Classic Poem

Our Castle is East of the Sun,
And our Castle is West of the Moon,
So wisely hidden from all the wise
In a twist of the air, in a fold of the skies,
They go East, they go West, of the land where it lies
And a Fool finds it soon.

Our Castle is East of the Sun
And abides not the law of the sunlight,
The last long shot of Apollo
Falls spent ere it strike the tower
Far East of the steep, of the strong,
Going up of the golden horses,
Strange suns have governed our going,
Strange dials the day and the hour.
With hearts not fed of Demeter,
With thoughts unappeased of Athene,
We have groped through the earth's dead daylight
To a night that is more, not less:
We have seen his star in the East
That is dark as a cloud from the westward,
To the Roman a reek out of Asia,
To the Greeks, foolishness.

For the Sun is not lord but a servant
Of the secret sun we have seen:
The sun of the crypt and the cavern,
The crown of a secret queen:
Where things are not what they seem
But what they mean.

But our Castle is West of the Moon,
Nor the Moon hath lordship upon it,
The Horns and the horsemen crying
On their great ungraven God:
And West of the moons of magic
And the sleep of the moon-faced idols
And the great moon-coloured crystal
Where the Mages mutter and nod:
The black and the purple poppies
That grow in Gautama's garden
Have waved not ever upon us
The smell of their sweet despair:
And the yellow masks of the Ancients
Looking west from their tinkling temples
See Hope on our hill Mountjoy,
And the dawn and the dancers there.

For the Moon is not lord but a servant
Of the smile more bright than the Sun:
And all they desire and despair of
And weary of winning is won
In our Castle of Joyous Garde
Desired and done.

So abides it dim in the midmost
The Bridge called Both-and-Neither,
To the East a wind from the westward,
To the West a light from the East:
But the map is not made of man
That can plot out its place under heaven,
That is counted and lost and left over
The largest thing and the least.

For our Castle is East of the Sun,
And our Castle is West of the Moon,
And the dark labyrinthine charts of the wise
Point East and point West of the land where it lies,
And a Fool walks blind on the highway
And finds it soon.