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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/75422-0.txt b/75422-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..97312d5 --- /dev/null +++ b/75422-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1142 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75422 *** + + + + + + THE SIRENS + AN ODE + + + + +[Illustration: Decoration] + + MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED + LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA · MADRAS + MELBOURNE + + THE MACMILLAN COMPANY + NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO + DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO + + THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. + TORONTO + + + + + THE SIRENS + + AN ODE + + BY + + LAURENCE BINYON + + [Illustration: Decoration] + + MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED + ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON + 1925 + + + + + COPYRIGHT + + + PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN + + + + + TO + CICELY + + + + +NOTE + + +This poem was printed by hand by Richard and Elinor Lambert at the +Stanton Press and issued by them in 1924 in a limited edition. It has +been revised for the present edition. + + + + +PRELUDE + + + I remember a night of my youth, I remember a night + Soundless! + The earth and the sea were a shadow, but over me opened + Heaven into uttermost heaven, and height into height + Boundless + With stars, with stars, with stars. + I remember the dew on my face, I remember the mingled + Homely smell of grass and unearthly beauty + Out of the ends of the air and the unsealed darkness + Poured in a rain, in a river, + Into my marrow,—thro’ all the veins of delight + Poured into me. + O the divine solitude, the intoxicating silence! + I was a spirit unregioned, worthy of them; + I, even I, was a creature of infinite flight, + Born to be free. + In the midst of the worlds, as they moved, I moved with them all, + A sense and a joy; I was hidden, and yet they were nigh; + For they came to me as lovers, + Those stars from on high. + + Thus as my whole soul drank of the star-thrilled air, + I felt more than heard, like a whisper + Invading me out of immensity, hinted, haunting + Sound + Of waves, of waves, of waves. + And I felt in the blood of my flesh to the roots of my hair, + That it sought me, a mind in the muteness: + In the midst of the worlds I trembled, + I in the night a mortal + Found! + What was I? What was I? Nothing + But a Moment, aware + Of the ruins of Time! + Yet a memory of memories awaking, I marvelled from where, + Out of shadows unshapen within me, and dust under dust, + From burial of realms and of ages, and darkness astir + In the roots of the hungering forest, the ancientest lair, + Rose to claim + This my body, the sap of its veins and its secret to share; + To emerge with the star-watching eyes of the venturer, Man. + And my body was brimmed with its meaning; it knew whence it came, + For I was the word on Earth’s lips + That she needed to name. + + But tell me, I cried, O whispering, troubling waves, + Tell me, O journeying wildernesses of stars, + Why do you near me & choose me? Whither would you lure me, + The earth-child? + To be brimmed with desire overflowing the bounds of the world, + To be wingless & stretched on a longing that boundlessly craves, + Who has known not this, in the bloom of a midnight marvelling + Earth-exiled? + But thus to be sought from afar by phantom waves, + In the still of the night to be neared by stooping stars, + As if all immensity sought for a home in the mind + At its core, + This draws my dark being up from its secret caves, + And the flesh is no longer a home, nor can comforting Earth + Shelter me more. + I am known to the Unknown; chosen, charmed, endangered: + I flow to a music ocean-wild and starry, + And feel within me, for this mortality’s answer, + Sea without shore. + + + + +I. THE VICTORIES + + + Masters of the known and found + Singers of a world completed, + All to a time and end ordained, + Powers foredestined to their bound + And truth immutably contained, + A dominion mapped and meted,— + Like as in Egyptian noon + Gods of granite throned august + Gaze on old realms round them strewn + Far as the horizon dust,— + All beneath that searching sky + Gathered into wisdom’s eye! + Prophets of the found and known, + Chanters of the Laws unchanging, + Comes