauty yours, but gazeUnder, and the soul is richPast computing, past amaze.Then is courage that enduresEven her awful tremble yours.Then, the reflex of that FountSpied below, will Reason mountLordly and a quenchless force,Lighting Pain to its mad source,Scaring Fear till Fear escapes,Shot through all its phantom shapes.Then your spirit will perceiveFleshly seed of fleshly sins;Where the passions interweave,How the serpent tangle spinsOf the sense of Earth misprised,Brainlessly unrecognized;She being Spirit in her clods,Footway to the God of Gods.Then for you are pleasures pure,Sureties as the stars are sure:Not the wanton beckoning flagsWhich, of flattery and delight,Wax to the grim Habit-HagsRiding souls of men to night:Pleasures that through blood run sane,Quickening spirit from the brain.Each of each in sequent birth,Blood and brain and spirit, three,(Say the deepest gnomes of Earth),Join for true felicity.Are they parted, then expectSome one sailing will be wrecked:Separate hunting are they sped,Scan the morsel coveted.Earth that Triad is: she hidesJoy from him who that divides;Showers it when the three are oneGlassing 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 thoseKnowing 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 robeLarge as air about the globe;Life, the question, hear its cryEchoed with concordant Why;Life, the small self-dragon ramped,Thrill for service to be stamped.Ay, and over every heightLife 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 SphinxIn the woods of Westermain,Daily fresh the woods are ranged;Glooms which otherwhere appal,Sounded: here, their worths exchangedUrban joins with pastoral:Little lost, save what may dropHusk-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 windRings of clasping parasites.Music have you there to feedSimplest and most soaring need.Free to wind, and in desireWinding, they to her attachedFeel the trunk a spring of fire,And ascend to heights unmatched,Whence the tidal world is viewedAs 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 fleshConjures tempest-flails to threshGood from worthless. Some clear lampsLight 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 turnForward our blown lamps discern,As you see on the dark deepFar 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 invokedHere is never secret cloaked.Doubt you with the monster's fryAll his orbit 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 shoutToasts to One whose eyes are out:Flowers along the reeling floorDrip henbane and hellebore:Beauty, of her tresses shorn,Shrieks as nature's maniac:Hideousness on hoof and hornTumbles, 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 pitsRound you, and with them you whirlFast where pours the fountain-routOut of Him whose eyes are out:Multitudes on multitudes,Drenched in wallowing devilry:And you ask where you may be,In what reek of a lairGiven to bones and ogre-broods:And they yell you Where.Enter these enchanted woods,You who dare.
Last night returning from my twilight walkI met the grey mist Death, whose eyeless browWas bent on me, and from his hand of chalkHe reached me flowers as from a withered bough:O Death, what bitter nosegays givest thou!
Death said, I gather, and pursued his way.Another stood by me, a shape in stone,Sword-hacked and iron-stained, with breasts of clay,And metal veins that sometimes fiery shone:O Life, how naked and how hard when known!
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 declineOf Death, of Life, those inwound notes are mine.
He who has looked upon EarthDeeper than flower and fruit,Losing some hue of his mirth,As the tree striking rock at the root,Unto him shall the marvellous taleOf Callistes more humanly comeWith the touch on his breast than a hailFrom the markets that hum.
Now the youth footed swift to the dawn.'Twas the season when wintertide,In the higher rock-hollows updrawn,Leaves meadows to bud, and he spied,By light throwing shallow shade,Between the beam and the gloom,Sicilian Enna, whose MaidSuch aspect wears in her bloomUnderneath since the CharioteerOf Darkness whirled her away,On a reaped afternoon of the year,Nigh the poppy-droop of Day.O and naked of her, all dust,The majestic Mother and Nurse,Ringing cries to the God, the Just,Curled the land with the blight of her curse:Recollected of this glad isleStill quaking. But now more fair,And momently fraying the whileThe veil of the shadows there,Soft Enna that prostrate griefSang through, and revealed round the vines,Bronze-orange, the crisp young leaf,The wheat-blades tripping in lines,A hue unillumined by sunOf the flowers flooding grass as from founts:All the penetrable dunOf the morn ere she mounts.
Nor had saffron and sapphire and redWaved aloft to their sisters below,When gaped by the rock-channel headOf the lake, black, a cave at one blow,Reverberant over the plain:A sound oft fearfully swungFor the coming of wrathful rain:And forth, like the dragon-tongueOf a fire beaten flat by the gale,But more as the smoke to behold,A chariot burst. Then a wailQuivered high of the love that would foldBliss immeasurable, bigger than heart,Though a God's: and the wheels were stayed,And the team of the chariot swartReared in marble, the six, dismayed,Like hoofs that by night plashing seaCurve and ramp from the vast swan-wave:For, lo, the Great Mother, She!And Callistes gazed, he gaveHis eyeballs up to the sight:The embrace of the Twain, of whomTo men are their day, their night,Mellow fruits and the shearing tomb:Our Lady of the SheavesAnd the Lily of Hades, the SweetOf Enna: he saw through leavesThe Mother and Daughter meet.They stood by the chariot-wheel,Embraced, very tall, most likeFellow poplars, wind-taken, that reelDown their shivering columns and strikeHead to head, crossing throats: and apart,For the feast of the look, they drew,Which Darkness no longer could thwart;And they broke together anew,Exulting to tears, flower and bud.But the mate of the Rayless was grave:She smiled like Sleep on its flood,That washes of all we crave:Like the trance of eyes awakeAnd the spirit enshrouded, she castThe wan underworld on the lake.They were so, and they passed.
