Than farthest stars more distant,A mile more,A mile more,A voice cries on insistent:"You may smile more if you will;
"You may sing too and spring too;But numb at lastAnd dumb at last,Whatever port you cling to,You must come at last to a hill.
"And never a man you'll find thereTo take your handAnd shake your hand;But when you go behind thereYou must make your hand a sword
"To fence with a foeman swarthy,And swink thereNor shrink there,Though cowardly and worthyMust drink there one reward."
The dead man's gone, the live man's sad, the dying leaf shakes on the tree,The wind constrains the window-panes and moans like moaning of the sea,And sour's the taste now culled in haste of lovely things I won too late,And loud and loud above the crowd the Voice of One more strong than we.
This Voice you hear, this call you fear, is it unprophesied or new?Were you so insolent to think its rope would never circle you?Did you then beastlike live and walk with ears and eyes that would not turn?Who bade you hope your service 'scape in that eternal retinue?
No; for I swear now bare's the tree and loud the moaning of the wind,I walked no rut with eyelids shut, my ears and eyes were never blind,Only my eager thoughts I bent on many things that I desiredTo make my greedy heart content ere flesh and blood I left behind.
Ignorance, then, was all your fault and filmèd eyes that could not know,That half discerned and never learned the temporal way that men must go;You set the image of the world high for your heart's idolatry,Though with your lips you called the world a toy, a ghost, a passing show.
No, no; this is not true; my lips spoke only what my heart believed.Called I the world a toy; I spoke not echo-like or self-deceived.But that I thought the toy was mine to play with, and the passing showWould sate at least my passing lusts, and did not, therefore am I grieved.
What did I do that I must bear this lifelong tyranny of my fate,That I must writhe in bonds unsought of accidental love and hate?Had chance but joined different dice, but once or twice, but once or twice,All lovely things that I desired I should have held before too late.
Surely I knew that flesh was grass nor valued overmuch the prize,But all the powers of chance conspired to cheat a man both just and wise.Happy I'd been had I but had my due reward, and not a swordFlaming in diabolic hand between me and my Paradise.
No hooded band of fates did stand your heart's ambitions to gainsay,No flaming brand in evil hand was ever thrust across your way,Only the things all men must meet, the common attributes of men,That men may flinch to see or, seeing, deny, but avoid them no man may.
Fall the dice, not once or twice but always, to make the self-same sum;Chance what may, a life's a life and to a single goal must come;Though a man search far and wide, never is hunger satisfied;Nature brings her natural fetters, man is meshed and the wise are dumb.
O vain all art to assuage a heart with accents of a mortal tongue,All earthly words are incomplete and only sweet are the songs unsung,Never yet was cause for regret, yet regret must afflict us all,Better it were to grasp the world 'thwart which this world is a curtain flung.
Last night I lay in an open fieldAnd looked at the stars with lips sealed;No noise moved the windless air,And I looked at the stars with steady stare.
There were some that glittered and some that shoneWith a soft and equal glow, and oneThat queened it over the sprinkled round,Swaying the host with silent sound.
"Calm things," I thought, "in your cavern blue,I will learn and hold and master you;I will yoke and scorn you as I can,For the pride of my heart is the pride of a man."
Grass to my cheek in the dewy field,I lay quite still with lips sealed,And the pride of a man and his rigid gazeStalked like swords on heaven's ways.
But through a sudden gate there stoleThe Universe and spread in my soul;Quick went my breath and quick my heart,And I looked at the stars with lips apart.
There is a wood where the fairies danceAll night long in a ring of mushrooms daintily,By each tree bole sits a squirrel or a mole,And the moon through the branches darts.
Light on the grass their slim limbs glance,Their shadows in the moonlight swing in quiet unison,And the moon discovers that they all have lovers,But they never break their hearts.
They never grieve at all for sands that run,They never know regret for a deed that's done,And they never think of going to a shed with a gunAt the rising of the sun.
No creature stirs in the wide fields.The rifted western heaven yieldsThe dying sun's illumination.This is the hour of tribulationWhen, with clear sight of eve engendered,Day's homage to delusion rendered,Mute at her window sits the soul.
