WIND SONG

Believe not Sorrow, her who bringsConfession of the folded wings,But seek you, burning, some frail birthThat sings.It is her spirit beating through.Handful of earth,It may be breath to you!

Horn of the morning!And the little night pipings fail.The day is launched like a hollow shipWith the sun for a sail.The way is wide and blue and loneWith all the miles inviolate,Save for the swinging stars they’ve sownAnd a thistle of cloud remote and blown.O I passion for something nearer than these!How shall I know that this live thing is IWith only the morning for proof and the sky?I long for a music more dear to its keys,For a touch that shall teach me the new sureties,Give me some griefs and some loyaltiesAnd a child’s mouth on my own....Lullaby,Babe of the world, swing high,Swing low.I am a mother you never may know,But oh,And oh, how long the wind will know you,With lullaby for the dead night through.Babe of the earth, as I blow....Swing high,To touch at the sky,And at last lie low.Lullaby....

Lullaby,Babe of the world, swing high,Swing low.I am a mother you never may know,But oh,And oh, how long the wind will know you,With lullaby for the dead night through.Babe of the earth, as I blow....Swing high,To touch at the sky,And at last lie low.Lullaby....

When all the leaves of Spring turn goldAnd the wind has no song,To whom then does the changeling greenBelong?And who on what far waveless shoreHarps as Spring wind shall harp no moreIn Winter’s beat and roll?O You, who such forgotten beauties hold,Find some faint loveliness unseenAnd save it in a soul.

To-day an odour lay upon the airAnd did not fall from any mortal flower.Deep they won their way within the hourWho laid that odour there.A perfume as of all that cannot giveA perfume—ivory and ore,Colour and cloud and pearl and marl; and storeOf the wild aroma of cave and hive.It was an inner perfume filteringFrom other level than the great Midgard;From a far and sphery home full-friendlier starredWhere marvels lift light wing.By fragrance, fire and music do we proveThe tender contact of a lovelier day,And these fair guarantors gently outrayFrom their far home—these three and also love.

To-day an odour lay upon the airAnd did not fall from any mortal flower.Deep they won their way within the hourWho laid that odour there.

A perfume as of all that cannot giveA perfume—ivory and ore,Colour and cloud and pearl and marl; and storeOf the wild aroma of cave and hive.

It was an inner perfume filteringFrom other level than the great Midgard;From a far and sphery home full-friendlier starredWhere marvels lift light wing.

By fragrance, fire and music do we proveThe tender contact of a lovelier day,And these fair guarantors gently outrayFrom their far home—these three and also love.

Beloved, it is daybreak on the hills.Dark glimmers and goes out in cloudy light.Faint on the marge of night the watchet dawnLifts like a lily from a quiet water.And that within me which is consonantIs at its door to meet God’s infinite.O Love, what banner shall we lift? And whatTimbrel and incense bear? How shall we greetGod’s day, his hills, his fire, and join their beauty?Voices reply that are no voice but breath:“Like beauty be thou nothing save his vesture.”

O Love, what banner shall we lift? And whatTimbrel and incense bear? How shall we greetGod’s day, his hills, his fire, and join their beauty?Voices reply that are no voice but breath:“Like beauty be thou nothing save his vesture.”

O you not only worshipful but dearNow have I learned not merely majestyBut gentleness and friendlihood to beYour way of drawing near.And late, upon a blue and yellow day,Wandering alone along a hill of SpringI caught another tender summoning,As if you were the comrad of my play.How strange that I have looked so lone and farWhen it is you, Great Love, who lonely are.How I have sought you in your cosmic leisureWhen you are eager in my childish pleasure.Why there is no dim doctrine to believe!Only to feel this touching at my sleeve.

O you not only worshipful but dearNow have I learned not merely majestyBut gentleness and friendlihood to beYour way of drawing near.

And late, upon a blue and yellow day,Wandering alone along a hill of SpringI caught another tender summoning,As if you were the comrad of my play.

How strange that I have looked so lone and farWhen it is you, Great Love, who lonely are.How I have sought you in your cosmic leisureWhen you are eager in my childish pleasure.

Why there is no dim doctrine to believe!Only to feel this touching at my sleeve.