He tells it, who knew the lawUpon mortals: he stood aliveDeclaring that this he saw:He could see, and survive.
Now the youth was not ware of the beamsWith the grasses intertwined,For each thing seen, as in dreams,Came stepping to rear through his mind,Till it struck his remembered prayerTo be witness of this which had flownLike a smoke melted thinner than air,That the vacancy doth disown.And viewing a maiden, he thoughtIt might now be morn, and afarWithin him the memory wroughtOf a something that slipped from the carWhen those, the august, moved by:Perchance a scarf, and perchanceThis maiden. She did not fly,Nor started at his advance:She looked, as when infinite thirstPants pausing to bless the springs,Refreshed, unsated. Then firstHe trembled with awe of the thingsHe had seen; and he did transfer,Divining and doubting in turn,His reverence unto her;Nor asked what he crouched to learn:The whence of her, whither, and whyHer presence there, and her name,Her parentage: under which skyHer birth, and how hither she came,So young, a virgin, alone,Unfriended, having no fear,As Oreads have; no moan,Like the lost upon earth; no tear;Not a sign of the torch in the blood,Though her stature had reached the heightWhen mantles a tender rudIn maids that of youths have sight,If maids of our seed they be:For he said: A glad vision art thou!And she answered him: Thou to me!As men utter a vow.
Then said she, quick as the criesOf the rainy cranes: Light! light!And Helios rose in her eyes,That were full as the dew-balls bright,Relucent to him as dewsUnshaded. Breathing, she sentHer voice to the God of the Muse,And along the vale it went,Strange to hear: not thin, not shrill:Sweet, but no young maid's throat:The echo beyond the hillRan falling on half the note:And under the shaken groundWhere the Hundred-headed groansBy the roots of great AEtna bound,As of him were hollow tonesOf wondering roared: a taleRepeated to sunless halls.But now off the face of the valeShadows fled in a breath, and the wallsOf the lake's rock-head were gold,And the breast of the lake, that swellOf the crestless long wave rolledTo shore-bubble, pebble and shell.A morning of radiant lidsO'er the dance of the earth opened wide:The bees chose their flowers, the snub kidsUpon hindlegs went sportive, or plied,Nosing, hard at the dugs to be filled:There was milk, honey, music to make:Up their branches the little birds billed:Chirrup, drone, bleat and buzz ringed the lake.O shining in sunlight, chiefAfter water and water's caress,Was the young bronze-orange leaf,That clung to the tree as a tress,Shooting lucid tendrils to wedWith the vine-hook tree or pole,Like Arachne launched out on her thread.Then the maiden her dusky stoleIn the span of the black-starred zone,Gathered up for her footing fleet.As one that had toil of her ownShe followed the lines of wheatTripping straight through the fields, green blades,To the groves of olive grey,Downy-grey, golden-tinged: and to gladesWhere the pear-blossom thickens the sprayIn a night, like the snow-packed storm:Pear, apple, almond, plum:Not wintry now: pushing, warm!And she touched them with finger and thumb,As the vine-hook closes: she smiled,Recounting again and again,Corn, wine, fruit, oil! like a child,With the meaning known to men.For hours in the track of the ploughAnd the pruning-knife she stepped,And of how the seed works, and of howYields the soil, she seemed adept.Then she murmured that name of the dearth,The Beneficent, Hers, who badeOur husbandmen sow for the birthOf the grain making earth full glad.She murmured that Other's: the dirgeOf life-light: for whose dark lapOur locks are clipped on the vergeOf the realm where runs no sap.She said: We have looked on both!And her eyes had a wavering beamOf various lights, like the frothOf the storm-swollen ravine streamIn flame of the bolt. What linksWere these which had made him her friend?He eyed her, as one who drinks,And would drink to the end.
