THE DAWN

When have I last looked onThe round green eyes and the long wavering bodiesOf the dark leopards of the moon?All the wild witches those most noble ladies,For all their broom-sticks and their tears,Their angry tears, are gone.The holy centaurs of the hills are banished;And I have nothing but harsh sun;Heroic mother moon has vanished,And now that I have come to fifty yearsI must endure the timid sun.

I would be ignorant as the dawnThat has looked downOn that old queen measuring a townWith the pin of a brooch,Or on the withered men that sawFrom their pedantic BabylonThe careless planets in their courses,The stars fade out where the moon comes,And took their tablets and did sums;I would be ignorant as the dawnThat merely stood, rocking the glittering coachAbove the cloudy shoulders of the horses;I would be—for no knowledge is worth a straw—Ignorant and wanton as the dawn.

May God be praised for womanThat gives up all her mind,A man may find in no manA friendship of her kindThat covers all he has broughtAs with her flesh and bone,Nor quarrels with a thoughtBecause it is not her own.Though pedantry deniesIt's plain the Bible meansThat Solomon grew wiseWhile talking with his queens.Yet never could, althoughThey say he counted grass,Count all the praises dueWhen Sheba was his lass,When she the iron wrought, orWhen from the smithy fireIt shuddered in the water:Harshness of their desireThat made them stretch and yawn,Pleasure that comes with sleep,Shudder that made them one.What else He give or keepGod grant me—no, not here,For I am not so boldTo hope a thing so dearNow I am growing old,But when if the tale's trueThe Pestle of the moonThat pounds up all anewBrings me to birth again—To find what once I hadAnd know what once I have known,Until I am driven mad,Sleep driven from my bed,By tenderness and care,Pity, an aching head,Gnashing of teeth, despair;And all because of some onePerverse creature of chance,And live like SolomonThat Sheba led a dance.

Though pedantry deniesIt's plain the Bible meansThat Solomon grew wiseWhile talking with his queens.Yet never could, althoughThey say he counted grass,Count all the praises dueWhen Sheba was his lass,When she the iron wrought, orWhen from the smithy fireIt shuddered in the water:Harshness of their desireThat made them stretch and yawn,Pleasure that comes with sleep,Shudder that made them one.What else He give or keepGod grant me—no, not here,For I am not so boldTo hope a thing so dearNow I am growing old,But when if the tale's trueThe Pestle of the moonThat pounds up all anewBrings me to birth again—To find what once I hadAnd know what once I have known,Until I am driven mad,Sleep driven from my bed,By tenderness and care,Pity, an aching head,Gnashing of teeth, despair;And all because of some onePerverse creature of chance,And live like SolomonThat Sheba led a dance.

Although I can see him still,The freckled man who goesTo a grey place on a hillIn grey Connemara clothesAt dawn to cast his flies,It's long since I beganTo call up to the eyesThis wise and simple man.All day I'd looked in the faceWhat I had hoped 'twould beTo write for my own raceAnd the reality;The living men that I hate,The dead man that I loved,The craven man in his seat,The insolent unreproved,And no knave brought to bookWho has won a drunken cheer,The witty man and his jokeAimed at the commonest ear,The clever man who criesThe catch-cries of the clown,The beating down of the wiseAnd great Art beaten down.Maybe a twelvemonth sinceSuddenly I began,In scorn of this audience,Imagining a manAnd his sun-freckled face,And grey Connemara cloth,Climbing up to a placeWhere stone is dark under froth,And the down turn of his wristWhen the flies drop in the stream:A man who does not exist,A man who is but a dream;And cried, 'Before I am oldI shall have written him onePoem maybe as coldAnd passionate as the dawn.'

Maybe a twelvemonth sinceSuddenly I began,In scorn of this audience,Imagining a manAnd his sun-freckled face,And grey Connemara cloth,Climbing up to a placeWhere stone is dark under froth,And the down turn of his wristWhen the flies drop in the stream:A man who does not exist,A man who is but a dream;And cried, 'Before I am oldI shall have written him onePoem maybe as coldAnd passionate as the dawn.'

'Call down the hawk from the air;Let him be hooded or cagedTill the yellow eye has grown mild,For larder and spit are bare,The old cook enraged,The scullion gone wild.''I will not be clapped in a hood,Nor a cage, nor alight upon wrist,Now I have learnt to be proudHovering over the woodIn the broken mistOr tumbling cloud.''What tumbling cloud did you cleave,Yellow-eyed hawk of the mind,Last evening? that I, who had satDumbfounded before a knave,Should give to my friendA pretence of wit.'