not an hour that undoes all + With a whispered homelessness, + With a sudden touch estranging? + Certainties you deemed your own, + Housing with a friendly wall, + Glide into a doubt and guess + Swift as when, the low light going, + Darkness on the wind comes flowing + Out of nothing; and surmise, + Dream, desire, are frontierless; + And the unroofed mind has skies + To breathe of, where a rumour sings + Of other mind and vaster things + Wooed to wilder destinies. + Thought throbs: there a power entices + (Like, on a wonder-night, all June + In a draught of stolen spices) + Not to stay, not to stay, + But to embark for the outer dark. + Only charms the untrodden way, + Only the unspelt secret rune. + + Conqueror with foot superb + Planted on the last step won, + Whom the trumpet-mouths proclaim + Destiny’s accepted son, + Robed in a resounding name, + What profounder pangs disturb + Something that’s unquarried yet + In the deep soul? All the gain + Weighs but as an ashy grain + In the world those pangs beget. + Fierce fruitions but betray + And deliver to the hard + Hope of things unhazarded. + Where that world is, who shall say? + Under western evening starred + Black waves tempt to far-away + Visioned walls of a wide shore, + Lands the only-coveted, + Gleaming as they gleamed before + Alexander’s dying eyes + In the tent at Babylon. + Dumb his soldiers streamed beside him, + Dumb’d with grief that only saw + The pillar of the world undone, + Nor guessed what potent visions gnaw + The unsated mind with cruelties,— + Ramparts where Time’s jealous spies, + Sentinelled afar, deride him, + Mocking all that passion willed + With the frustrate and the unfulfilled. + O the inexorable Lure + Spur to the demon hearts of men! + Ravening Genghis, hot Timour, + And the empire-storming Saracen, + Fate’s infuriate charioteers, + Fly from a whisper in their ears + (Earth before them, Time behind) + Whispering, ‘Haste, ere blood be chill, + Storm and scatter, work your will!’ + Hunters hunted in the mind, + Hunting what they cannot name, + Thunder over earth, to find + Nothing. Though the harvest black + Be reaped in rue and curse and wrong, + There’s a thing they cannot tame. + Still they keep their torrent-track, + Maddened by a shadowy song + Sung beyond the reach of sense. + What song is this which wastes the worth + Of human things, and distastes earth, + And fevers with magnificence + Of swiftness trampling, ruin-crowned, + Toward a goal that none has found? + Is it the song the Adventurer stole + Body-bound upon the mast + For the enchantment of his soul? + Over farthest foam of waves + That are sailors’ restless graves, + He heard exulting as he passed + Perilous voices challenging + The mortal heart of him, and fear + Became a glory, so to hear + Secure as an immortal, sing + The Sirens. + + +I. 2 + + Whither is she gone, wing’d by the evening airs, + Yon sail that draws the last of light afar, + On the sea-verge alone, despising other cares + Than her own errand and her guiding star? + She leaves the safe land, leaves the roofs, and the long roads + Travelling the hills to end for each at his own hearth. + She leaves the silence under slowly-darkening elms, + The friendly human voices, smell of dew and dust, + And generations of men asleep in the old earth. + Between two solitudes she glides and fades, + And round us falls the darkness she invades. + + Waters empty and outcast, O barren waters! + What have your wastes to do + With the earth-treader, the earth-tiller; this frail + Body of man; the sower, whom the green shoot gladdens; + Hewer of trees; the builder, who houses him from the bleak winds, + And whom awaits at last long peace beneath the grass + In soil his fathers knew? + What shall he hope for from your careless desolation, + Lion-indolence, or cold roar of your risen wrath? + What sows he in your furrows, or what fruit gathers + But hazard, loss, and his own hard courage?... + Yon sail goes like a spirit seeking you. + + I heard a trumpet from beyond the moon, + Piercing ice-blue gulfs of air, + Cry down the secret waters of the world, + Under the far sea-streams, to summon there + The foundered ships, the splendid ships, the lost ships. + In their ribb’d ruin and age-long sleep they heard, + Where each had found her shadowy burial-bed, + Clutched in blind reef, shoal-choked or shingle-bound; + Heard from betraying isles and capes of dread + In corners of all oceans, where