Now the meadows with crocus besprent,And the asphodel woodsides she left,And the lake-slopes, the ravishing scentOf narcissus, dark-sweet, for the cleftThat tutors the torrent-brook,Delaying its forceful spleenWith many a wind and crookThrough rock to the broad ravine.By the hyacinth-bells in the brakes,And the shade-loved white windflower, half hid,And the sun-loving lizards and snakesOn the cleft's barren ledges, that slidOut of sight, smooth as waterdrops, all,At a snap of twig or barkIn the track of the foreign foot-fall,She climbed to the pineforest dark,Overbrowing an emerald chineOf the grass-billows. Thence, as a wreath,Running poplar and cypress to pine,The lake-banks are seen, and beneath,Vineyard, village, groves, rivers, towers, farms,The citadel watching the bay,The bay with the town in its arms,The town shining white as the sprayOf the sapphire sea-wave on the rock,Where the rock stars the girdle of sea,White-ringed, as the midday flock,Clipped by heat, rings the round of the tree.That hour of the piercing shaftTransfixes bough-shadows, confusedIn veins of fire, and she laughed,With her quiet mouth amusedTo see the whole flock, adroop,Asleep, hug the tree-stem as one,Imperceptibly filling the loopOf its shade at a slant of sun.The pipes under pent of the crag,Where the goatherds in piping recline,Have whimsical stops, burst and flagUncorrected as outstretched swine:For the fingers are slack and unsure,And the wind issues querulous:- thornsAnd snakes!—but she listened demure,Comparing day's music with morn's.Of the gentle spirit that slipsFrom the bark of the tree she discoursed,And of her of the wells, whose lipsAre coolness enchanting, rock-sourced.And much of the sacred loon,The frolic, the Goatfoot God,For stories of indolent noonIn the pineforest's odorous nod,She questioned, not knowing: he canBe waspish, irascible, rude,He is oftener friendly to man,And ever to beasts and their brood.For the which did she love him well,She said, and his pipes of the reed,His twitched lips puffing to tellIn music his tears and his need,Against the sharp catch of his hurt.Not as shepherds of Pan did she speak,Nor spake as the schools, to divert,But fondly, perceiving him weakBefore Gods, and to shepherds a fear,A holiness, horn and heel.All this she had learnt in her earFrom Callistes, and taught him to feel.Yea, the solemn divinity flushedThrough the shaggy brown skin of the beast,And the steeps where the cataract rushed,And the wilds where the forest is priest,Were his temple to clothe him in awe,While she spake: 'twas a wonder: she readThe haunts of the beak and the clawAs plain as the land of bread,But Cities and martial States,Whither soon the youth veered his theme,Were impervious barrier-gatesTo her: and that ship, a trireme,Nearing harbour, scarce wakened her glance,Though he dwelt on the message it boreOf sceptre and sword and lanceTo the bee-swarms black on the shore,Which were audible almost,So black they were. It befelThat he called up the warrior hostOf the Song pouring hydromelIn thunder, the wide-winged Song.And he named with his boyish prideThe heroes, the noble throngPast Acheron now, foul tide!With his joy of the godlike bandAnd the verse divine, he namedThe chiefs pressing hot on the strand,Seen of Gods, of Gods aided, and maimed.The fleetfoot and ireful; the King;Him, the prompter in stratagem,Many-shifted and masterful: Sing,O Muse! But she cried: Not of themShe breathed as if breath had failed,And her eyes, while she bade him desist,Held the lost-to-light ghosts grey-mailed,As you see the grey river-mistHold shapes on the yonder bank.A moment her body waned,The light of her sprang and sank:Then she looked at the sun, she regainedClear feature, and she breathed deep.She wore the wan smile he had seen,As the flow of the river of Sleep,On the mouth of the Shadow-Queen.In sunlight she craved to bask,Saying: Life! And who was she? who?Of what issue? He dared not ask,For that partly he knew.
A noise of the hollow groundTurned the eye to the ear in debate:Not the soft overflowing of soundOf the pines, ranked, lofty, straight,Barely swayed to some whispers remote,Some swarming whispers above:Not the pines with the faint airs afloat,Hush-hushing the nested dove:It was not the pines, or the routOft heard from mid-forest in chase,But the long muffled roar of a shoutSubterranean. Sharp grew her face.She rose, yet not moved by affright;'Twas rather good haste to useHer holiday of delightIn the beams of the God of the Muse.And the steeps of the forest she crossed,On its dry red sheddings and conesUp the paths by roots green-mossed,Spotted amber, and old mossed stones.Then out where the brook-torrent startsTo her leap, and from bend to curveA hurrying elbow dartsFor the instant-glancing swerve,Decisive, with violent willIn the action formed, like hers,The maiden's, ascending; and stillAscending, the bud of the furze,The broom, and all blue-berried shootsOf stubborn and prickly kind,The juniper flat on its roots,The dwarf rhododaphne, behindShe left, and the mountain sheepFar behind, goat, herbage and flower.The island was hers, and the deep,All heaven, a golden hour.Then with wonderful voice, that rangThrough air as the swan's nigh death,Of the glory of Light she sang,She sang of the rapture of Breath.Nor ever, says he who heard,Heard Earth in her boundaries broad,From bosom of singer or birdA sweetness thus rich of the GodWhose harmonies always are sane.She sang of furrow and seed,The burial, birth of the grain,The growth, and the showers that feed,And the green blades waxing matureFor the husbandman's armful brown.O, the song in its burden ran pure,And burden to song was a crown.Callistes, a singer, skilledIn the gift he could measure and praise,By a rival's art was thrilled,Though she sang but a Song of Days,Where the husbandman's toil and strifeLittle varies to strife and toil:But the milky kernel of life,With her numbered: corn, wine, fruit, oilThe song did give him to eat:Gave the first rapt vision of Good,And the fresh young sense of SweetThe grace of the battle for food,With the issue Earth cannot refuseWhen men to their labour are sworn.'Twas a song of the God of the MuseTo the forehead of Morn.
