Classic Poem

I

The storm dies ...
Clouds,
Their black anger spent,
Soften into creamy gauze, and float apart, and heaven
Bathed, breaks blue ...

West
The low sun pours fire
Through a white well,
East
A rainbow
Trembles ...

Round us the Earth
Laughs rainily ...
The wet garden sparkles,
The wet robin sings ...

The hard rain flailed
Fragrance from grass and dust and mint and rose
And the air
Is perfume ...

We drink,
As if the body were a mouth,

The seen world of brilliant hills
Sunned and rainbowed,
The tasted world, fresh, cool, and odorous,
The heard world of wind-dapple, bird-song, human voices ...
And the felt world
Of heavenly peace.

The rainbow arches
From soul to soul,
Our dark clouds whiten,
Floating like reveries of song,
Blue of heaven breaks
Through the heart's fire ...
Together we laugh low,
At peace.

II

Here is peace ...
But that black storm,
That whirlwind storm,
Thunders through the human world,
Stripping the forest of a generation
Of blossoms and young leaves ...

Millions,
Upgazing,
Wait for the divine arch whereunder
Armies shall march with evening song
Of heavenly peace,
And the perfumed winds
Blow off the sulphurous vapours
And the sky's blue
Break through the battle-smoke ...

They wait, dying;
And it comes too late
For the world's youth,
And it comes never
For doomed humanity ...

For this is a storm
Which has raged since the dawn of time,
This is a storm
Between the demons and gods in the human soul,
This is a storm
Under every roof of man,
And in every body of flesh ...

But this generation
Has gathered each soul's tempest into one black heaven
Of rolling lightning-riven storm,
And the deep horror of humanity
Is nakedly revealed
In one great Doomsday ...

III

Shall peace be peace?
It shall not be
Save along the path of the ascension,
The path no eyes have seen,
No feet have felt ...

Above man lies peace,
Among the evening hills
Where the late robin
Sings in the sparkling garden,
Where the rainbow
Trembles in the east,
Where the sinking sun
Pours splendour through a well of cloud ...

Above man
And his unregenerate desires,
His power-hunger, primal lust,
Above man
In a world which the race inhabits with hills and animals,
With sun and storm,
A world vaster
Than cities and empires,
A world where the gods
Envelop and transcend the marketplace,
A world whose prizes
Are not fame or power or wealth,
But that blest harmony
Which pays itself ...

Among those hills ascended
The spirit stands alone, and says, " I am, "
And to God, " Thou art, "
And to Nature, " Thou, too, art, "
And to man, " Thou art,
But what thou seekest, I seek not,
In this ascension. "

When man overcomes man
Then peace dawns,
The storm dies ...
And in the west
The low sun pours fire
Through a white well,
And in the east
A rainbow
Trembles ...