Who is this that is so near?Not a face and not a voice.But a sense of someone here,Or of something not ourselves.At no altar, from no ark——Is it He? O wonderfulIn the day and in the darkTo behold Him by no eyes.Is it They? Ask us not who.As trees know when creatures pass,We may know when Those look throughFrom another kind of day.He and They within our sense.As we hope of bird or root:“Lo, it has intelligence!”Hidden ones may hope of us.

Who is this that is so near?Not a face and not a voice.But a sense of someone here,Or of something not ourselves.

At no altar, from no ark——Is it He? O wonderfulIn the day and in the darkTo behold Him by no eyes.

Is it They? Ask us not who.As trees know when creatures pass,We may know when Those look throughFrom another kind of day.

He and They within our sense.As we hope of bird or root:“Lo, it has intelligence!”Hidden ones may hope of us.

Brilliant and lone she satUpon eternal heightAnd veiled her face about.She was in fear of sin,She was in fear of deadly night,I saw her eyes peer out.I saw her eyes peer outAnd knew she was divine,But oh, her stedfast, dreadful gazeAnd her importunate doubt.She did not make me word or signOr turn away her face.She did not make word or sign,But as she watched me errHer eyes grew cold like the dark starAnd her body ceased to shine.I could not breathe for the breath of herWas frost of Winter and fire of war.Her body ceased to shine.I dare not let her die.I opened my heart to the sunAnd I breathed her breath for mine.Behold, that Inmost One was I,And I was the inmost one.I opened my heart to the sun.O colour and line, and birthOf wonder and word and light!Through love and her I have wonThe earth within the earthAnd the sight that is more than sight.O colour and line and birth,Birth of an order new,Of a life that is more than my own ...Birth that is your birth ...Birth in me of youO God, brilliant and lone!

Brilliant and lone she satUpon eternal heightAnd veiled her face about.She was in fear of sin,She was in fear of deadly night,I saw her eyes peer out.

I saw her eyes peer outAnd knew she was divine,But oh, her stedfast, dreadful gazeAnd her importunate doubt.She did not make me word or signOr turn away her face.

She did not make word or sign,But as she watched me errHer eyes grew cold like the dark starAnd her body ceased to shine.I could not breathe for the breath of herWas frost of Winter and fire of war.

Her body ceased to shine.I dare not let her die.I opened my heart to the sunAnd I breathed her breath for mine.Behold, that Inmost One was I,And I was the inmost one.

I opened my heart to the sun.O colour and line, and birthOf wonder and word and light!Through love and her I have wonThe earth within the earthAnd the sight that is more than sight.

O colour and line and birth,Birth of an order new,Of a life that is more than my own ...Birth that is your birth ...Birth in me of youO God, brilliant and lone!

Let me not see thee, Lord God of my essential life, where thou art not.Let me not look upon colour and pray to thee believing thee to be colour.Let me not go in silence or in dream and dream thee to be that silence.With the failing of the light let me not thrill at the intricate touch of that spiritWho films light to shadow, and kneel believing ecstasy to be prayer.From my dreams, from the siren singing and the imperious call,From the blinding joy and the august mystery of simple beautyWilt not thou, compassionate, O deliver me, faint for beauty.God! If I were praying to be delivered from thee ...

God! If I were praying to be delivered from thee ...

We do not touch the texture of the light.But one may see with a secret eyeThe things that are.Then we divine that we need not dieTo win our heritage of sight.As well this earth as any other star.Waking from dream there trails an alien air,A residue of other suns than these;We know that we have walked an inner way,Have met familiars thereAnd kept our step in exquisite concordThe while we spoke some unremembered word.And over all there layLight whose vibrations ran to other keysThan those we woke upon. Light whose long playWas dappled colour delicately kissed.Strange fires rayed from strange regions of the Lord.Light from the sun behind the sun fell whereWe went to keep our tryst.In sleep and in the solitary dusk there comeFine lines of light upon the lowered lids,A flush that lets us in the heart of nightAnd hints dear wonders to be there at home;As if the universal fabric bidsIts human pattern know that all is light.In snowHave we not seen the whiteness smitten throughWith sudden rays of glory, vague with veils,Of some beloved hue that palesTo earthly rose and violet and blue?Oh youWho pulse within that light—we know, we know!SoonFrom without transition nightWe would come into this, our own.Then the dim tuneThe which we almost hear,The low-keyed colour and the wordWe have not heard,All these we shall be shown,And infinitely nearTo God, breathe for our breath his light.