Him loved she. Lo, now was he veiled:Over sea stood a swelled cloud-rack:The fishing-boat heavenward sailed,Bent abeam, with a whitened track,Surprised, fast hauling the net,As it flew: sea dashed, earth shook.She said: Is it night? O not yet!With a travail of thoughts in her look.The mountain heaved up to its peak:Sea darkened: earth gathered her fowl;Of bird or of branch rose the shriek.Night? but never so fell a scowlWore night, nor the sky since thenWhen ocean ran swallowing shore,And the Gods looked down for men.Broke tempest with that stern roarNever yet, save when black on the whirlRode wrath of a sovereign Power.Then the youth and the shuddering girl,Dim as shades in the angry shower,Joined hands and descended a mazeOf the paths that were racing aliveRound boulder and bush, cleaving ways,Incessant, with sound of a hive.The height was a fountain-urnPouring streams, and the whole solid heightLeaped, chasing at every turnThe pair in one spirit of flightTo the folding pineforest. Yet here,Like the pause to things hunted, in doubt,The stillness bred spectral fearOf the awfulness ranging without,And imminent. Downward they fled,From under the haunted roof,To the valley aquake with the treadOf an iron-resounding hoof,As of legions of thunderful horseBroken loose and in line tramping hard.For the rage of a hungry forceRoamed blind of its mark over sward:They saw it rush dense in the cloakOf its travelling swathe of steam;All the vale through a thin thread-smokeWas thrown back to distance extreme:And dull the full breast of it blinked,Like a buckler of steel breathed o'er,Diminished, in strangeness distinct,Glowing cold, unearthly, hoar:An Enna of fields beyond sun,Out of light, in a lurid web;And the traversing fury spunUp and down with a wave's flow and ebb;As the wave breaks to grasp and to spurn,Retire, and in ravenous greed,Inveterate, swell its return.Up and down, as if wringing from speedSights that made the unsighted appear,Delude and dissolve, on it scoured.Lo, a sea upon land held careerThrough the plain of the vale half-devoured.Callistes of home and escapeMuttered swiftly, unwitting of speech.She gazed at the Void of shape,She put her white hand to his reach,Saying: Now have we looked on the Three.And divided from day, from night,From air that is breath, stood she,Like the vale, out of light.
Then again in disorderly wordsHe muttered of home, and was mute,With the heart of the cowering birdsEre they burst off the fowler's foot.He gave her some redness that streamedThrough her limbs in a flitting glow.The sigh of our life she seemed,The bliss of it clothing in woe.Frailer than flower when the roundOf the sickle encircles it: strongTo tell of the things profound,Our inmost uttering song,Unspoken. So stood she awhileIn the gloom of the terror afield,And the silence about her smileSaid more than of tongue is revealed.I have breathed: I have gazed: I have been:It said: and not joylessly shoneThe remembrance of light through the screenOf a face that seemed shadow and stone.She led the youth trembling, appalled,To the lake-banks he saw sink and riseLike a panic-struck breast. Then she called,And the hurricane blackness had eyes.It launched like the Thunderer's bolt.Pale she drooped, and the youth by her sideWould have clasped her and dared a revoltSacrilegious as ever defiedHigh Olympus, but vainly for strengthHis compassionate heart shook a frameStricken rigid to ice all its length.On amain the black traveller came.Lo, a chariot, cleaving the storm,Clove the fountaining lake with a plough,And the lord of the steeds was in formHe, the God of implacable brow,Darkness: he: he in person: he ragedThrough the wave like a boar of the wildsFrom the hunters and hounds disengaged,And a name shouted hoarsely: his child's.Horror melted in anguish to hear.Lo, the wave hissed apart for the pathOf the terrible Charioteer,With the foam and torn features of wrath,Hurled aloft on each arm in a sheet;And the steeds clove it, rushing at landLike the teeth of the famished at meat.Then he swept out his hand.
This, no more, doth Callistes recall:He saw, ere he dropped in swoon,On the maiden the chariot fall,As a thundercloud swings on the moon.Forth, free of the deluge, one cryFrom the vanishing gallop rose clear:And: Skiegeneia! the skyRang; Skiegeneia! the sphere.And she left him therewith, to rejoice,Repine, yearn, and know not his aim,The life of their day in her voice,Left her life in her name.