the light + Gropes faltering over their spilt merchandize: + And shapes at last were stirred + On glimmerless abysses’ oozy floors + Known to the dark fins only and drowned eyes;— + Sunk out of memory, they that glided forth + Bound from cold rivers to the tropic shores, + Or questing up the white gloom of the North, + Or shattered in the glory of old wars, + The laden ships, the gallant ships, the lost ships! + + I saw them clouding up over the verge, + Ghosts that arose out of an unknown grave, + Strange to the buoyant seas that young they rode upon + And strange to the idle glitter of the wave. + Magically re-builded, rigged and manned, + They stole in their slow beauty toward the land. + Mariners, O mariners! + I heard a voice cry; Home, come home! + Here is the rain-fresh earth; leaf-changing seasons; here + Spring the flowers; and here, older than memory, peace + Tastes on the air sweet as honey in the honey-comb. + Smells not the hearth-smoke better than spices of India? + Are not children’s kisses dearer than ivory and pearls? + And sleep in the hill kinder than nameless water + And the cold, wandering foam? + Dear are the names of home, I heard a far voice answer, + Pleasant the tilled valley, the flocks and farms; and sweet + The hum in cities of men, and words of our own kin. + But we have tasted wild fruit, listened to strange music; + And all shores of the earth are but as doors of an inn; + We knocked at the doors, and slept; to arise at dawn and go. + We spilt blood for gold, trafficked in costly cargoes, + But knew in the end it was not these we sailed to win; + Only a wider sea; room for the winds to blow, + And a world to wander in. + + +I. 3 + + O divine summits and O unascended solitudes! + O alone soaring over care and stain! + Who without wing shall set foot upon your pinnacles? + Or who your spaciousness of light attain? + Flames in the dawn-cold, towering incredible, + When else the earth is shadow-drowned and prone, + Veiled and unveiled by the misty-footed winds that guard + Bright chasm and black gulf round a thunder-throne, + Realmed with a vision beyond reaches of mortality,— + Thither some splendour in the mind aspires, + Sharing the terror of your dark, tumultuous sisterhood, + Silent in glory as of chanting quires. + Changing and changeless, O far-illumined Presences + In apparition from some world august, + Up from this flesh have you drawn us, as in ecstasy + That thirsts to elude this forfeiture of dust. + Even on your last heights man has set his perilous foot, + And mid the void as on some dazzling shore + Stands in the vast air, stricken and insatiate, + Wingless, a spirit craving wings to soar. + + Now at last voyaging a fabulous dominion + Surpassing all the measures of his kind, + He, a free rider of the undulating silences, + Has in himself begotten a new mind; + Made him a companion of the winds of Heaven, travelling + Unpaven streets of cloudy golden snows, + Piercing forlorn mist, cold though it encompass him + Like a dead mind that nothing sees or knows, + Vacant, a cavern fleecy and immaterial, + A soundless vapour that he pulses through, + Suddenly emerging, and swims into the sun again + And steers his path up toward the topless blue;— + Towers in the frosty flame-apparelled mystery + Of brain-intoxicating sharp sapphire + Round him and above him, throbbing in the midst of it, + A daring, a defiance, a desire! + + Mote in the hollow vast, drowned amid the vivid light, + Invading far and far the virgin sky, + Charioting with beats of fire the fiery-beating heart of man + (O heart of flesh, O force of dread!) on high! + Careless of death is he, riding in the eagle’s ways + Above the peak and storm, so dear a sting + Drives him unresting to strive beyond the boundaries + Of his condition, being so brief a thing, + Being a creature perishable and passionate, + To drink the bright wine, danger, and to woo + Life on the invisible edge of airy precipices, + A lover, else to his own faith untrue, + Giving the glory of youth for flower of sacrifice + Upon the untried way that he must tread, + So that he savour the breath of life to the uttermost, + Breath only sweet when all is hazarded. + Is it that, moving in a rapture of deliverance + From chains of time and paths of dust and stone, + Serving a spirit of swiftness irresistible, + He makes his pilgrimage, alone, alone, + Seeking a privacy of boundlessness, abandoning + A self surpassed, yet