Classic Poem

That which once overbent the turn of chance,
So that it could be prophesied,
By knowledge of the behaviour of metals
And of the patience of a twisted coil,
When, newly, would the wiry course
Spring straight and the next unavoidable thing
Be at last permitted to happen—

Such means of idleness no more are ours.
We may no longer stand aside
And, extracting from the thread of event
A question-mark, gird actuality
With soft anticipation:
We may be slow no longer
To the awaiting stroke of circumstance.

We, and the time-reserved fulfilment
Of our given, taken, uneffected meaning,
Have, by the enigmatic path of time,
Come into knowledge with an innocence
That knits our minds to our occasions
Of a silent sudden—the befalling
And the thought of it together fall

And the heart-stir is the tremble of the scene
As an eye flutters with the bird watched.
Yet, who can help the glance, the thought aside,
Sometimes, when, the hour seeming shallow
Because its surface holds its depth,
Invention prowls like prey along its edge,
Tempting to be scooped in and mixed with the tale?

I even, to whom the law of instantness
And all-fraught present is a pulse of mind,
Have known myself, yesterday even,
To write—it may have been—a letter to a friend
By conjecture a friend, and to discuss,
In the distracted way of letters, likelihoods
Outside the provision of the complete to-day.

Or, learning of books lately arrived
At the discretion of print and a price
Of austere insignificance,
Perhaps a sign of chastened fancy,
Have relented, sat by the hearth of time
Reading and nodding assent and objection,
Shedding the clock-tear, and the door half-open.

Did refinger with slavish habit of hand
The last and last newspaper, throw my eyes
To the lionish landscape of advent,
Then snatch them from dayglare to nightglow as if—
All looking being now moon-mild,
Sunny astonishment abandoned
For the nimbler heed which exclaims not.

Or, when a neighbour's turkey flew the fence
Into my farther garden and the cats
Studied the weakness of the enemy
At battle-quiet, have paused to calculate
The omen in the omen,
Though well I knew the implements extinct—
What may the cats and turkeys of us augur

That we do not more newly now pronounce
From the eventual rostrum of ourselves?
It is a craven modesty, to greet
With old surprise the consequence unfurled.
This was a daring falter once
When, cheats of time, we choked hereafter back.
But now time wilts, prophecy cheats ourselves.