Now the valley in ruin of fieldsAnd fair meadowland, showing at eveLike the spear-pitted warrior's shieldsAfter battle, bade men believeThat no other than wrathfullest GodHad been loose on her beautiful breast,Where the flowery grass was clod,Wheat and vine as a trailing nest.The valley, discreet in grief,Disclosed but the open truth,And Enna had hope of the sheaf:There was none for the desolate youthDevoted to mourn and to crave.Of the secret he had divinedOf his friend of a day would he rave:How for light of our earth she pined:For the olive, the vine and the wheat,Burning through with inherited fire:And when Mother went Mother to meet,She was prompted by simple desireIn the day-destined car to have placeAt the skirts of the Goddess, unseen,And be drawn to the dear earth's face.She was fire for the blue and the greenOf our earth, dark fire; athirstAs a seed of her bosom for dawn,White air that had robed and nursedHer mother. Now was she goneWith the Silent, the God without tear,Like a bud peeping out of its sheathTo be sundered and stamped with the sere.And Callistes to her beneath,As she to our beams, extinct,Strained arms: he was shade of her shade.In division so were they linked.But the song which had betrayedHer flight to the cavernous earFor its own keenly wakeful: that songOf the sowing and reaping, and cheerOf the husbandman's heart made strongThrough droughts and deluging rainsWith his faith in the Great Mother's love:O the joy of the breath she sustains,And the lyre of the light above,And the first rapt vision of Good,And the fresh young sense of Sweet:That song the youth ever pursuedIn the track of her footing fleet.For men to be profited muchBy her day upon earth did he sing:Of her voice, and her steps, and her touchOn the blossoms of tender Spring,Immortal: and how in her soulShe is with them, and tearless abides,Folding grain of a love for one goalIn patience, past flowing of tides.And if unto him she was tears,He wept not: he wasted within:Seeming sane in the song, to his peers,Only crazed where the cravings begin.Our Lady of Gifts prized he lessThan her issue in darkness: the dimLost Skiegencia's caressOf our earth made it richest for him.And for that was a curse on him raised,And he withered rathe, dry to his prime,Though the bounteous Giver be praisedThrough the island with rites of old timeExceedingly fervent, and reapedVeneration for teachings devout,Pious hymns when the corn-sheaves are heapedAnd the wine-presses ruddily spout,And the olive and apple are juiceAt a touch light as hers lost below.Whatsoever to men is of useSprang his worship of them who bestow,In a measure of songs unexcelled:But that soul loving earth and the sunFrom her home of the shadows he heldFor his beacon where beam there is none:And to join her, or have her brought back,In his frenzy the singer would call,Till he followed where never was track,On the path trod of all.
He rises and begins to round,He drops the silver chain of sound,Of many links without a break,In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake,All intervolved and spreading wide,Like water-dimples down a tideWhere ripple ripple overcurlsAnd eddy into eddy whirls;A press of hurried notes that runSo fleet they scarce are more than one,Yet changeingly the trills repeatAnd linger ringing while they fleet,Sweet to the quick o' the ear, and dearTo her beyond the handmaid ear,Who sits beside our inner springs,Too often dry for this he brings,Which seems the very jet of earthAt sight of sun, her music's mirth,As up he wings the spiral stair,A song of light, and pierces airWith fountain ardour, fountain play,To reach the shining tops of day,And drink in everything discernedAn ecstasy to music turned,Impelled by what his happy billDisperses; drinking, showering still,Unthinking save that he may giveHis voice the outlet, there to liveRenewed in endless notes of glee,So thirsty of his voice is he,For all to hear and all to knowThat he is joy, awake, aglow;The tumult of the heart to hearThrough pureness filtered crystal-clear,And know the pleasure sprinkled brightBy simple singing of delight;Shrill, irreflective, unrestrained,Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustainedWithout a break, without a fall,Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical,Perennial, quavering up the chordLike myriad dews of sunny swardThat trembling into fulness shine,And sparkle dropping argentine;Such wooing as the ear receivesFrom zephyr caught in choric leavesOf aspens when their chattering netIs flushed to white with shivers wet;And such the water-spirit's chimeOn mountain heights in morning's prime,Too freshly sweet to seem excess,Too animate to need a stress;But wider over many headsThe starry voice ascending spreads,Awakening, as it waxes thin,The best in us to him akin;And every face to watch him raised,Puts on the light of children praised;So rich our human pleasure ripesWhen sweetness on sincereness pipes,Though nought be promised from the seas,But only a soft-ruffling breezeSweep glittering on a still content,Serenity in ravishmentFor singing till his heaven fills,'Tis love of earth that he instils,And ever winging up and up,Our valley is his golden cup,And he the wine which overflowsTo lift us with him as he goes:The woods and brooks, the sheep and kine,He is, the hills, the human line,The meadows green, the fallows brown,The dreams of labour in the town;He sings the sap, the quickened veins;The wedding song of sun and rainsHe is, the dance of children, thanksOf sowers, shout of primrose-banks,And eye of violets while they breathe;All these the circling song will wreathe,And you shall hear the herb and tree,The better heart of men shall see,Shall feel celestially, as longAs you crave nothing save the song.
Was never voice of ours could sayOur inmost in the sweetest way,Like yonder voice aloft, and linkAll hearers in the song they drink.Our wisdom speaks from failing blood,Our passion is too full in flood,We want the key of his wild noteOf truthful in a tuneful throat;The song seraphically freeOf taint of personality,So pure that it salutes the sunsThe voice of one for millions,In whom the millions rejoiceFor giving their one spirit voice.Yet men have we, whom we revere,Now names, and men still housing here,Whose lives, by many a battle-dintDefaced, and grinding wheels on flint,Yield substance, though they sing not, sweetFor song our highest heaven to greet:Whom heavenly singing gives us new,Enspheres them brilliant in our blue,From firmest base to farthest leap,Because their love of Earth is deep,And they are warriors in accordWith life to serve, and, pass reward,So touching purest and so heardIn the brain's reflex of yon bird:Wherefore their soul in me, or mine,Through self-forgetfulness divine,In them, that song aloft maintains,To fill the sky and thrill the plainsWith showerings drawn from human stores,As he to silence nearer soars,Extends the world at wings and dome,More spacious making more our home,Till lost on his aerial ringsIn light, and then the fancy sings.