'Call down the hawk from the air;Let him be hooded or cagedTill the yellow eye has grown mild,For larder and spit are bare,The old cook enraged,The scullion gone wild.'

'I will not be clapped in a hood,Nor a cage, nor alight upon wrist,Now I have learnt to be proudHovering over the woodIn the broken mistOr tumbling cloud.'

'What tumbling cloud did you cleave,Yellow-eyed hawk of the mind,Last evening? that I, who had satDumbfounded before a knave,Should give to my friendA pretence of wit.'

One had a lovely face,And two or three had charm,But charm and face were in vainBecause the mountain grassCannot but keep the formWhere the mountain hare has lain.

She is foremost of those that I would hear praised.I have gone about the house, gone up and downAs a man does who has published a new bookOr a young girl dressed out in her new gown,And though I have turned the talk by hook or crookUntil her praise should be the uppermost theme,A woman spoke of some new tale she had read,A man confusedly in a half dreamAs though some other name ran in his head.She is foremost of those that I would hear praised.I will talk no more of books or the long warBut walk by the dry thorn until I have foundSome beggar sheltering from the wind, and thereManage the talk until her name come round.If there be rags enough he will know her nameAnd be well pleased remembering it, for in the old days,Though she had young men's praise and old men's blame,Among the poor both old and young gave her praise.

'What have I earned for all that work,' I said,'For all that I have done at my own charge?The daily spite of this unmannerly town,Where who has served the most is most defamed,The reputation of his lifetime lostBetween the night and morning. I might have lived,And you know well how great the longing has been,Where every day my footfall should have litIn the green shadow of Ferrara wall;Or climbed among the images of the past—The unperturbed and courtly images—Evening and morning, the steep street of UrbinoTo where the duchess and her people talkedThe stately midnight through until they stoodIn their great window looking at the dawn;I might have had no friend that could not mixCourtesy and passion into one like thoseThat saw the wicks grow yellow in the dawn;I might have used the one substantial rightMy trade allows: chosen my company,And chosen what scenery had pleased me best.'Thereon my phoenix answered in reproof,'The drunkards, pilferers of public funds,All the dishonest crowd I had driven away,When my luck changed and they dared meet my face,Crawled from obscurity, and set upon meThose I had served and some that I had fed;Yet never have I, now nor any time,Complained of the people.'All I could replyWas: 'You, that have not lived in thought but deed,Can have the purity of a natural force,But I, whose virtues are the definitionsOf the analytic mind, can neither closeThe eye of the mind nor keep my tongue from speech.'And yet, because my heart leaped at her words,I was abashed, and now they come to mindAfter nine years, I sink my head abashed.

All I could replyWas: 'You, that have not lived in thought but deed,Can have the purity of a natural force,But I, whose virtues are the definitionsOf the analytic mind, can neither closeThe eye of the mind nor keep my tongue from speech.'And yet, because my heart leaped at her words,I was abashed, and now they come to mindAfter nine years, I sink my head abashed.

There is a queen in China, or maybe it's in Spain,And birthdays and holidays such praises can be heardOf her unblemished lineaments, a whiteness with no stain,That she might be that sprightly girl who was trodden by a bird;And there's a score of duchesses, surpassing womankind,Or who have found a painter to make them so for payAnd smooth out stain and blemish with the elegance of his mind:I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day.The young men every night applaud their Gaby's laughing eye,And Ruth St. Denis had more charm although she had poor luck,From nineteen hundred nine or ten, Pavlova's had the cry,And there's a player in the States who gathers up her cloakAnd flings herself out of the room when Juliet would be brideWith all a woman's passion, a child's imperious way,And there are—but no matter if there are scores beside:I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day.There's Margaret and Marjorie and Dorothy and Nan,A Daphne and a Mary who live in privacy;One's had her fill of lovers, another's had but one,Another boasts, 'I pick and choose and have but two or three.'If head and limb have beauty and the instep's high and light,They can spread out what sail they please for all I have to say,Be but the breakers of men's hearts or engines of delight:I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day.There'll be that crowd to make men wild through all the centuries,And maybe there'll be some young belle walk out to make men wildWho is my beauty's equal, though that my heart denies,But not the exact likeness, the simplicity of a child,And that proud look as though she had gazed into the burning sun,And all the shapely body no tittle gone astray,I mourn for that most lonely thing; and yet God's will be done,I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day.

