Poor Soul, poor Soul! why must you sit alone
Under the magic of the earth and air;
When spells are in the leaf in in the stone,
And greater music than the brain can bear?
Shuddering lest he come and yearning yet,
You dream and wait and dream: quick as a blast
The Wonder takes you captive in the net,
The Glory of the Mountain clips you fast.
Smiling, he gives you peace because you ask it,
Token of his handfasting, cruelly,
Pleasure enveloped in a lockless casket,
Perpetual hunger digged by memory.
Thrilled with divine communications, pale,
With no more root in earth, you homeward creep;
And every night you watche without avail,
And all men take your waking day for sleep.
Flown with a dark evangel, break your wings
Like giddy birds against a window-pane:
" There is no meaning in the word he sings.
" Most surely moonstruck. Let him sing in vain. "
Come these of Godhead blabbed in ears profane —
Madness and mockery, servitude and death?
Impart the revelation or contain:
These are the wages of the rarer breath!
Fairer than all, but not as others fair
She mated much with solitude, and drew
Light veils of melancholy round her hair,
Wind-films dissembling ocean-deeps from view.
Far from the City, on the mountain side
She steeped in drowsy noon her thirsting sense
And thinking, thinking, watched the high sun ride
A metal heaven, in anguished indolence.
A million crickets' fiddling cracked the brakes;
She heard the lizard whisper through the thyme,
Murmuring sounds the full-drawn silence makes
Possessed her like an unforgotten rhyme.
But all within was droughty emptiness;
Her thought ran, dull and drugged, a tasteless road;
And all the things she knew and loved grew less:
The deep earth dross for one unquarried lode.
When lo! beneath the plodding march of thought
Sudden abysses dropt: her eyes were dark:
Vast expectation tingled out of naught;
Her eyes saw strange like eyes half waking, Hark!
A sudden hush of crickets told The God!
Ray-white he came: the scarlet blossom, slow
Redressed her bruised plumes, grateful to be trod.
Around the immortal temples seemed to grow
A little wind where every wind was laid.
O strung for crowns of juvenal address,
Male in the brow, but in the eyes a maid,
Lord of the arena, breathing loveliness!
What says the orient sun to the opening rose?
How greets the frankincense the altar fire?
As urgent seas behind a vessel close,
The aching hollows of the heart's desire
Regorged with satisfaction. Full and fresh
As lilies in a midnight rain she lay:
Little delights went arrowy through her flesh
Like minnows in a stream on longest day.
The hours burned faster than a fire of straw:
Only the balanced eagle in ample rings
Scaling the towered air on Ida, saw
Apollo and the child of Phrygian Kings.
Shimmering through the amethystine air —
As when a Seagod with an earthquake's-flaw
Cracks the sheeted sapphire calms that spare
To wake a holy Eastern isle — she saw
Phoebus depart. Late in the sunset-smoke
She stole through Troy, to wonder all night long
And meet the morn with wonder; never spoke
But strained for echoes of elusive song.
The silly days were sheets of lead to robe her;
Too strong for silence but too weak for speech,
To teasing sisters' questions put to probe her
Few words she said but miracles in each.
Was it a taunt from one of those who trod
The rustling lady-chambers, made the treason?
Or willy-nilly she confest the God
Shedding her secret like the rose in season? —
Wrung from her as the notes of Memnon's harp
Which winds unasked along the desert roll?
Or did set lips fall open at the sharp
Razor of thoughts unuttered, near the soul?
Did ever tiny grain of treason breed
Such monstrous shades as choked Cassandra's head?
Forsaken, unforgetting, doomed to read
Behind the golden veil the texts of dread,
She saw tall Troy couch down into the fire,
Royal women along the ruined street
Haled by the hair, because the World's-Desire
Must jangle Europe and Asia at her feet.
Night after night she sucked the cup of dreams,
Day after day they mocked her " Mind thy wool, "
Forewept her tears on the unregarded theme,
Till lo! 'twas time; the cup of act was full.
Foam on the mouth, glazed eyes, a death in life:
What epilepsies shake this wench of ours?
Doubt withers at the glance of Paris' wife
Set safe within the curtain-crown of towers.
So, deep in the intervital hollows, deep,
Amid the treasure-house of seeds in thrall
Rises the starry Stature, softly fall
The feet of Christ along the floors of Sleep.
A silent Presence felt in the darkness, heard
Above the secular silence, in the curl'd
Root-riddled alleys moist of the underworld:
And all the looms of herb and tree are stirred.
Meekly towards the courts of light they crave.
Wreak, bitter wind, thy rapine overhead:
Pastime of opiate music for the dead
Whose ears are touched to seize the opening grave!