We do not touch the texture of the light.But one may see with a secret eyeThe things that are.Then we divine that we need not dieTo win our heritage of sight.As well this earth as any other star.

Waking from dream there trails an alien air,A residue of other suns than these;We know that we have walked an inner way,Have met familiars thereAnd kept our step in exquisite concordThe while we spoke some unremembered word.And over all there layLight whose vibrations ran to other keysThan those we woke upon. Light whose long playWas dappled colour delicately kissed.Strange fires rayed from strange regions of the Lord.Light from the sun behind the sun fell whereWe went to keep our tryst.

In sleep and in the solitary dusk there comeFine lines of light upon the lowered lids,A flush that lets us in the heart of nightAnd hints dear wonders to be there at home;As if the universal fabric bidsIts human pattern know that all is light.In snowHave we not seen the whiteness smitten throughWith sudden rays of glory, vague with veils,Of some beloved hue that palesTo earthly rose and violet and blue?Oh youWho pulse within that light—we know, we know!

SoonFrom without transition nightWe would come into this, our own.Then the dim tuneThe which we almost hear,The low-keyed colour and the wordWe have not heard,All these we shall be shown,And infinitely nearTo God, breathe for our breath his light.

I close my eyes and on the nightA face looks in at me.It speaks a word like burning light,I answer joyfully.It dims away. The word is sped.I know not what we two have said.The old dark sparkles like a star.And when shall we be touched with sightTo find the things that are?

I close my eyes and on the nightA face looks in at me.It speaks a word like burning light,I answer joyfully.It dims away. The word is sped.I know not what we two have said.

The old dark sparkles like a star.And when shall we be touched with sightTo find the things that are?

I am glad of the straight lines of the rain;Of the free blowing curves of the grain;Of the perilous swirling and curling of fire;The sharp upthrust of a spire;Of the ripples on the riverWhere the patterns curl and quiverAnd sun thrills;Of the innumerable undulations of the hills.But the true line is drawn from my spirit to some infinite outward place ...That line I cannot trace.

In June the road to Kilbourn is a long green hall,A corridor of leafage pillared whiteBy birches and with wild-rose patterns on the wall,And all melodious with the fluid fallOr lift of red-winged blackbirds fluting mating cries.The very airIs visible, not by the light,Not by the shades that driftAnd dip, but by an essence rhythmic with the floodThat flowsNot in the sap, not in the blood,But otherwhere.And of that essence growsAll men see in the air of Paradise.He lay upon a little upland slopeDeep, deep with grass.And when I saw his head above the greenWhere I must pass,The battered hat, the squinting eyesBlinking the westering sun, I felt a sting of fear——Alas, that in June’s delicate demesneA watching human face can teach one fear.So then I spoke to him, gave him good day,And seeing his gun said what I always sayMeeting a huntsman: “Friend, I hopeYou have killed nothing here.”He stared and grinned. And with his grinI felt his trustiness. So whenHe scrambled down the bank and followed me,I waited for him as my kind and kin.He was a thing of seventeen. And menCompounded in his blood had set him hereWizened and hump-backed. But his little faceHeld something of the one he was to beIn some eternity.He talked as freely as a child. He’d shot, he said,At a young wood-chuck. Now his gun was broke,And it’d cost a dollar and a halfTo mend it. Then I spokeAbout a little kerchief made of laceLost on the road that day. He turned his head.“Did it have money in it, Lady?”—with quick graceCaught from some knightlier place.And when I asked him what he readHe tried to rise to all my speech awoke.“A person give me a book a while ago.Oh, I donnoThe name—the cover’s off. I got, I guess,Two pages done. Time the stock’s fedI get so sleepy I jump into bed.”—And with this, for defence, a rueful laugh.I named the town not two miles distant. No,He hardly ever went there. Motion picture show?His eyes lit. Several times he’d been.War pictures was the best. He liked to kill?He hung his head. “No, but I never willShoot pups or kittens when they want me to.War’s different.” School? He’d seenFour years of that—well, four years, more or less.Dad needed him—dad had so much to do.So then I faced him and his need to live.I put it plain: “But you?What do you want to do?”His answer lay within him, ready made.He met my eyes with all he had to give.“I’d like,” he said, “to learn the artist trade.”Questioned, he told me bit by little bit.He’d had a horse that died—he’d painted her.He’d painted Tige, the dog. The pigeon house.The fence that crossed the slough. The willow tree.Would he let me see?Oh, well—they wasn’t much. He couldn’t stir——The paint right, and he didn’t have enough.All that he’d done was rough.I tried to spell his dream,—to see if his face litAt flame of it.He only said: “Mebbe I couldn’t learn.”And his eyes did not burn.(“Perhaps,” I thought, “there’s nothing here at all.”)“Dad’s going to have me paint the house,” he said.I questioned where he led.“Yellow and brown,” he answered. And my fancy’s fallHe must have fathomed in my face for a slow redMounted and swept his cheek. His eyes sought mine,His look was piteous with a kind of light.“I don’t like that. They picked it out,” he said. “I wanted white.”And all his tone was shame.The craftsman wounded in his craftsman’s rightIn ways he could not name.He took the cross-road. Where I saw him goWild fever-few made narrow paths of snowThrough the flat fields of dying afternoon.Bravely in tuneWith every little part as with some wholeA red wing answered to an orioleAnd met a cat bird’s call.The sun! The sun! The road to Kilbourn like a long green hall!The very air a spirit like our ownSo nearly shownThat one could almost see.The veil so thin that presence was outrayed.But all the great blue day came facing me,And crying from the vault and from the sod:“Oh God, oh God.‘I’d like,’ he said, ‘to learn the artist trade!’”