The young men every night applaud their Gaby's laughing eye,And Ruth St. Denis had more charm although she had poor luck,From nineteen hundred nine or ten, Pavlova's had the cry,And there's a player in the States who gathers up her cloakAnd flings herself out of the room when Juliet would be brideWith all a woman's passion, a child's imperious way,And there are—but no matter if there are scores beside:I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day.

There's Margaret and Marjorie and Dorothy and Nan,A Daphne and a Mary who live in privacy;One's had her fill of lovers, another's had but one,Another boasts, 'I pick and choose and have but two or three.'If head and limb have beauty and the instep's high and light,They can spread out what sail they please for all I have to say,Be but the breakers of men's hearts or engines of delight:I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day.

There'll be that crowd to make men wild through all the centuries,And maybe there'll be some young belle walk out to make men wildWho is my beauty's equal, though that my heart denies,But not the exact likeness, the simplicity of a child,And that proud look as though she had gazed into the burning sun,And all the shapely body no tittle gone astray,I mourn for that most lonely thing; and yet God's will be done,I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day.

She might, so noble from headTo great shapely knees,The long flowing line,Have walked to the altarThrough the holy imagesAt Pallas Athene's side,Or been fit spoil for a centaurDrunk with the unmixed wine.

There is grey in your hair.Young men no longer suddenly catch their breathWhen you are passing;But maybe some old gaffer mutters a blessingBecause it was your prayerRecovered him upon the bed of death.For your sole sake—that all heart's ache have known,And given to others all heart's ache,From meagre girlhood's putting onBurdensome beauty—for your sole sakeHeaven has put away the stroke of her doom,So great her portion in that peace you makeBy merely walking in a room.Your beauty can but leave among usVague memories, nothing but memories.A young man when the old men are done talkingWill say to an old man, 'Tell me of that ladyThe poet stubborn with his passion sang usWhen age might well have chilled his blood.'Vague memories, nothing but memories,But in the grave all, all, shall be renewed.The certainty that I shall see that ladyLeaning or standing or walkingIn the first loveliness of womanhood,And with the fervour of my youthful eyes,Has set me muttering like a fool.You are more beautiful than any oneAnd yet your body had a flaw:Your small hands were not beautiful,And I am afraid that you will runAnd paddle to the wristIn that mysterious, always brimming lakeWhere those that have obeyed the holy lawPaddle and are perfect; leave unchangedThe hands that I have kissedFor old sakes' sake.The last stroke of midnight dies.All day in the one chairFrom dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have rangedIn rambling talk with an image of air:Vague memories, nothing but memories.

Your beauty can but leave among usVague memories, nothing but memories.A young man when the old men are done talkingWill say to an old man, 'Tell me of that ladyThe poet stubborn with his passion sang usWhen age might well have chilled his blood.'

Vague memories, nothing but memories,But in the grave all, all, shall be renewed.The certainty that I shall see that ladyLeaning or standing or walkingIn the first loveliness of womanhood,And with the fervour of my youthful eyes,Has set me muttering like a fool.

You are more beautiful than any oneAnd yet your body had a flaw:Your small hands were not beautiful,And I am afraid that you will runAnd paddle to the wristIn that mysterious, always brimming lakeWhere those that have obeyed the holy lawPaddle and are perfect; leave unchangedThe hands that I have kissedFor old sakes' sake.

The last stroke of midnight dies.All day in the one chairFrom dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have rangedIn rambling talk with an image of air:Vague memories, nothing but memories.

Others because you did not keepThat deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;Yet always when I look death in the face,When I clamber to the heights of sleep,Or when I grow excited with wine,Suddenly I meet your face.

This night has been so strange that it seemedAs if the hair stood up on my head.From going-down of the sun I have dreamedThat women laughing, or timid or wild,In rustle of lace or silken stuff,Climbed up my creaking stair. They had readAll I had rhymed of that monstrous thingReturned and yet unrequited love.They stood in the door and stood betweenMy great wood lecturn and the fireTill I could hear their hearts beating:One is a harlot, and one a childThat never looked upon man with desire,And one it may be a queen.

Hands, do what you're bid;Bring the balloon of the mindThat bellies and drags in the windInto its narrow shed.

Come play with me;Why should you runThrough the shaking treeAs though I'd a gunTo strike you dead?When all I would doIs to scratch your headAnd let you go.