Clouds and skies and lakes and seas,Valleys and hills and grass and trees,Sun, moon, and stars, all stand to herLimbs of one lordless challenger,Who, without deigning taunt or frown.Throws a perennial gauntlet down:"Come conquer me and take thy toll."
No cowardice or fear she knows,But, as once more she girds, there growsAn unresignèd hopelessnessFrom memory of former stress.Head bent, she muses whilst he waits:How with such weapons dint his plates?How quell this vast and sleepless giantCalmly, immortally defiant,How fell him, bind him, and controlWith a silver cord and a golden bowl?
Death in the cold grey morningCame to the man where he lay;And the wind shivered, and the tree shudderedAnd the dawn was grey.
And the face of the man was grey in the dawn,And the watchers by the bedKnew, as they heard the shaking of the leaves,That the man was dead.
Flying his hair and his eyes averse,Fleet are his feet and his heart apart.How could our song his charms rehearse?Fleet are his feet and his heart apart.
High on a down we found him last,Shy as a hare, he fled as fast;How could we clasp him or ever he passed?Fleet are his feet and his heart apart.
How could we cling to his limbs that shone,Ravish his cheeks' red gonfalon,Or the wild-skin cloak that he had on?Fleet are his feet and his heart apart.
For the wind of his feet still straightly shaping,He loosed at our breasts from his eyes escapingOne crooked swift glance like a javelin leaping.Fleet are his feet and his heart apart.
And his feet passed over the sunset landFrom the place forlorn where a forlorn bandWatching him flying we still did stand.Fleet are his feet and his heart apart.
Vanishing now who would not stayTo the blue hills on the verge of day.O soft! soft! Music play,Fading away,(Fleet are his feetAnd his heart apart)Fading away.
There is a far unfading cityWhere bright immortal people are;Remote from hollow shame and pity,Their portals frame no guiding starBut blightless pleasure's moteless raysThat follow their footsteps as they danceLong lutanied measures through a mazeOf flower-like song and dalliance.
There always glows the vernal sun,There happy birds for ever sing,There faint perfumed breezes runThrough branches of eternal spring;There faces browned and fruit and milkAnd blue-winged words and rose-bloomed kissesIn galleys gowned with gold and silkShake on a lake of dainty blisses.
Coyness is not, nor bear they thought,Save of a shining gracious flow;All natural joys are temperate sought.For calm desire there they know,A fire promiscuous, languorous, kind;They scorn all fiercer lusts and quarrels,Nor blow about on anger's wind,Nor burn with love, nor rust with morals.
Folk in the far unfading city,Burning with lusts my senses are,I am torn with love and shame and pity,Be to my heart a guiding star:Wise youths and maidens in the sun,With eyes that charm and lips that sing,And gentle arms that rippling run,Shed on my heart your endless spring!
Beneath my skull-bone and my hair,Covered like a poisonous well,There is a land: if you looked thereWhat you saw you'd quail to tell.You that sit there smiling, youKnow that what I say is true.
My head is very small to touch,I feel it all from front to back,An earèd round that weighs not much,Eyes, nose-holes, and a pulpy crack:Oh, how small, how small it is!How could countries be in this?
Yet, when I watch with eyelids shut,It glimmers forth, now dark, now clear,The city of Cis-Occiput,The marshes and the writhing mere,The land that every man I seeKnows in himself but not in me.
Upon the borders of the weald(I walk there first when I step in)Set in green wood and smiling field,The city stands, unstained of sin;White thoughts and wishes pureWalk the streets with steps demure.
In its clean groves and spacious hallsThe quiet-eyed inhabitantsHold innocent sunny festivalsAnd mingle in decorous dance;Things that destroy, distort, deface,Come never to that lovely place.
Never could evil enter thither,It could not live in that sweet air,The shadow of an ill deed must witherAnd fall away to nothing there.You would say as there you standThat all was beauty in the land.
*****
But go you out beyond the gateway,Cleave you the woods and pass the plain,Cross you the frontier down, and straightwayThe trees will end, the grass will wane,And you will come to a wildernessOf sticks and parchèd barrenness.