When by Zeus relenting the mandate was revoked,Sentencing to exile the bright Sun-God,Mindful were the ploughmen of who the steer had yoked,Who: and what a track showed the upturned sod!Mindful were the shepherds, as now the noon severeBent a burning eyebrow to brown evetide,How the rustic flute drew the silver to the sphere,Sister of his own, till her rays fell wide.God! of whom musicAnd song and blood are pure,The day is never darkenedThat had thee here obscure.
Chirping none, the scarlet cicadas crouched in ranks:Slack the thistle-head piled its down-silk grey:Scarce the stony lizard sucked hollows in his flanks:Thick on spots of umbrage our drowsed flocks lay.Sudden bowed the chestnuts beneath a wind unheard,Lengthened ran the grasses, the sky grew slate:Then amid a swift flight of winged seed white as curd,Clear of limb a Youth smote the master's gate.God! of whom musicAnd song and blood are pure,The day is never darkenedThat had thee here obscure.
Water, first of singers, o'er rocky mount and mead,First of earthly singers, the sun-loved rill,Sang of him, and flooded the ripples on the reed,Seeking whom to waken and what ear fill.Water, sweetest soother to kiss a wound and cool,Sweetest and divinest, the sky-born brook,Chuckled, with a whimper, and made a mirror-poolRound the guest we welcomed, the strange hand shook.God! of whom musicAnd song and blood are pure,The day is never darkenedThat had thee here obscure.
Many swarms of wild bees descended on our fields:Stately stood the wheatstalk with head bent high:Big of heart we laboured at storing mighty yields,Wool and corn, and clusters to make men cry!Hand-like rushed the vintage; we strung the bellied skinsPlump, and at the sealing the Youth's voice rose:Maidens clung in circle, on little fists their chins;Gentle beasties through pushed a cold long nose.God! of whom musicAnd song and blood are pure,The day is never darkenedThat had thee here obscure.
Foot to fire in snowtime we trimmed the slender shaft:Often down the pit spied the lean wolf's teethGrin against his will, trapped by masterstrokes of craft;Helpless in his froth-wrath as green logs seethe!Safe the tender lambs tugged the teats, and winter spedWhirled before the crocus, the year's new gold.Hung the hooky beak up aloft, the arrowheadReddened through his feathers for our dear fold.God! of whom musicAnd song and blood are pure,The day is never darkenedThat had thee here obscure.
Tales we drank of giants at war with Gods above:Rocks were they to look on, and earth climbed air!Tales of search for simples, and those who sought of loveEase because the creature was all too fair.Pleasant ran our thinking that while our work was good,Sure as fruits for sweat would the praise come fast.He that wrestled stoutest and tamed the billow-broodDanced in rings with girls, like a sail-flapped mast.God! of whom musicAnd song and blood are pure,The day is never darkenedThat had thee here obscure.
Lo, the herb of healing, when once the herb is known,Shines in shady woods bright as new-sprung flame.Ere the string was tightened we heard the mellow tone,After he had taught how the sweet sounds cameStretched about his feet, labour done, 'twas as you seeRed pomegranates tumble and burst hard rind.So began contention to give delight and beExcellent in things aimed to make life kind.God! of whom musicAnd song and blood are pure,The day is never darkenedThat had thee here obscure.
You with shelly horns, rams! and, promontory goats,You whose browsing beards dip in coldest dew!Bulls, that walk the pastures in kingly-flashing coats!Laurel, ivy, vine, wreathed for feasts not few!You that build the shade-roof, and you that court the rays,You that leap besprinkling the rock stream-rent:He has been our fellow, the morning of our days!Us he chose for housemates, and this way went.God! of whom musicAnd song and blood are pure,The day is never darkenedThat had thee here obscure.
With love exceeding a simple love of the thingsThat glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck;Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wingsFrom branch to branch, only restful to pipe and peck;Or, bristled, curl at a touch their snouts in a ball;Or cast their web between bramble and thorny hook;The good physician Melampus, loving them all,Among them walked, as a scholar who reads a book.
For him the woods were a home and gave him the keyOf knowledge, thirst for their treasures in herbs and flowers.The secrets held by the creatures nearer than weTo earth he sought, and the link of their life with ours:And where alike we are, unlike where, and the veinedDivision, veined parallel, of a blood that flowsIn them, in us, from the source by man unattainedSave marks he well what the mystical woods disclose.
And this he deemed might be boon of love to a breastEmbracing tenderly each little motive shape,The prone, the flitting, who seek their food whither bestTheir wits direct, whither best from their foes escape.For closer drawn to our mother's natural milk,As babes they learn where her motherly help is great:They know the juice for the honey, juice for the silk,And need they medical antidotes, find them straight.