I think it better that in times like theseA poet keep his mouth shut, for in truthWe have no gift to set a statesman right;He has had enough of meddling who can pleaseA young girl in the indolence of her youth,Or an old man upon a winter's night.

Five-and-twenty years have goneSince old William PollexfenLaid his strong bones down in deathBy his wife ElizabethIn the grey stone tomb he made.And after twenty years they laidIn that tomb by him and her,His son George, the astrologer;And Masons drove from miles awayTo scatter the Acacia sprayUpon a melancholy manWho had ended where his breath began.Many a son and daughter liesFar from the customary skies,The Mall and Eades's grammar school,In London or in Liverpool;But where is laid the sailor John?That so many lands had known:Quiet lands or unquiet seasWhere the Indians trade or Japanese.He never found his rest ashore,Moping for one voyage more.Where have they laid the sailor John?And yesterday the youngest son,A humorous, unambitious man,Was buried near the astrologer;And are we now in the tenth year?Since he, who had been contented long,A nobody in a great throng,Decided he would journey home,Now that his fiftieth year had come,And 'Mr. Alfred' be againUpon the lips of common menWho carried in their memoryHis childhood and his family.At all these death-beds women heardA visionary white sea-birdLamenting that a man should die;And with that cry I have raised my cry.

And yesterday the youngest son,A humorous, unambitious man,Was buried near the astrologer;And are we now in the tenth year?Since he, who had been contented long,A nobody in a great throng,Decided he would journey home,Now that his fiftieth year had come,And 'Mr. Alfred' be againUpon the lips of common menWho carried in their memoryHis childhood and his family.At all these death-beds women heardA visionary white sea-birdLamenting that a man should die;And with that cry I have raised my cry.

With the old kindness, the old distinguished graceShe lies, her lovely piteous head amid dull red hairPropped upon pillows, rouge on the pallor of her face.She would not have us sad because she is lying there,And when she meets our gaze her eyes are laughter-lit,Her speech a wicked tale that we may vie with herMatching our broken-hearted wit against her wit,Thinking of saints and of Petronius Arbiter.

Bring where our Beauty liesA new modelled doll, or drawing,With a friend's or an enemy'sFeatures, or maybe showingHer features when a tressOf dull red hair was flowingOver some silken dressCut in the Turkish fashion,Or it may be like a boy's.We have given the world our passionWe have naught for death but toys.

Because to-day is some religious festivalThey had a priest say Mass, and even the Japanese,Heel up and weight on toe, must face the wall—Pedant in passion, learned in old courtesies,Vehement and witty she had seemed—; the Venetian ladyWho had seemed to glide to some intrigue in her red shoes,Her domino, her panniered skirt copied from Longhi;The meditative critic; all are on their toes,Even our Beauty with her Turkish trousers on.Because the priest must have like every dog his dayOr keep us all awake with baying at the moon,We and our dolls being but the world were best away.

She is playing like a childAnd penance is the play,Fantastical and wildBecause the end of dayShows her that some one soonWill come from the house, and say—Though play is but half-done—'Come in and leave the play.'—

She has not grown uncivilAs narrow natures wouldAnd called the pleasures evilHappier days thought good;She knows herself a womanNo red and white of a face,Or rank, raised from a commonUnreckonable race;And how should her heart fail herOr sickness break her willWith her dead brother's valourFor an example still.

When her soul flies to the predestined dancing-place(I have no speech but symbol, the pagan speech I madeAmid the dreams of youth) let her come face to face,While wondering still to be a shade, with Grania's shadeAll but the perils of the woodland flight forgotThat made her Dermuid dear, and some old cardinalPacing with half-closed eyelids in a sunny spotWho had murmured of Giorgione at his latest breath—Aye and Achilles, Timor, Babar, Barhaim, allWho have lived in joy and laughed into the face of Death.

Pardon, great enemy,Without an angry thoughtWe've carried in our tree,And here and there have boughtTill all the boughs are gay,And she may look from the bedOn pretty things that mayPlease a fantastic head.Give her a little grace,What if a laughing eyeHave looked into your face—It is about to die.

Hic

On the grey sand beside the shallow streamUnder your old wind-beaten tower, where stillA lamp burns on beside the open bookThat Michael Robartes left, you walk in the moonAnd though you have passed the best of life still traceEnthralled by the unconquerable delusionMagical shapes.