He was a thing of seventeen. And menCompounded in his blood had set him hereWizened and hump-backed. But his little faceHeld something of the one he was to beIn some eternity.He talked as freely as a child. He’d shot, he said,At a young wood-chuck. Now his gun was broke,And it’d cost a dollar and a halfTo mend it. Then I spokeAbout a little kerchief made of laceLost on the road that day. He turned his head.“Did it have money in it, Lady?”—with quick graceCaught from some knightlier place.And when I asked him what he readHe tried to rise to all my speech awoke.“A person give me a book a while ago.Oh, I donnoThe name—the cover’s off. I got, I guess,Two pages done. Time the stock’s fedI get so sleepy I jump into bed.”—And with this, for defence, a rueful laugh.I named the town not two miles distant. No,He hardly ever went there. Motion picture show?His eyes lit. Several times he’d been.War pictures was the best. He liked to kill?He hung his head. “No, but I never willShoot pups or kittens when they want me to.War’s different.” School? He’d seenFour years of that—well, four years, more or less.Dad needed him—dad had so much to do.

So then I faced him and his need to live.I put it plain: “But you?What do you want to do?”His answer lay within him, ready made.He met my eyes with all he had to give.“I’d like,” he said, “to learn the artist trade.”

Questioned, he told me bit by little bit.He’d had a horse that died—he’d painted her.He’d painted Tige, the dog. The pigeon house.The fence that crossed the slough. The willow tree.Would he let me see?Oh, well—they wasn’t much. He couldn’t stir——The paint right, and he didn’t have enough.All that he’d done was rough.I tried to spell his dream,—to see if his face litAt flame of it.He only said: “Mebbe I couldn’t learn.”And his eyes did not burn.(“Perhaps,” I thought, “there’s nothing here at all.”)“Dad’s going to have me paint the house,” he said.I questioned where he led.“Yellow and brown,” he answered. And my fancy’s fallHe must have fathomed in my face for a slow redMounted and swept his cheek. His eyes sought mine,His look was piteous with a kind of light.“I don’t like that. They picked it out,” he said. “I wanted white.”And all his tone was shame.The craftsman wounded in his craftsman’s rightIn ways he could not name.

He took the cross-road. Where I saw him goWild fever-few made narrow paths of snowThrough the flat fields of dying afternoon.Bravely in tuneWith every little part as with some wholeA red wing answered to an orioleAnd met a cat bird’s call.The sun! The sun! The road to Kilbourn like a long green hall!The very air a spirit like our ownSo nearly shownThat one could almost see.The veil so thin that presence was outrayed.

But all the great blue day came facing me,And crying from the vault and from the sod:“Oh God, oh God.‘I’d like,’ he said, ‘to learn the artist trade!’”