Of earth and sun they are wise, they nourish their broods,Weave, build, hive, burrow and battle, take joy and painLike swimmers varying billows: never in woodsRuns white insanity fleeing itself: all saneThe woods revolve: as the tree its shadowing limnsTo some resemblance in motion, the rooted lifeRestrains disorder: you hear the primitive hymnsOf earth in woods issue wild of the web of strife.
Now sleeping once on a day of marvellous fire,A brood of snakes he had cherished in grave regretThat death his people had dealt their dam and their sire,Through savage dread of them, crept to his neck, and setTheir tongues to lick him: the swift affectionate tongueOf each ran licking the slumberer: then his earsA forked red tongue tickled shrewdly: sudden upsprung,He heard a voice piping: Ay, for he has no fears!
A bird said that, in the notes of birds, and the speechOf men, it seemed: and another renewed: He movesTo learn and not to pursue, he gathers to teach;He feeds his young as do we, and as we love loves.No fears have I of a man who goes with his headTo earth, chance looking aloft at us, kind of hand:I feel to him as to earth of whom we are fed;I pipe him much for his good could he understand.
Melampus touched at his ears, laid finger on wristHe was not dreaming, he sensibly felt and heard.Above, through leaves, where the tree-twigs inter-twist,He spied the birds and the bill of the speaking bird.His cushion mosses in shades of various green,The lumped, the antlered, he pressed, while the sunny snakeSlipped under: draughts he had drunk of clear Hippocrene,It seemed, and sat with a gift of the Gods awake.
Divinely thrilled was the man, exultingly full,As quick well-waters that come of the heart of earth,Ere yet they dart in a brook are one bubble-poolTo light and sound, wedding both at the leap of birth.The soul of light vivid shone, a stream within stream;The soul of sound from a musical shell outflew;Where others hear but a hum and see but a beam,The tongue and eye of the fountain of life he knew.
He knew the Hours: they were round him, laden with seedOf hours bestrewn upon vapour, and one by oneThey winged as ripened in fruit the burden decreedFor each to scatter; they flushed like the buds in sun,Bequeathing seed to successive similar rings,Their sisters, bearers to men of what men have earned:He knew them, talked with the yet unreddened; the stings,The sweets, they warmed at their bosoms divined, discerned.
Not unsolicited, sought by diligent feet,By riddling fingers expanded, oft watched in growthWith brooding deep as the noon-ray's quickening wheat,Ere touch'd, the pendulous flower of the plants of sloth,The plants of rigidness, answered question and squeeze,Revealing wherefore it bloomed, uninviting, bent,Yet making harmony breathe of life and disease,The deeper chord of a wonderful instrument.
So passed he luminous-eyed for earth and the fatesWe arm to bruise or caress us: his ears were chargedWith tones of love in a whirl of voluble hates,With music wrought of distraction his heart enlarged.Celestial-shining, though mortal, singer, though mute,He drew the Master of harmonies, voiced or stilled,To seek him; heard at the silent medicine-rootA song, beheld in fulfilment the unfulfilled.
Him Phoebus, lending to darkness colour and formOf light's excess, many lessons and counsels gave,Showed Wisdom lord of the human intricate swarm,And whence prophetic it looks on the hives that rave,And how acquired, of the zeal of love to acquire,And where it stands, in the centre of life a sphere;And Measure, mood of the lyre, the rapturous lyre,He said was Wisdom, and struck him the notes to hear.
Sweet, sweet: 'twas glory of vision, honey, the breezeIn heat, the run of the river on root and stone,All senses joined, as the sister PieridesAre one, uplifting their chorus, the Nine, his own.In stately order, evolved of sound into sight,From sight to sound intershifting, the man descriedThe growths of earth, his adored, like day out of night,Ascend in song, seeing nature and song allied.
And there vitality, there, there solely in song,Resides, where earth and her uses to men, their needs,Their forceful cravings, the theme are: there is it strong,The Master said: and the studious eye that reads,(Yea, even as earth to the crown of Gods on the mount),In links divine with the lyrical tongue is bound.Pursue thy craft: it is music drawn of a fountTo spring perennial; well-spring is common ground.
Melampus dwelt among men: physician and sage,He served them, loving them, healing them; sick or maimed,Or them that frenzied in some delirious rageOutran the measure, his juice of the woods reclaimed.He played on men, as his master, Phoebus, on stringsMelodious: as the God did he drive and check,Through love exceeding a simple love of the thingsThat glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck.
Under yonder beech-tree single on the greensward,Couched with her arms behind her golden head,Knees and tresses folded to slip and ripple idly,Lies my young love sleeping in the shade.Had I the heart to slide an arm beneath her,Press her parting lips as her waist I gather slow,Waking in amazement she could not but embrace me:Then would she hold me and never let me go?
* * *
Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow,Swift as the swallow along the river's lightCircleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets,Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight.Shy as the squirrel that leaps among the pine-tops,Wayward as the swallow overhead at set of sun,She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer,Hard, but O the glory of the winning were she won!
* * *
When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror,Tying up her laces, looping up her hair,Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,More love should I have, and much less care.When her mother tends her before the lighted mirror,Loosening her laces, combing down her curls,Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,I should miss but one for the many boys and girls.