Ille

By the help of an imageI call to my own opposite, summon allThat I have handled least, least looked upon.

Hic

And I would find myself and not an image.

Ille

That is our modern hope and by its lightWe have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mindAnd lost the old nonchalance of the hand;Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brushWe are but critics, or but half create,Timid, entangled, empty and abashedLacking the countenance of our friends.

Hic

And yetThe chief imagination of ChristendomDante Alighieri so utterly found himselfThat he has made that hollow face of hisMore plain to the mind's eye than any faceBut that of Christ.

Ille

And did he find himself,Or was the hunger that had made it hollowA hunger for the apple on the boughMost out of reach? and is that spectral imageThe man that Lapo and that Guido knew?I think he fashioned from his oppositeAn image that might have been a stony face,Staring upon a bedouin's horse-hair roofFrom doored and windowed cliff, or half upturnedAmong the coarse grass and the camel dung.He set his chisel to the hardest stone.Being mocked by Guido for his lecherous life,Derided and deriding, driven outTo climb that stair and eat that bitter bread,He found the unpersuadable justice, he foundThe most exalted lady loved by a man.

Hic

Yet surely there are men who have made their artOut of no tragic war, lovers of life,Impulsive men that look for happinessAnd sing when they have found it.

Ille

No, not sing,For those that love the world serve it in action,Grow rich, popular and full of influence,And should they paint or write still it is action:The struggle of the fly in marmalade.The rhetorician would deceive his neighbours,The sentimentalist himself; while artIs but a vision of reality.What portion in the world can the artist haveWho has awakened from the common dreamBut dissipation and despair?

Hic

And yetNo one denies to Keats love of the world;Remember his deliberate happiness.

Ille

His art is happy but who knows his mind?I see a schoolboy when I think of him,With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window,For certainly he sank into his graveHis senses and his heart unsatisfied,And made—being poor, ailing and ignorant,Shut out from all the luxury of the world,The coarse-bred son of a livery stable-keeper—Luxuriant song.

Hic

Why should you leave the lampBurning alone beside an open book,And trace these characters upon the sands;A style is found by sedentary toilAnd by the imitation of great masters.

Ille

Because I seek an image, not a book.Those men that in their writings are most wiseOwn nothing but their blind, stupefied hearts.I call to the mysterious one who yetShall walk the wet sands by the edge of the streamAnd look most like me, being indeed my double,And prove of all imaginable thingsThe most unlike, being my anti-self,And standing by these characters discloseAll that I seek; and whisper it as thoughHe were afraid the birds, who cry aloudTheir momentary cries before it is dawn,Would carry it away to blasphemous men.

God grant a blessing on this tower and cottageAnd on my heirs, if all remain unspoiled,No table, or chair or stool not simple enoughFor shepherd lads in Galilee; and grantThat I myself for portions of the yearMay handle nothing and set eyes on nothingBut what the great and passionate have usedThroughout so many varying centuries.We take it for the norm; yet should I dreamSinbad the sailor's brought a painted chest,Or image, from beyond the Loadstone MountainThat dream is a norm; and should some limb of the devilDestroy the view by cutting down an ashThat shades the road, or setting up a cottagePlanned in a government office, shorten his life,Manacle his soul upon the Red Sea bottom.

An old man cocked his ear upon a bridge;He and his friend, their faces to the South,Had trod the uneven road. Their boots were soiled,Their Connemara cloth worn out of shape;They had kept a steady pace as though their beds,Despite a dwindling and late risen moon,Were distant. An old man cocked his ear.

Aherne

What made that sound?

Robartes

A rat or water-henSplashed, or an otter slid into the stream.We are on the bridge; that shadow is the tower,And the light proves that he is reading still.He has found, after the manner of his kind,Mere images; chosen this place to live inBecause, it may be, of the candle lightFrom the far tower where Milton's platonistSat late, or Shelley's visionary prince:The lonely light that Samuel Palmer engraved,An image of mysterious wisdom won by toil;And now he seeks in book or manuscriptWhat he shall never find.

Aherne

Why should not youWho know it all ring at his door, and speakJust truth enough to show that his whole lifeWill scarcely find for him a broken crustOf all those truths that are your daily bread;And when you have spoken take the roads again?

Robartes

He wrote of me in that extravagant styleHe had learnt from Pater, and to round his taleSaid I was dead; and dead I chose to be.

Aherne

Sing me the changes of the moon once more;True song, though speech: 'mine author sung it me.'