One night on some light errand I sat besideThe cooking-stove in Johann’s sitting-room.Within there was the cheer of lamp and fire,The stove-draught yawning red and wide,The table with its rosy cotton spread,A blue chair-cover from a home-land loom,A baby’s bed.And in that odour of cleanliness and foodJohann, the labourer worthy of his hireFor seven days a week, twelve hours a dayAt some vague toil “down in the yard.”“Hard?What o’ that? Look at the luck I’ve got to keep the placeAnd draw my pay.”He had been strongAnd still his body kept its ruggedness.Yet he was old and stiffened and he movedAs one who is wrapped round in something thick.But O, his face,His face was like the faces that look outFrom bark and hole of trees all marred and grooved,All laid aboutWith old varieties of silence and of wrong.Such faces are locked longIn men, in stones, in wood, in earth,Awaiting birth.And Johann’s face was lessExpectant than the happy dead awaiting to become the quick.His wife said much about how hard she tried.She chattered high and shrillAbout the burden and the eating ill.His mother, little, thin, half-blind and cross,With scarlet flannel round her throat,Put in her note,Muttered about the cold, the draught, her side——Small ineffectual chants of little loss,With never a wordOf the great gossip which she had not heard:That life had passed her by.The little room beset me like the dinAnd prick of scourges. AllAt once I looked upon the spattered wallAnd saw a violin.A hallVast, bright and breathing.In the upper airA chord, a flower of tone, a quiet wreathingAlong the lift and fallOf some clear current in the bloodNow delicately understood,Till all the hearing ones belowAre whereThe voices call.O now they knowWhat music is. It is that which they areThemselves. Infinite bells,Of silence in a little sheath. Deep wellsOf being in a little cup. Star upon starVeiled save one reaching ray.And see! The people turnAnd for a breath they lookOut into one another’s eyesAnd shine and burnWise, wise,With ultimate knowledge of the goodThat seeks one whole.And howEternity beginsAnd ever is beginning nowA thousand hearts learn from the violins.“My back ain’t right. My head ain’t right. I’m almost dead.Fill the hot water bag. I’m goin’ to bed....”“Ten pairs of socks I’ve darned to-night. I tryTo do the best I can....”I put the women by.“Johann,” I said, “you play?” He shook his head.“I lost it, loggin’——” he held up a stump of thumb.“I took six lessons once,” he said.I sat there, dumb.From out the inner place of music there had comeLong long ago,Some viewless one to tell him how to knowWhat waits upon the pageTo beat the rhythm of the world. He heard; and triedTo stumble toward the door graciously wideFor other feet than his.“I took six lessons once,” he said with pride.ThisWas all we gave him of his heritage.

His wife said much about how hard she tried.She chattered high and shrillAbout the burden and the eating ill.His mother, little, thin, half-blind and cross,With scarlet flannel round her throat,Put in her note,Muttered about the cold, the draught, her side——Small ineffectual chants of little loss,With never a wordOf the great gossip which she had not heard:That life had passed her by.The little room beset me like the dinAnd prick of scourges. AllAt once I looked upon the spattered wallAnd saw a violin.

A hallVast, bright and breathing.In the upper airA chord, a flower of tone, a quiet wreathingAlong the lift and fallOf some clear current in the bloodNow delicately understood,Till all the hearing ones belowAre whereThe voices call.O now they knowWhat music is. It is that which they areThemselves. Infinite bells,Of silence in a little sheath. Deep wellsOf being in a little cup. Star upon starVeiled save one reaching ray.And see! The people turnAnd for a breath they lookOut into one another’s eyesAnd shine and burnWise, wise,With ultimate knowledge of the goodThat seeks one whole.And howEternity beginsAnd ever is beginning nowA thousand hearts learn from the violins.

“My back ain’t right. My head ain’t right. I’m almost dead.Fill the hot water bag. I’m goin’ to bed....”“Ten pairs of socks I’ve darned to-night. I tryTo do the best I can....”I put the women by.“Johann,” I said, “you play?” He shook his head.“I lost it, loggin’——” he held up a stump of thumb.“I took six lessons once,” he said.I sat there, dumb.

From out the inner place of music there had comeLong long ago,Some viewless one to tell him how to knowWhat waits upon the pageTo beat the rhythm of the world. He heard; and triedTo stumble toward the door graciously wideFor other feet than his.“I took six lessons once,” he said with pride.ThisWas all we gave him of his heritage.