The middle of the land is this,A tawny desert midmost set,Barren of living things it is,Saving at night some vampires flitThat nest them in the farther marishWhere all save vilest things must perish.
Here in this reedy marsh of greenAnd oily pools, swarm insects fatAnd birds of prey and beasts obscene,Things that the traveller shudders at,All cunning things that creep and flyTo suck men's blood until they die.
Rarely from hence does aught escapeInto the world of outer light,But now and then some sable shapeOutward will dash in sudden flight;And men stand stonied or distraughtTo know the loathly deed or thought.
But, ah! beyond the marsh you reachA purulent place more vile than all,A festering lake too foul for speech,Rotten and black, with coils acrawl,Where writhe with lecherous squeakings shrillHorrors that make the heart stand still.
There, 'neath a heaven diseased, it lies,The mere alive with slimy worms,With perverse terrible infamies,And murders and repulsive formsThat have no name, but slide here deep,Whilst I, their holder, silence keep.
[To F., who complained of his vagueness and lack ofdogmatic statement]
Not, I suppose, since I denyAppearance is reality,And doubt the substance of the earthDoes your remonstrance come to birth;Not that at once I both affirm'Tis not the skin that makes the wormAnd every tactile thing with massMust find its symbol in the grassAnd with a cool conviction sayEven a critic's more than clayAnd every dog outlives his day.This kind of vagueness suits your view,You would not carp at it; for youDid never stand with those who takeTheir pleasures in a world opaque.For you a tree would never beLovely were it but a tree,And earthly splendours never splendidIf by transience unattended.Your eyes are on a farther shoreThan any of earth; nor do adoreAs godhead God's dead hieroglyph.Nor would you be perturbed ifSome prophet with a voice of thunderAnd avalanche arm should blast and founderThe logical pillars that maintainThis visible world which loads the brain,Loads the brain and withers the heartAnd holds man from his God apart.
But still with you remains the cravingFor some more solid substance, havingSurface to touch, colour to see,And form compact in symmetry.You are not satisfied with theseVague throbbings, nameless ecstasies,Nor can your spirit find delightIn an amorphic great white light.Not with such sickles can you reap;If a dense earth you cannot keepYou want a dense heaven as substituteWith trees of plump celestial fruit,Red apples, golden pomegranates,And a river flowing by tall gatesOf topaz and of chrysoliteAnd walls of twenty cubits height.
Frank, you cry out against the age!Nor you nor I can disengageOurselves from that in which we liveNor seize on things God does not give.Thirsty as you, perhaps, I longFor courtyards of eternal song,Even as yours my feet would strayIn a city where 'tis always dayAnd a green spontaneous leafy gardenWith God in the middle for a warden;But though I hope with strengthening faithTo taste when I have traversed deathThe unimaginable sweetnessOf certitude of such concreteness,How should I draw the hue and scopeOf substances I only hopeOr blaze upon a paper screenThe evidence of things not seen?This art of ours but grows and stirsExperience when it registers,And you know well as I know wellThis autumn of time in which we dwellIs not an age of revelationsSolid as once, but intimationsThat touch us with warm misty fingersLeaving a nameless sense that lingersThat sight is blind and Time's a snareAnd earth less solid than the airAnd deep below all seeming thingsThere sits a steady king of kingsA radiant ageless permanence,A quenchless fount of virtue whenceWe draw our life; a sense that makesA staunch conviction nothing shakesOf our own immortality.And though, being man, with certain gleeI eat and drink, though I suffer pain,And love and hate and love againWell or in mode contemptible,Thus shackled by the body's spellI see through pupils of the beastThough it be faint and blurred with mistA Star that travels in the East.I see what I can, not what I will.In things that move, things that are still;Thin motion, even cloudier rest,I see the symbols God hath drest.The moveless trees, the trees that waveThe clouds that heavenly highways have,Horses that run, rocks that are fixt,Streams that have rest and motion mixt,The main with its abiding flux,The wind that up my chimney sucksA mounting waterfall of flame,Sticks, straws, dust, beetles and that sameOld blazing sun the Psalmist sawA testifier to the law:Divinely to the heart they speakSaying how they are but weak,Wan will-o'-the-wisps on the crystal sea;But stays that sea still dark to me.