Robartes

Twenty-and-eight the phases of the moon,The full and the moon's dark and all the crescents,Twenty-and-eight, and yet but six-and-twentyThe cradles that a man must needs be rocked in:For there's no human life at the full or the dark.From the first crescent to the half, the dreamBut summons to adventure and the manIs always happy like a bird or a beast;But while the moon is rounding towards the fullHe follows whatever whim's most difficultAmong whims not impossible, and though scarredAs with the cat-o'-nine-tails of the mind,His body moulded from within his bodyGrows comelier. Eleven pass, and thenAthenae takes Achilles by the hair,Hector is in the dust, Nietzsche is born,Because the heroes' crescent is the twelfth.And yet, twice born, twice buried, grow he must,Before the full moon, helpless as a worm.The thirteenth moon but sets the soul at warIn its own being, and when that war's begunThere is no muscle in the arm; and afterUnder the frenzy of the fourteenth moonThe soul begins to tremble into stillness,To die into the labyrinth of itself!

Aherne

Sing out the song; sing to the end, and singThe strange reward of all that discipline.

Robartes

All thought becomes an image and the soulBecomes a body: that body and that soulToo perfect at the full to lie in a cradle,Too lonely for the traffic of the world:Body and soul cast out and cast awayBeyond the visible world.

Aherne

All dreams of the soulEnd in a beautiful man's or woman's body.

Robartes

Have you not always known it?

Aherne

The song will have itThat those that we have loved got their long fingersFrom death, and wounds, or on Sinai's top,Or from some bloody whip in their own hands.They ran from cradle to cradle till at lastTheir beauty dropped out of the lonelinessOf body and soul.

Robartes

The lovers' heart knows that.

Aherne

It must be that the terror in their eyesIs memory or foreknowledge of the hourWhen all is fed with light and heaven is bare.

Robartes

When the moon's full those creatures of the fullAre met on the waste hills by country menWho shudder and hurry by: body and soulEstranged amid the strangeness of themselves,Caught up in contemplation, the mind's eyeFixed upon images that once were thought,For separate, perfect, and immovableImages can break the solitudeOf lovely, satisfied, indifferent eyes.

And thereupon with aged, high-pitched voiceAherne laughed, thinking of the man within,His sleepless candle and laborious pen.

Robartes

And after that the crumbling of the moon.The soul remembering its lonelinessShudders in many cradles; all is changed,It would be the World's servant, and as it serves,Choosing whatever task's most difficultAmong tasks not impossible, it takesUpon the body and upon the soulThe coarseness of the drudge.

Aherne

Before the fullIt sought itself and afterwards the world.

Robartes

Because you are forgotten, half out of life,And never wrote a book your thought is clear.Reformer, merchant, statesman, learned man,Dutiful husband, honest wife by turn,Cradle upon cradle, and all in flight and allDeformed because there is no deformityBut saves us from a dream.

Aherne

And what of thoseThat the last servile crescent has set free?

Robartes

Because all dark, like those that are all light,They are cast beyond the verge, and in a cloud,Crying to one another like the bats;And having no desire they cannot tellWhat's good or bad, or what it is to triumphAt the perfection of one's own obedience;And yet they speak what's blown into the mind;Deformed beyond deformity, unformed,Insipid as the dough before it is baked,They change their bodies at a word.

Aherne

And then?

Robartes

When all the dough has been so kneaded upThat it can take what form cook Nature fancyThe first thin crescent is wheeled round once more.

Aherne

But the escape; the song's not finished yet.

Robartes

Hunchback and saint and fool are the last crescents.The burning bow that once could shoot an arrowOut of the up and down, the wagon wheelOf beauty's cruelty and wisdom's chatter,Out of that raving tide is drawn betwixtDeformity of body and of mind.

Aherne

Were not our beds far off I'd ring the bell,Stand under the rough roof-timbers of the hallBeside the castle door, where all is starkAusterity, a place set out for wisdomThat he will never find; I'd play a part;He would never know me after all these yearsBut take me for some drunken country man;I'd stand and mutter there until he caught'Hunchback and saint and fool,' and that they cameUnder the three last crescents of the moon,And then I'd stagger out. He'd crack his witsDay after day, yet never find the meaning.And then he laughed to think that what seemed hardShould be so simple—a bat rose from the hazelsAnd circled round him with its squeaky cry,The light in the tower window was put out.

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