His boy had stolen some money from a boothAt the County Fair. I found the father in his kitchen.For years he had driven a dray and the heavy liftingHad worn him down. So through his eveningsHe slept by the kitchen stove as I found him.The mother was crying and ironing.I thought about the mother,For she brought me a photographTaken at a street fair on her wedding day.She was so trim and white and he so neat and alertIn the picture with their friends about them——I saw that she wanted me to know their dignity from the first.But afterward I thought more about the father.For as he came with me to the door I could not forbearTo say how bright and near the stars seemed.Then he leaned and peered from beneath his low roof,And he said:“There used to be a star called the Nord Star.”

In anger, in irritation, in argument, what happens to you and me?Something fine weaving us round is torn open.Something fine permeating us is drawn from the veins.Presences waiting to understand us retreat to a farther ante-room of us.Little cells are incommunicably sealed.All this happened to me and some strange progress was halted until something in me could be repaired.The whole race halted with me.The light of the remotest star, do you imagine that it did not know?Innumerable influences ceased to pour upon us all.And it was because someone left the attic window open and it had rained on an old bureau.

All this happened to me and some strange progress was halted until something in me could be repaired.The whole race halted with me.The light of the remotest star, do you imagine that it did not know?Innumerable influences ceased to pour upon us all.And it was because someone left the attic window open and it had rained on an old bureau.

I went from Fifth avenue into the Plaza on a sunny Winter morning.There on a little stage it was Spring. A shepherdess walked.Beside a stream girls were tying garlands. A harp was touched.The shepherdess and her lovers danced a minuet on the bright emerald of that shining field.Down by Brooklyn Bridge——Now this sharp contrast will shock you, but we must not interrupt the minuet——I know a place down by Brooklyn Bridge where a woman(Young, once pretty, still with tender eyes)Carries water up five flights of stairs to do washing.I watched the minuet and I thought about that woman.Did God create two worlds?Or has man made a world? And can man see that his world is good?

Down by Brooklyn Bridge——Now this sharp contrast will shock you, but we must not interrupt the minuet——I know a place down by Brooklyn Bridge where a woman(Young, once pretty, still with tender eyes)Carries water up five flights of stairs to do washing.

I watched the minuet and I thought about that woman.Did God create two worlds?Or has man made a world? And can man see that his world is good?

I laid the blue dishes on the table.The dining room was still and sunny.Zinnias were in a brown basket,The grape-fruit plant was glossy in a window.Skilful fingers had wrought the border of the curtain.My grand-mother’s blue pitcher was on the sideboard.There were chestnut leaves in the brown rug.Barometer and thermometer recorded miracle on the rose wall.Dark wood paneled and beamed us in together.As I worked these exquisite patient familiar things let me within.They let me look with their eyes, feel with their beating pulses of hurrying molecules.I perceived how locomotion and consciousness and self-consciousness have advanced us.By what means shall we go forward now?Does anyone wonder at my slow patience as I wonder at the slow patience of these exquisite and familiar things?

As I worked these exquisite patient familiar things let me within.They let me look with their eyes, feel with their beating pulses of hurrying molecules.I perceived how locomotion and consciousness and self-consciousness have advanced us.By what means shall we go forward now?Does anyone wonder at my slow patience as I wonder at the slow patience of these exquisite and familiar things?

Do you ever go into your room and find familiar things unfamiliar.Muslin curtains thinned by moonlight,Open window, candle, mirror, expectant chairs,Long smooth waiting bed—do they not bear another aspectAs if you had divined them doing their duty,As if to be inanimate clearly involved a process,As if they were surprised at their creeping task of going back to earth, rising in plants, quickening into beings.That is the great work of those patient things.That is why they look so intent.So with all your preoccupation in dressing for to-dayYour object is the same as that of these humble ones.Only you have reached a paradise where you can hasten your way.But these others are yet in purgatory.

On that day of wild joyous windI filled my being with warm hurrying air.The pouring sun was in my heart like water in a well.I ran in the pulsing tonic currents.And all the time, melodious in my mind,There beat and strove the measure of a tune.Then for a breath I understood: Glory without and flame within,They passioned to belong to each other.I—I was the interruption.From that time I gave my body to be a harp:Wind of the world without, breath of the soul within,I will try to let you interflow.August Presences, at least, at least may I not hinder you.

From that time I gave my body to be a harp:Wind of the world without, breath of the soul within,I will try to let you interflow.August Presences, at least, at least may I not hinder you.