Did I now glibly insolentChart the ulterior firmament,Would you not know my words were lies,Where not my testimonial eyesMortal or spiritual lodge,Mere uncorroborated fudge?Praise me, though praise I do not want,Rather, that I have cast much cant,That what I see and feel I write,Read what I can in this dim lightGranted to me in nether night.And though I am vague and shrink to guessGod's everlasting purposes,And never save in perplext dreamHave caught the least clear-shapen gleamOf the great kingdom and the throneIn the world that lies behind our own,I have not lacked my certainties,I have not haggard moaned the skies,Nor waged unnecessary strifeNor scorned nor overvalued life.And though you say my attitudeIs questioning, concede my moodDoes never bring to tongue or penAccents of gloomy modern menWho wail or hail the death of GodAnd weigh and measure man the clod,Or say they draw reluctant breathAnd musically mourn that DeathIs a queen omnipotent of woeAnd Life her lean cicisbeo,Abject and pale, whom vampire-likeShe playeth with ere she shall strike,And pose sad riddles to the SphinxWith raven quills in purple inks,Then send the boy to fetch more drinks.
This dense hard ground I tread.These iron bars that ripple past,Will they unshaken stand when I am deadAnd my deep thoughts outlast?
Is it my spirit slips,Falls, like this leaf I kick aside;This firmness that I feel about my lips,Is it but empty pride?
Mute knowledge conquers me;I contemplate them as they are,Faint earth and shadowy bars that shake and flee,Less hard, more transient far
Than those unbodied huesThe sunset flings on the calm river;And, as I look, a swiftness thrills my shoesAnd my hands with empire quiver.
Now light the ground I tread,I walk not now but rather float;Clear but unreal is the scene outspread,Pitiful, thin, remote.
Poor vapour is the grass,So frail the trees and railings seem,That, did I sweep my hand around, 'twould passThrough them, as in a dream.
Godlike I fear no changes;Shatter the world with thunders loud,Still would I ray-like flit about the rangesOf dark and ruddy cloud.
Airy and quick and wiseIn the shed light of the sun,You clasp with friendly eyesThe thoughts from mine that run.
But something breaks the link;I solitary standBy a giant gully's brinkIn some vast gloomy land.
Sole central watcher, IWith steadfast sadness nowIn that waste place descry'Neath the awful heavens how
Your life doth dizzy dropA little foam of flameFrom a peak without a topTo a pit without a name.
There was no song nor shout of joyNor beam of moon or sun,When she came back from the voyageLong ago begun;But twilight on the watersWas quiet and grey,And she glided steady, steady and pensive,Over the open bay.
Her sails were brown and ragged,And her crew hollow-eyed,But their silent lips spoke contentAnd their shoulders pride;Though she had no captives on her deck,And in her holdThere were no heaps of corn or timberOr silks or gold.
In this dense hall of green and gold,Mirrors and lights and steam, there sitTwo hundred munching men;While several score of others flitLike scurrying beetles over a fen,With plates in fanlike spread; or foldNapkins, or jerk the corks from bottles,Ministers to greedy throttles.Some make noises while they eat,Pick their teeth or shuffle their feet,Wipe their noses 'neath eyes that rangeOr frown whilst waiting for their change.Gobble, gobble, toil and trouble.Soul! this life is very strange,And circumstances very foulAttend the belly's stormy howl.How horrible this noise! this air how thick!It is disgusting ... I feel sick...Loosely I prod the table with a fork,My mind gapes, dizzies, ceases to work...
*****
The weak unsatisfied strainOf a band in another room;Through this dull complex dinComes winding thin and sharp!The gnat-like mourning of the violin,The faint stings of the harp.The sounds pierce in and die again,Like keen-drawn threads of ink dropped into a glassOf water, which curl and relax and soften and pass.Briefly the music hovers in unstable poise,Then melts away, drowned in the heavy sea of noise.And I, I am now emasculate.All my forces dissipate;Conquered by matter utterly,Moving not, willing not, I lie,Like a man whom timbers pinWhen the roof of a mine falls in.