other worlds to dare? + Nay, in that element hailing his predestinate + World, and exulting to be native there? + + +I. 4 + + Hymn the Finders! Hymn the bold + Trusters of Earth, those patient ones, + That listen to the subtle words + Of Silence in the streams and stones; + Ponderers of the secret-souled + Bodies quick with ignorant being; + Followers of the clues that thread + Differences and accords; + Wooers of what powers agreeing + May the hands of man bestead; + Seers who have turned aside + From the greeds that ask and ache + Blinded to all else beside,— + Letting the clear spirit take + Truth from vision open-eyed. + Breaks the bud for him that sees + In a world of promises. + + Hymn the breaker of the dark, + Hymn the finder of the flame, + Troubler of the essential spark + Lurking in the withered pith + Or from stony prison freed, + Friend and fury, holy need + And fierce destroyer, hard to tame, + Risen, a God to wrestle with! + Hymn the bender of the wheel, + Mother of the shapes of speed! + Hymn the launcher of the keel + Carrying thought’s arrow-aim + Beyond the sundown,—sowing seed + Of man on coasts untrod before, + To widen memory’s haunted shore + And add the nearness of a name. + + Far-descended old desire! + That stirred in swarming forest-ages, + Prowled by fear whose stealthy eye + Watched from glooms, where hunger-rages + Ravened; see at last the Hand + Emerging human, stretched to try + Shapes of things with wondering pleasure, + When its strength forgets to kill; + Tempted on to understand, + Serving ways of secret will,— + Fit and fashion, poise and measure. + Hymn the hand that builds the wall + And spans the river, and arches over + Man the worshipper and lover + Song-like stone; the hand so strong + To strike, yet in whose touch is all + Life’s mystery that wooes from things + Their strength, as music from the strings,— + Touch of the mind that seeks behind + The world for the befriending Mind. + + Hymn the openers of the gates, + Hymn the changers of the fates! + Hymn the seekers! them that saw, + Past the seeming starry roof + Of human earth, in mazy plan + Bright eternities of law; + Them that neared those orbs to man, + Unafraid, and put to proof + Divination’s ancient scheme; + Stept into the timeless stream, + Star-like spirits among the stars! + Hymn the seekers! Chosen souls, + Grapnel’d in the very marrow + By a thought that night and day + Draws them whither their unknown + Mighty lover far away + Beckons them to the frore Poles + Or new meridians; like to him + Who climbed in Panama the tree, + And splendour of untravelled sea + Smote him like a glorious arrow: + Never shall he rest again + Till he sail that virgin main! + Or like him who quietly + Sitting in his Polar tent + Found so great a way to die; + Hope-forsaken, famine-spent, + Wrote his words of faith and cheer + Till the pen dropt from the hand + That wrote them. + Hymn the lost, who never + Found, but kept high heart to steer + Onward toward the mark they meant, + Sailing out of sight of land. + Wail not them, nor lost endeavour, + For they heard what tranced the ear, + Filled the exulting soul, the song + Pale and prudent mortals fear, + Song of those who, out of Time, + Sing the heights the immortals climb, + The Sirens. + + + + +II. PENUMBRA + + + Hearken to the hammers, endlessly hammering, + The din of wheels, the drone of wheels, the furnaces + Panting, where Man as in a demon-palace toils + To forge the giant creatures of his brain. + He has banished the spring and the innocence of leaves + From the blackened waste he has made; the infected sky + Glooms with a sun aghast, and the murk of the night + Is peopled with tall flames like spirits insane. + + He strips himself to the heat, not of the jovial sun, + But of the scorch of furnaces; with naked breast + Sweating beneath the iron and blear glass, amid + The hammers’ hammering and the wheels’ roar. + Not with grapes of October trodden underfoot + Spurting juices of ripeness in runnels, his vats + Brim, but with gushes flickered-over and blinding, + Unshapen spilth and blaze of molten ore. + + With a finger he lifts the weight of mountain-sides + Poised; the metal mass he shears red-hot in a trice; + He has given to the animate iron thews of force, + A Titan’s pulse, and breath of fiery draught. + Monsters mightier far than himself he creates + To swim storming seas, and to mount in miles of air, + To deride Space and the old