* * *
Heartless she is as the shadow in the meadowsFlying to the hills on a blue and breezy noon.No, she is athirst and drinking up her wonder:Earth to her is young as the slip of the new moon.Deals she an unkindness, 'tis but her rapid measure,Even as in a dance; and her smile can heal no less:Like the swinging May-cloud that pelts the flowers with hailstonesOff a sunny border, she was made to bruise and bless.
* * *
Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweepingWavy in the dusk lit by one large star.Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried,Brooding o'er the gloom, spins the brown eve-jar.Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting:So were it with me if forgetting could be willed.Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring,Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled.
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Stepping down the hill with her fair companions,Arm in arm, all against the raying West,Boldly she sings, to the merry tune she marches,Brave in her shape, and sweeter unpossessed.Sweeter, for she is what my heart first awakingWhispered the world was; morning light is she.Love that so desires would fain keep her changeless;Fain would fling the net, and fain have her free.
* * *
Happy happy time, when the white star hoversLow over dim fields fresh with bloomy dew,Near the face of dawn, that draws athwart the darkness,Threading it with colour, like yewberries the yew.Thicker crowd the shades as the grave East deepensGlowing, and with crimson a long cloud swells.Maiden still the morn is; and strange she is, and secret;Strange her eyes; her cheeks are cold as cold sea-shells.
* * *
Sunrays, leaning on our southern hills and lightingWild cloud-mountains that drag the hills along,Oft ends the day of your shifting brilliant laughterChill as a dull face frowning on a song.Ay, but shows the South-west a ripple-feathered bosomBlown to silver while the clouds are shaken and ascendScaling the mid-heavens as they stream, there comes a sunsetRich, deep like love in beauty without end.
* * *
When at dawn she sighs, and like an infant to the windowTurns grave eyes craving light, released from dreams,Beautiful she looks, like a white water-lilyBursting out of bud in havens of the streams.When from bed she rises clothed from neck to ankleIn her long nightgown sweet as boughs of May,Beautiful she looks, like a tall garden lilyPure from the night, and splendid for the day.
* * *
Mother of the dews, dark eye-lashed twilight,Low-lidded twilight, o'er the valley's brim,Rounding on thy breast sings the dew-delighted skylark,Clear as though the dewdrops had their voice in him.Hidden where the rose-flush drinks the rayless planet,Fountain-full he pours the spraying fountain-showers.Let me hear her laughter, I would have her everCool as dew in twilight, the lark above the flowers.
* * *
All the girls are out with their baskets for the primrose;Up lanes, woods through, they troop in joyful bands.My sweet leads: she knows not why, but now she loiters,Eyes bent anemones, and hangs her hands.Such a look will tell that the violets are peeping,Coming the rose: and unaware a crySprings in her bosom for odours and for colour,Covert and the nightingale; she knows not why.
* * *
Kerchiefed head and chin, she darts between her tulips,Streaming like a willow grey in arrowy rain:Some bend beaten cheek to gravel, and their angelShe will be; she lifts them, and on she speeds again.Black the driving raincloud breasts the iron gate-way:She is forth to cheer a neighbour lacking mirth.So when sky and grass met rolling dumb for thunder,Saw I once a white dove, sole light of earth.
* * *
Prim little scholars are the flowers of her garden,Trained to stand in rows, and asking if they please.I might love them well but for loving more the wild ones.O my wild ones! they tell me more than these.You, my wild one, you tell of honied field-rose,Violet, blushing eglantine in life; and even as they,They by the wayside are earnest of your goodness,You are of life's, on the banks that line the way.
* * *
Peering at her chamber the white crowns the red rose,Jasmine winds the porch with stars two and three.Parted is the window; she sleeps; the starry jasmineBreathes a falling breath that carries thoughts of me.Sweeter unpossessed, have I said of her my sweetestNot while she sleeps: while she sleeps the jasmine breathes,Luring her to love; she sleeps; the starry jasmineBears me to her pillow under white rose-wreaths.
* * *
Yellow with birdfoot-trefoil are the grass-glades;Yellow with cinquefoil of the dew-grey leaf:Yellow with stonecrop; the moss-mounds are yellow;Blue-necked the wheat sways, yellowing to the sheaf.Green-yellow, bursts from the copse the laughing yaffle;Sharp as a sickle is the edge of shade and shine:Earth in her heart laughs looking at the heavens,Thinking of the harvest: I look and think of mine.
* * *
This I may know: her dressing and undressingSuch a change of light shows as when the skies in sportShift from cloud to moonlight; or edging over thunderSlips a ray of sun; or sweeping into portWhite sails furl; or on the ocean bordersWhite sails lean along the waves leaping green.Visions of her shower before me, but from eyesightGuarded she would be like the sun were she seen.
* * *
Front door and back of the mossed old farmhouseOpen with the morn, and in a breezy linkFreshly sparkles garden to stripe-shadowed orchard,Green across a rill where on sand the minnows wink.Busy in the grass the early sun of summerSwarms, and the blackbird's mellow fluting notesCall my darling up with round and roguish challenge:Quaintest, richest carol of all the singing throats!
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