Halt! ... as a cloud condensesI press my mind, recoverDominion of my senses.With newly flowing bloodI lift, and now float overThe restaurant's expansesLike a draggled sea-gull over dreary flats of mud.An effort ... ah ... I urge and push,And now with greater strength I flush,The hall is full of my pinions' rush;No drooping now, the place is mine,Beating the walls with shattering wings,Over the herd my spirit swings,In triumph shouts "Aha, you swine!Grovel before your lord divine!I, only I, am real here! ..."Through the uncertain firmament,Still bestial in their dull content.The despicable phantoms leer...Hogs! even now in my right handI hold at my will the thunderboltsMeasured not in mortal volts,Would crash you to annihilation!Lit with a new illumination,What need I of ears and eyesOf flesh? Imperious I will rise,Dominate you as a godWho only does not trouble to wield the rodOf death, or kick your weak spheroidLike a football through the void!
*****
Ha! was it but a dream?And did it merely seem?Ha! not yet free of your cage,Soul, spite of all your rage?Come now, this foe engage!With explosion of your mightOh heave, oh leap and flash up, soul.Like a stabbing scream in the night!Hurl aside this useless bowlOf a body...But there comes a shockA soft, tremendous shockOf contact with the body; I lose all power,And fall back, back, like a solitary rowerWhose prow that debonair the waves did rideIs suddenly hurled back by an iron tide.O sadness, sadness, feel the returning painOf touch with unescapable mortal things again!The cloth is linen, the floor is wood,My plate holds cheese, my tumbler toddy;I cannot get free of the body,And no man ever could.
*****
Self! do not lose your hold on life,Nor coward seek to shrink the strifeOf body and spirit; even now(Not for the first time), even nowClear in your ears has rung the messageThat tense abstraction is the passageTo nervelessness and living death.Never forget while you draw breathThat all the hammers of will can neverYour chainèd soul from matter sever;And though it be confused and mixed,This is the world in which you're fixed.Never despise the things that are.Set your teeth upon the grit.Though your heart like a motor beat,Hold fast this earthly star,The whole of it, the whole of it.
Look on this crowd now, calm now, look.Remember now that each one drewWoman's milk (which you partook)And year by year in wonder grew.Scorn not them, nor scorn not their feasts(Which you partake) nor call them beasts.These be children of one PowerWith you, nor higher you nor lower.They also hear the harp and fiddle,And sometimes quail before the riddle.They also have hot blood, quick thought,And try to do the things they ought,They also have hearts that ache when stung.And sigh for days when they were young,And curse their wills because they falter,And know that they will never alter.See these men in a world of men.Material bodies?—yes, what then?These coarse trunks that here you seeJudge them not, lest judged you be,Bow not to the moment's curse,Nor make four walls a universe.Think of these bodies here assembled,Whence they have come, where they have trembledWith the strange force that fills us all.Men and beasts both great and small.Here within this fleeting homeTwo hundred men have this day come;Here collected for one day,Each shall go his separate way.Self, you can imagine noughtOf all the battles they have fought,All the labours they have done,All the journeys they have run.O, they have come from all the world,Borne by invisible currents, swirledLike leaves into this vortex hereFlying, or like the spirits drearWindborne and frail, whom Dante saw,Who yet obeyed some hidden law.
*****
Is it not miraculousThat they should here be gathered thus,All to be spread before your view,Who are strange to them as they to you?Soul, how can you sustain without a sob,The lightest thought of this titanic throbOf earthly life, that swells and breaksInto leaping scattering waves of fire,Into tameless tempests of effort and storms of desireThat eternally makesThe confused glittering armies of humankind,To their own heroism blind,Swarm over the earth to build, to dig, and to till,To mould and compel land and sea to their will...Whence we are here eating...Standing here as on a high hill,Strain, my imagination, strain forth to embraceThe energies that labour for this place,This place, this instant. Beyond your island's verge,Listen, and hear the roaring impulsive surge,The clamour of voices, the blasting of powder, the clanging of steel,The thunder of hammers, the rattle of oars...For this one mealTen thousand Indian hamlets stored their yields,Manchurian peasants sweltered in their fields,And Greeks drove carts to Patras, and lone menSaw burning summer come and go againAnd huddled from the winds of winter onThe fertile deserts of Saskatchewan.To fabricate these things have been marchings and slaughters,The sun has toiled and the moon has moved the waters,Cities have laboured, and crowded plains, and deep in the earthMen have plunged unafraid with ardour to wrench the worthOf sweating dim-lit caverns, and paths have been hewnThrough forests where for uncounted years nor sun nor moonHave penetrated, men have driven straight shining railsThrough the dense bowels of mountains, and climbed their frozen tops,and wrinkled sailors have shouted at shouting galesIn the huge Pacific, and battled around the HornAnd gasping, coasted to Rio, and turning towards the morn,Fought over the wastes to Spain, and battered and worn,Sailed up the Channel, and on into the NoreTo the city of masts and the smoky familiar shore.