Only once have I been sure that a rose answered me.Always the reticence of roses was the aloofness of the peakA rose would never admit me, speak to me,Listen to me, reply to me, do other than suffer me.But one day after our barbarous fashion I lifted a rose to my face.Suddenly, thrillingly, the rose replied. It, too, touched at me.We had something to exchange.What am I to do that this shall be true of every flower,Every animal, every stone, every manufactured article,Every created object—yes, even every person of the world?

I heard her at the telephone.“Do come early,” she was saying, “while the light lasts.The dog-wood is in blossom, the mountains are wonderful.It is,” she said, “too heavenly. Do come, while the light lasts....”Outside on the veranda I could see the light,I could see the dog-wood in bloom and a mountainAnd more!What else there was I am trying to tell:Not colour for I am no artist. Not glamour for I am not in love;Not any more magic than I am accustomed to;Not presence I think—though perhaps after all it was presence.But something else was there, exquisite, insistent.When she came back I looked up to see if it met her.But she only said: “It is too heavenly.I hope they will come while the light lasts.”I knew that she did not see what I saw.But what did I see....

Can the world have been created for you and me to do all that fills our days:Care of a house, lawn, shop, billion dollar business?These are not enough for us.Can the world have been created for the nations to do all that fills their days:Trading, peacefully penetrating, warring,Or when the mood changes, motoring down one another’s roads, decorating one another, bowing at one another’s courts?These are not enough for the nations.What is the world for?Once in an apple orchard at mid-dayI had a moment of second sight as I watched a child at play.She shone with light like a holy child. She was pure.She was growing. She was nothing, nothing but love.She was all that we might be, we and the nations.She was all that we shall be.Come, let us face it!

What is the world for?

Once in an apple orchard at mid-dayI had a moment of second sight as I watched a child at play.She shone with light like a holy child. She was pure.She was growing. She was nothing, nothing but love.She was all that we might be, we and the nations.She was all that we shall be.Come, let us face it!

Go and wait somewhere. Take no book, no paper, no solitaire or needle task.Nay but forbid yourself also that you reckon the profit or plan a feastOr discern dust on the lamp;That you consider to whom to sell or what to wear.Go and wait somewhere, with forgotten muscles.Now does something wait with you, glad and welcoming that you are free to turn to it?Then you have bread that you know not of and it is brought to you.Or do you merely sit with an hundred fibres in you pressing to be gone?Then you are in danger of starvation.By this means we may almost know what we are.

Now does something wait with you, glad and welcoming that you are free to turn to it?Then you have bread that you know not of and it is brought to you.Or do you merely sit with an hundred fibres in you pressing to be gone?Then you are in danger of starvation.By this means we may almost know what we are.

At the edge of consciousness is a little door.What goes by?Now a wing of brightness, of colour, of something out there that I love more than I am accustomed to loving.Now fares by a delicate shadow, patterned, fleet, that I long to know more than I am accustomed to knowing.There must be so much more to love and to know than the little loves and the little knowledge.Then someone knocks at my door.Thou!The wing of brightness, the delicate shadow were but the sign.What am I to do?I will find my way to the edge of my consciousness,I will gain the door, I will have my freedom,I will love and know and be all being.Thou art the liberator. Why it is true....“Behold, I stand at the door and knock.”

Then someone knocks at my door.Thou!The wing of brightness, the delicate shadow were but the sign.What am I to do?I will find my way to the edge of my consciousness,I will gain the door, I will have my freedom,I will love and know and be all being.Thou art the liberator. Why it is true....“Behold, I stand at the door and knock.”

Three times that day came the sense of levitation.As if court-house walk, walnut shadow, a length of sunny lawn let her go by with no tribute of her touch.It seemed as if the wonderful would happen.She waited, prepared for the vision.The day flowered, ripened, mellowed, fell upon night.No presence opened or signaled.Then she went to embosom that which the hours had left her.She faced her day, and her day gathered itself as a living thing with a voice and deep eyes.It said, I was wonderful.Yet the only thing to happen that day had been this:Old Edgerton Bascom came to the porch, selling buttons.She bought from him, picked her dahlias for his wife.He went away, comforted, restored to self-respect by her purchase.Perhaps when levitation comes it will be a matter of this kindRather than of calculation and reckoning.

Yet the only thing to happen that day had been this:Old Edgerton Bascom came to the porch, selling buttons.She bought from him, picked her dahlias for his wife.He went away, comforted, restored to self-respect by her purchase.Perhaps when levitation comes it will be a matter of this kindRather than of calculation and reckoning.

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