Under the magic of the earth and air;
When spells are in the leaf in in the stone,
And greater music than the brain can bear?
Shuddering lest he come and yearning yet,
You dream and wait and dream: quick as a blast
The Wonder takes you captive in the net,
The Glory of the Mountain clips you fast.
Smiling, he gives you peace because you ask it,
Token of his handfasting, cruelly,
Pleasure enveloped in a lockless casket,
Perpetual hunger digged by memory.
Thrilled with divine communications, pale,
With no more root in earth, you homeward creep;
And every night you watche without avail,
And all men take your waking day for sleep.
Flown with a dark evangel, break your wings
Like giddy birds against a window-pane:
" There is no meaning in the word he sings.
" Most surely moonstruck. Let him sing in vain. "
Come these of Godhead blabbed in ears profane —
Madness and mockery, servitude and death?
Impart the revelation or contain:
These are the wages of the rarer breath!
Fairer than all, but not as others fair
She mated much with solitude, and drew
Light veils of melancholy round her hair,
Wind-films dissembling ocean-deeps from view.
Far from the City, on the mountain side
She steeped in drowsy noon her thirsting sense
And thinking, thinking, watched the high sun ride
A metal heaven, in anguished indolence.
A million crickets' fiddling cracked the brakes;
She heard the lizard whisper through the thyme,
Murmuring sounds the full-drawn silence makes
Possessed her like an unforgotten rhyme.
But all within was droughty emptiness;
Her thought ran, dull and drugged, a tasteless road;
And all the things she knew and loved grew less:
The deep earth dross for one unquarried lode.
When lo! beneath the plodding march of thought
Sudden abysses dropt: her eyes were dark:
Vast expectation tingled out of naught;
Her eyes saw strange like eyes half waking, Hark!
A sudden hush of crickets told The God!
Ray-white he came: the scarlet blossom, slow
Redressed her bruised plumes, grateful to be trod.
Around the immortal temples seemed to grow
A little wind where every wind was laid.
O strung for crowns of juvenal address,
Male in the brow, but in the eyes a maid,
Lord of the arena, breathing loveliness!
What says the orient sun to the opening rose?
How greets the frankincense the altar fire?
As urgent seas behind a vessel close,
The aching hollows of the heart's desire
Regorged with satisfaction. Full and fresh
As lilies in a midnight rain she lay:
Little delights went arrowy through her flesh
Like minnows in a stream on longest day.
The hours burned faster than a fire of straw:
Only the balanced eagle in ample rings
Scaling the towered air on Ida, saw
Apollo and the child of Phrygian Kings.
Shimmering through the amethystine air —
As when a Seagod with an earthquake's-flaw
Cracks the sheeted sapphire calms that spare
To wake a holy Eastern isle — she saw
Phoebus depart. Late in the sunset-smoke
She stole through Troy, to wonder all night long
And meet the morn with wonder; never spoke
But strained for echoes of elusive song.
The silly days were sheets of lead to robe her;
Too strong for silence but too weak for speech,
To teasing sisters' questions put to probe her
Few words she said but miracles in each.
Was it a taunt from one of those who trod
The rustling lady-chambers, made the treason?
Or willy-nilly she confest the God
Shedding her secret like the rose in season? —
Wrung from her as the notes of Memnon's harp
Which winds unasked along the desert roll?
Or did set lips fall open at the sharp
Razor of thoughts unuttered, near the soul?
Did ever tiny grain of treason breed
Such monstrous shades as choked Cassandra's head?
Forsaken, unforgetting, doomed to read
Behind the golden veil the texts of dread,
She saw tall Troy couch down into the fire,
Royal women along the ruined street
Haled by the hair, because the World's-Desire
Must jangle Europe and Asia at her feet.
Night after night she sucked the cup of dreams,
Day after day they mocked her " Mind thy wool, "
Forewept her tears on the unregarded theme,
Till lo! 'twas time; the cup of act was full.
Foam on the mouth, glazed eyes, a death in life:
What epilepsies shake this wench of ours?
Doubt withers at the glance of Paris' wife
Set safe within the curtain-crown of towers.
So, deep in the intervital hollows, deep,
Amid the treasure-house of seeds in thrall
Rises the starry Stature, softly fall
The feet of Christ along the floors of Sleep.
A silent Presence felt in the darkness, heard
Above the secular silence, in the curl'd
Root-riddled alleys moist of the underworld:
And all the looms of herb and tree are stirred.
Meekly towards the courts of light they crave.
Wreak, bitter wind, thy rapine overhead:
Pastime of opiate music for the dead
Whose ears are touched to seize the opening grave!