opposition of Time: + Their speed is like strong drink that he has quaffed. + + He has the tamed lightning to do his bidding, draws + Energies out of the veins of earth; he is armed + From all elements, woven as in a magic web; + He has stolen seeds of Death, wherewith to fight. + He holds fabled terrors of the ancient gods in his hand— + In a handful of dust, earthquake and pestilence; + He exults to destroy, to obliterate, to be + Lord of the powers of the engulfing night. + + Deafened with the hammers, inebriate with the sound + Of the powers he has raised out of their jealous lair, + He has fever within him, he becomes dizzy, + And craves, and knows not whither he is bound. + Shall he attain god-like felicity of ease, + Supreme articulate voice of nature’s striving, + Or builds he a vast prison for himself, a slave + With iron of his own strong forging crowned? + + Insatiable of ransacked worlds, and exulting + Furiously in feet-supplanting speed, the proud-eyed + Victor, he who has come so far, so far, looks forth + To achieve the eluded glory of his goal. + What solitude is this that suddenly he enters? + Voices of earth no more with anchoring kindness call. + The fevered hammers throb; but deep within he knows + The desert he has made in his own soul. + + O where is now the dew-dropt radiance of morning, + That sistered with him leafing tree and rippling stream, + When simple of heart in the sun with a free body + He accepted all the boundaries of his mind? + Full of fears he was then, shadowed with helpless need + To propitiate Powers that threatened each footstep. + Has he escaped from those old terrors, to be prey + Of fears more terrible because less blind? + + +II. 2 + + Ah, did men feign you once, triumphant Sirens, + Omnipotent in your lure + On a far spice-island over legendary surges + Singing, and divine you with the famished eyes of mariners, + Listen in a trance to your voices, but listen + In a dream secure? + + Lost amid strange and hungry waters + They fabled the storm-worn sailor stung + By a vision of arms outstretched at the end of the world,— + Eternal woman, wonderful, with a bosom + Heaved as with love, and with warm, white eyelids + Over eyes cruel and young. + From those voluptuous throats, magical throats, + As out of a coral-lipped, an ivory-coloured + Dazzling flower, tormenting sweetness floats, + Sweetness of voices, odour of strange, strange longing + Felt on the flesh like trail of perfumed hair, + In sound that stole like soft arms round the soul + Drawn thither and inescapably aware + Of nothing but the extreme ache to press + Lips on those lips, that thirst to suck the breath, + The heart’s blood, into theirs, till eyes grow dull, + Till lips be lips no longer, and only a skull + Roll from your feast of death, + O sated Sirens! + + But what if it be that fond perfidious Voices + With different music lure + Even us who have cast far from us the fables of old? + If the pride of our quest undo us, and they enchant us + Simple as those lost mariners, but no longer + In dream secure? + + If not with sorcery of song in a scarlet mouth + And with eyes of desire + You ensnare the easy senses and perishing flesh, + But with spiritual lure you hunger to entice us + Beyond the borders of knowledge, O evilly enamoured, + O terrible choir? + If shadowy at the end of time you wait, + Wooing subtly the while Man’s spirit, tempted + On ever more extravagant quest, and bait + His blood with charm of secrecy and peril, + Ay, and waylay the longings of his mind, + Yielding by dear degrees what he exults to seize, + Until he glows to seem the unconfined + Master of earth, the world’s sole will, but only + That you may taste his glory, spent and shared, + Before you press upon his lips the last + Kiss of annihilation, and he be cast + Into the void prepared, + Malignant Sirens! + + +II. 3 + + ‘Whither, Whither?’ I heard a crying + That asked of Night, and there was none replying. + ‘Whither, into what land of change and wrack, + Into what time out-racing thought and will, + With feet borne onward and mind beaten back + Over an earth that our lost loves has buried, + Against a dark wind blowing chill, + Whither are we driven, whither hurried? + + ‘Lovely vales of our youth, where haunted + Peace of the ripening years, and hope that vaunted + Its strength so rooted in earth’s purposes + That children’s children should possess peace there! + O sunny vales, and corn, and guardian trees, + Shut off by the blind rain’s down-dropping curtain,— + Vanished, as if they never were, + And doubt alone were certain! + + ‘Heaven we feigned in a time perfecting + Our missed design, and beauty of our neglecting. + There should we live completed in an age + Wise from our loss and rich with all our spoil, + A race redeeming its lost heritage, + Not by vain fears checked, nor by vain hopes cheated. + —If that heaven fade, and futureless we toil, + And battle already defeated? + + ‘Words of beauty, words of assuaging + Majesty saw we on high above time’s raging + Inscribed as over some vast porch serene; + PARDON: the heart flowed out on tides of peace. + JUSTICE: the soiled soul hasted to be clean. + One word we named not, dreamed not, feared not even, + THE END.—If All utterly cease; + Earth, Time, Desire, Hell, Heaven?’ + + Titan spirit of god-like stature; + Star-measurer, holder of deep clues of nature; + Maker, but half-aware of what he makes, + Of what the extravagant flame in him devours, + And what unshapen Vastness he awakes,— + Toiled in the terrible webs his mind invented, + And caught in flame that twists and towers, + Man strives with himself tormented. + + Born for ever to move, the Dancer + Of dark Creation’s dream, its destined answer,— + Joy were those limbs created to express! + Now like one darkly stumbling, while his brain + Puzzles each motion with too anxious stress, + Under the glory of stars that move unhalting + He burns with the old need onward still to strain, + Mis-timed, way-lost, defaulting. + + +II. 4 + + Hearken to the eternal lovers rejoicing! + A sunrise in their hearts, a music in their veins, + Their bodies make sweet singing to one another; + They bathe in beams from one another’s eyes. + They rejoice to belong to the Eternal Delight + Upon whose universe of buoyance they are launched, + That questions not of its way nor of its haven + But is both way and haven where it hies. + + They marvel to be born in a new element, + To meet like streams as they go chiming to the sea, + To move like flames that touch and tremble; and marvelling + They look back on the voided shell they quit. + Dawn within dawn, light within light, unfolds for them + The secret of the world that flowing overflows + The sun and the moon and the farthest of the stars, + And it abounds in them, and they in it. + + Beautiful are their fears as the shy-footed fawns + Safe only in wildness from the old hunter, Time, + To be assured in shadow of the heart’s solitude, + Where joy finds joy that never Time records. + They have made virgin words of that soiled alphabet + Wherewith have been written histories of sorrow, + Labour and long defeat, and proud and vain conquest; + And all their lore is those sufficing words. + + Magnificent they match the music of a name + Against abhorred Silence and terrors of the abyss, + The trust of a smile against all-ignoring Night, + And one low voice against Oblivion’s greed. + Difference drew them to the enamoured wrestle, + Chosen, inevitable dear antagonists; + They cry one to the other; ‘Alone I was not I,’ + ‘O lovely danger!’ and ‘O my angel need!’ + + ‘Because thy sweetness is so troubling and so sharp, + Full of blood-thrilling strangeness, unexplored peril, + Never to be possessed, always to be desired, + Thou unknown world, I will dare all for thee.’ + ‘Though in a moment thou hast made me to forget + All that I was and had, triumphing I hold thee; + To thy darkness of strength I give and commit me; + Here is thy world, O sail upon my sea!’ + + As the East that quickens and flushes to the height + Answering the ardour of the West, and as a rose + Quivers on the western cloud before the dayspring, + Divided as the East and West they are: + But upon ways invisible to mortal sense + Moves their bright union, where was created new + Love’s wondrous world; from the darkness it emerges; + It is their Evening and their Morning Star. + + Out of the hollows of unpenetrated Night + From afar calls to them, though they have known it not, + A voice that is theirs, yet is not theirs, a new voice + Never yet heard, yet older than all things; + Laughter of a child’s voice, sweeter than any sound + On the earth or in the air, voice of eternal joy, + Victorious over the bowed wisdom of mortals, + A well beyond the world, that springs and sings. + + + + +III. THE UNDISCOVERED WORLD + + + O in a living stream to bathe + That runs its course from