Classic Poem

I AM the tortured god who lies in hell
Imagining mankind. Before I fell
Down to this purposeless unholy place,
To sink in mortification and disgrace,
On the great height of the wheeling world elate
I dwelt, a god sublimely fortunate.
The invisible spirit for ever passing on,
Turning the world with thoroughfare unknown
Of flying power, such golden mood on me
Poured, that divine delight of fantasy
Went forth of me creating loveliness
Of life about me, mortal images
Of a god's blissful mind, rejoicing throngs
Enchanting me as may its own sweet songs
The heart of music. Even so now in hell
My tortured mind lives indestructible
Imagining mankind, the busy insane
Detested dream wherein my helpless pain
Beholds itself. For now the slow world's weight,
Eternally disturbed in circular fate,
To depths that like malignant waters drown.
The joyful use of being, has borne me down;
And still I must create, and make my night
Of darkness and dishonor quick and alight
With spectacle of life, the swarming fire
Of a god's imagination, a god's desire
Blazing forth in impotent mutiny.
Thus in perpetual vision I must see
Man's life enact itself: that life accurst
Which knows the best and must achieve the worst
Creature and symbol of my anguish here!
He thinks of beauty and freedom, and there appear
His towns, his factories, his furnaces,
His squalidly elaborate wretchedness.
With power to shape his fate I see him stand;
He who can out of ancient stone command
Metals and secret forces, and make these
His marvellous intelligent slaveries,
Gleaming obedient demons, exquisite skill
And thundering strength, as sensitive to his will
As his own joints to thrilling of his nerves;
He whom the very nature of things serves,
Man who has made Machines, he is my dream
Of the power I have lost — my impotent dream,
Man who has made himself a misery
With his Machines, and still the more must be,
The more his power, the idiot of his fate:
And hating my dream of man, myself I hate.

But this is not my master: stifled here,
Even my own self-hatred I can bear,
Nay, for myself have still insatiable
Desire, knowing there burns within me still
The sleepless virtue of the mind divine
That feeds on all event and makes it mine,
The manner of my life; and can abide
Even in agony strangely satisfied.
And I am not to end in hell:
It has been before, in the world's change,
That tides of darkness over me fell,
To make remember'd heaven as strange
As to the waters buried deep
In bitter darkness of the sea,
Their fresh delighted springs must be
That down the sunny hills would leap.
And it has been that at the last
The night of waters past:
For still the changing world went round,
Out of the depth where I lay vile and drowned
Lifting me on high again
To shine above forgotten pain.
Then in a smooth and sapphire floor,
Firm beneath my feet and bright,
The perilous waters of existence bore
Courteously the journeying of my restored delight.
Out of that favorable sea
Arose like an enchanted land
The fortune that awaited me,
In noble heights where I might stand
Surveying my prosperity.
Thence a delicious welcome came
From forests that, in fragrant flame
Of scarlet blossoming, hung between
Pinnacled splendour of carven snow
And ocean luminous below
With purple depth and shallows green.
Forth for my feet in curving bays
The beaches spread their golden ground,
Inviting me up to grassy ways
And meadows of pleasant summer beyond:
And I ran over the light of the sea,
And took the world prepared for me
Sauntering inland as I went,
In floods of flowers I must wade,
Held in many a sweet delay
To hear the birds such joy invent,
Or note the whispering shiver made
In spinneys of willow silver-grey,
Their delicate bright leaves answering
The stirring airs like flying away
Of sunlit smoke. But I must climb
Above the warm bewitching leas,
Above the droning of the bees
And silvery crickets' throbbing ring;
Above the slopes of vetch and thyme,
Past broom and birches shadowing
Green mountain water in fall and pool
Where musing air dwelt moist and cool;
Towards where from out dark fell of pin
Towering peaks raised sharp and fine
Their gleaming speculation high:
And with my rocks I stood to share
The heavenly space of light and air;
And once again in lonely glee,
Soared out of joy's perplexity
The pure immortal ecstasy,
Perfection of the god in me.
I knew my radiance of joy
Like flame that knows the light it makes:
My joy was round me in winds and seas
Shone over earth in grass and trees,
And ran in rivers; with fiery flakes
Of infinite joy I starred the night;
And in high clouds my joy was white,
And stately joy beneath them stood
Mountainous in great attitude:
Everywhere colour and shape and sound
Of joy divinely mine, my own,
I knew encompassing me round.
But in the midst of this,
Distinct in singular central bliss,
I to myself was known,
The maker of joy, the flame within:
My soul erect and burning keen
In supreme spire of consciousness
Uttering its own marvellous place,
The world that round about it glowed,
As a flame in light makes its abode.
Then was I in that ecstasy
Such music of intelligence,
That uncontainable beauty thence
Went out in power ranging free;
And sang itself forth circling sweet and clear
To shape, like mastery of sound in air,
Life in my world — energies numberless
Formed in one perfect chime of happiness.

This was: and what has been, will be again.
The god that has no power but in vain
To dream of power: himself a hated thing,
Bound down to hate in turn the posturing
Procession of his creatures round about
His darkness — that old story of long drawn out
Pretentious blundering in a mystery,
The life of man: this very god is he
Whose bliss its own excess shall contemplate
In the image of beautiful life it must create,
And thereby crown himself once more sublimely fortunate.