Classic Poem

ECSTATIC O DE

Low stooped the oaks, like eagles
With feathers of green glass.
I saw the coloured sunset
Out of the flowers pass:
The heavenly mask was blushed with colour:
Greyness possessed the grass.

I saw intoxicant Vision
Galloping like a hare
In a fine linear frenzy:
I saw vast beauties there
Curvet on feathered toe;
Thin fell the light, and rare.

What wild fury filled that hare!
His blazing eye! Electric fur!
The fearful flashing of his paws!
The patting of his sparkling claws!
— Lo, the immortal shadow in me,
That pale incubus the Soul,
Faints and fades, and I am free:
Saved are my five senses whole.
Got when God with Matter wenched,
Nothing deep in Thing entrenched,
Now stripped of his material vest
See the phantom dispossessed:
Whipt with cords of smell and heat,
Lashed with blows of sound and weight,
Before the drumming of those feet,
Before those eyes of flashing light,
Scourged with the scorpions of sight
Flees the viewless parasite.

That fearful hare
With fur of bright glass,
With his bare leaping,
His steps of fine brass,
His hinder feet thudding
And mewing like a bell
By his almighty movement
Possesses World as well:
Sound and Colour sing together
Witness to the shapely earth:
The caterpillar with the weather
Shares his mad, ecstatic mirth:
Running water to the hour
Sings his tones: and every flower
Flies from tree to tree.
Now I have Vision, now I see
The sloping of material Shape:
The curving air: the dagger-thrust
Of light, its million-way riposte:
The spraying fountains of the wind
That sparkle veils of musk behind:
The solid hills, their brilliant faces
Spread like nets on living Graces:
Tilted plains; the sky's leaning:
Bellied clouds' abrupt careening:
Trees that like spindles rise to sight
Wound in threads of knotted light:
Flowers drowned in suffused blue
That their delicate bodies show through.

I saw the World's arches,
The spreading roots of light,
The high wordy pillars
That hold all upright,
The deep verbal fundament
Whereon rests sure
The world on thoughtful vaulting,
Interlocked, secure.

And I saw Vision
Grow suddenly still,
So that nothing was moving,
Had moved or ever will:
I saw the limbs of Vision
Outstretched in Form, where
Intoxicant Vision lay couchant,
Motionless as a hare.

The sunset fades; night falls anon;
The stunted oaks put darkness on
And plovers whistle. Once again
I am mere bodied spirit, fain
To muse on shapeless mysteries;
To shut my eyes on trees.