spring to sea! + And O to cast this aching mesh + Of iron bands that starkly swathe + Limbs that labour, neck to knee! + To feel the wind upon the flesh, + Wind that was before man was, + Blowing out of blue divine; + Feel the feet on morning grass + Lightly firm, and body bare + Over-showered with beams so fine + As cleanse the very heart of care! + Sages, had you found but this + For the mind, so it could use + What the body knows of bliss + When all thought it loves to lose + Merely poising in the sun, + Sure of powers a-spring within it + Rippling out to leap and run,— + Like for memory’s waiting ear + Silence, ere the music win it:— + When unreasoned joy alone + Brims the body, itself its own + Infinity unquestioning; + Careless, Life is O so near, + Death a legendary thing, + Breath and blood like bells that ring;— + Sages, had you art to find + Such a glory for the mind, + Not with eyes that are too wise + But the lover’s wonder-vision + Seeing far and seeing near + As within one radiant sphere + All things living, joined and whole, + Bloomed with light of Paradise; + Sages then—but who has taught + Such an end for labouring thought, + Such a nakedness of soul;— + What but probing, doubting, and division? + Hark, on iron iron’s endless clamour! + The hours, the hours, drive swifter than we strain— + Earth changes not, but who has changed us, + As if a Fury with a shadowy hammer + Nailed the nails into the fiery brain? + Who has estranged us? + + What dark enemy within + Makes of Earth an enemy? + Is it not he who sought of old + Secrets of her wealth to win, + Hot with greed and overbold, + Aching to possess her? he, + Searching labyrinthine veins, + Thirsted for yet rarer gains, + And through patient nights perused + Each divided element, + Curious of that pregnant dust + Which with intent hand he bruised; + Crucibled in fire the grains + That should subtly be cajoled + In the end to yield his lust + Feasts of gold—a continent + Molten into dazzling gold! + (Were not heard the Sirens then + Deriding the poor dreams of men?) + Nay, but he would scrutinize + Even Night’s deep-ordered scheme, + And spell his own proud destinies + In scripture of the starry stream. + Coveting what power those skies + Might enthrone, he sought a charm + That should warp them and should woo. + To his use, and by such aid + To disimperil of one harm + This brief body, would undo + A universe. And he arrayed + In a constellated robe + His heaven-projected effigy, + Because his spirit was afraid + Of its nakedness, nor dared + Terrors of the truth to probe; + Rather chose itself to ensky + In a dream. But no night bared + To him her grandeur, swerved no spheres + To the wrench of human fears. + Earth and Night to crave of lust + Yield but fruitlessness and dust; + Dust to lust, to greed a weed! + Mockers rise from those forgotten years: + ‘This is he, the self-dupe, still the same + Vaunter of a world of his defiling! + Claiming heavens, with only will to maim. + Who is this to own an earth’s empire, + In whose blood is mud, and this aviling + Squalor of desire?’ + + Lo, with feet on fiery ashes + Earth’s foiled master casts his eyes + Round his world-abode. Time’s heir, + Freed by blood of martyrs, wise + With myriad lives of thought and care, + Into Doubt’s dim future gropes, + Black with omen, lit with flashes! + Lo, beneath his heaven of hopes + Falling palaces of dream, + Proudly pillared; regions wreckt, + Peopled with stray flames that seem + Hot greeds from his burning brain + And the very earth infect. + Lo, like bodies for his fear + Shadowy shapes of force insane + Menacing in murk appear, + Primed with energy to kill,— + Engines of his intellect, + Incarnations of his will! + Those old siren-songs of air + Change into a song abhorred, + Chanting softly, Revel, Lord! + Triumph, Master! This you sought! + This your own proud hands have wrought! + Now the lover’s loathing taste + Comes on him for what he burned + So imperiously to clutch. + Where is now the bliss embraced, + Where the conquest? At a touch + All’s to desolation turned. + Is it he, or Earth, betrays? + She that seemed to sting him on + To possession, once possessed, + Dispossesses him. Her breast + Stony grows, and hard her gaze. + —Yet, oh, could she again be wooed + In her own, her chosen ways, + Shall she not transform her mood, + Glorify with truth his quest, + Give, as lovers give, entire + Body to body, mind to mind, + Ay, and