So, so of every substance you see aroundMight a tale be unwoundOf perils passed, of adventurous journeys madeIn man's undying and stupendous crusade.This flower of man's energies TradeBrought hither to hand and lipBy waggon, train or ship,Each atom that we eat....Stare at the wine, stare at the meat.The mutton which these platters fillsGrazed upon a thousand hills;This bread so square and white and dryOnce was corn that sang to the sky;And all these spruce, obedient winesFlowed from the vatted fruit of vinesThat trailed, a bright maternal host,The warm Mediterranean coast,Or spread their Bacchic mantle onThat Iberian HeliconWhere the slopes of PortugalCrown the Atlantic's eastern wall.
O mighty energy, never-failing flame!O patient toils and journeys in the nameOf Trade! No journey ever was the sameAs another, nor ever came again one task;And each man's face is an ever-changing mask.From the minutest cell to the lordliest starAll things are unique, though all of their kindred are.And though all things exist for ever, all life is change,And the oldest passions come to each heart in a garment strange.Though life be as brief as a flower and the body but dust,Man walks the earth holding both body and spirit in trust;And the various glories of sense are spread for his delight,New pageants glow in the sunset, new stars are born in the night,And clouds come every day, and never a shape recurs,And the grass grows every year, yet never the same blade stirsAnother spring, and no delving man breaks again the self-same clodAs he did last year though he stand once more where last year he trod.O wonderful procession fore-ordained by God!Wonderful in unity, wonderful in diversity.Contemplate it, soul, and seeHow the material universe moves and strives with anguish and glee!
*****
I was born for that reason,With muscles, heart and eyes,To watch each following season,To work and to be wise;Not body and mind to tetherTo unseen things alone,But to traverse togetherThe known and the unknown.My muscles were not weldedTo waste away in sleep,My bones were never buildedTo throw upon a heap."Man worships God in action,"Senses and reason call,"And thought is putrefaction,If thought is all in all!"
Most of the guests are gone; look over there,Against a pillar leans with absent airA tall, dark, pallid waiter. There he standsLimply, with vacant eyes and listless hands.He dreams of some small Tyrolean town,A church, a bridge, a stream that rushes down.A frustrate, hankering man, this one short timeUnconscious he into my gaze did climb;He sinks again, again he is but oneOf many myriads underneath the sun,Now faint, now vivid.... How puzzling is it all!For now again, in spite of all,The lights, the chairs, the diners, and the hallLose their opacity.Fool! exert your will,Finish your whisky up, and pay your bill.
When I see truth, do I seek truthOnly that I may things denote,And, rich by striving, deck my youthAs with a vain unusual coat?
Or seek I truth for other ends:That she in other hearts may stir,That even my most familiar friendsMay turn from me to look on her?
So I this day myself was asking;Out of the window skies were blueAnd Thames was in the sunlight basking;My thoughts coiled inwards like a screw.
I watched them anxious for a while;Then quietly, as I did watch,Spread in my soul a sudden smile:I knew that no firm thing they'd catch.
And I remembered if I leaptUpon the bosom of the windIt would sustain me; question slept;I felt that I had almost sinned.
Now am I a tin whistleThrough which God blows,And I wish to God I were a trumpet—But why, God only knows.
I and myself swore enmity. Alack,Myself has tied my hands behind my back.Yielding, I know there's no excuse in them—I was accomplice to the stratagem.