more than these can find,— + Spirit to spirit? Beauty of Desire, + Beauty beyond possession still is breathing, + Beauty in us defaced! + O secret spring eternal, muddied here, + Soiled and sunken, troubled into seething! + Torrent of Desire, by greed and fear + Spilled into waste! + + +III. 2 + + Be still! Wash out this dull roar from the ear + That fevers Time; be emptied the hot brain + Of clamorous, intricately-teasing toil. + Let spiritual Silence brim again + The mind’s well to a mirror virgin-clear; + All these invented cares smoothe and uncoil. + + Contemplate Silence; the wild Silence, ere + Music or word was; waste, unshapen sound; + Crying of wind; moaning of sea; stammer of storm; + Gropings as for a being nowhere found; + Mateless desires, frustrated throbs of air, + Without home, without form. + + They sought a lodge in haunted flesh, they sought + The inward tingling sense’s touched accord; + To be delivered, to be born perfect + On shapes of lips, a breathed, a living word, + A flower that seeds its riches, thought from thought, + Incarnate sound, mysterious and elect. + + Contemplate Silence! The unwithered womb + Of all music infinite as desire; + All words, releasing tears and bliss; all song, + That wins at last a universe for choir, + And there the enlarged spirit has full room, + There its desires and its delights belong. + + All speech, all song, all music still unborn, + Waits there for its futurity of mind + To become human; yet it holds some tone + Drawn from a something vaster than mankind, + As from profounder heart-strings torn, + And yet complete in man alone; + + As if behind him travailing, the whole + Dark world were seeking in this eloquent flesh + Some other self, and sighing here to be + Born afresh, born afresh; + To win a world yet undiscovered in the soul: + ‘O Voice,’ it cries, ‘utter; O Hands, deliver me!’ + + With such a dark quest in desirous eyes, + From the ancient East, as through a silent gate + In the mind’s city and labyrinth of thought, + Those Magian Kings, of knowledge satiate, + Of riches satiate, and forlornly wise, + Down desert gorges brought + + Gifts for the Unknown: nay, but Earth from far + In yearning sent them, her ambassadors. + Rocks opened veins of gold, trees oozed their blood, + Spices sighed, gems burned up from cavern-floors, + The very Night had made Desire a star, + That over against them, strange and certain, stood; + + And thither laden with Earth’s hope and want, + Her symbol’d sighs and riches of her pain, + Down separate passes of the mountain streaming + Wound onward each amid his marvelling train, + Those sages drawn from towers of midnight haunt + By their prophetic dreaming; + And trumpet thrilled to trumpet thro’ the night, + And torches told of glistering strange attire, + Where met those three kings on one errand led. + What image shaped they of the World’s Desire, + What presence throned in majesty and might, + As they went musing, deep in hope and dread, + + And under vast cope of the wheeling skies + Found but a naked child, a child new-born? + Wisdom resigned the crown of her enthroning; + All her impassioned question was forsworn: + In wonder she saw all things with new eyes. + Then, there were songs of joy; now, sound of a world groaning. + + +III. 3 + + Mystery of Dawn, ere yet the glory streams + Risen over earth, and pauses in that hush + When far, as from an ecstasy, clouds flush, + And hills lift up their pureness into dreams + Of light that not yet colours the cold flower, + And the earth-clasping, heaven-desiring tree + Trembles in virginal expectancy— + What breath of the unknown Power + Is this that, spirit to spirit, as with a spousal kiss + Comes seeking us, even us, through shadow and dew,— + Seeking in this soiled flesh what undiscovered world + Beyond tears, beyond bliss, beyond wisdom, beyond + Time? what recaptured harmony of earth and heaven? + What world made new? + + A world so strange, the spirit thrills to flame, + Transfigured in a wonder of release! + A world so near, it has no other name + Than light and breath! Where lost we, then, this peace? + Wanting what charm to cleanse + Our eyes? To see; is this the last of gifts, + That, as the scales drop, the heart so uplifts? + O world where no possession is of men’s, + Where the will rages not with fever to destroy + Differing wills, or warp another life to its use, + But each lives in the light of its own joy! + In one wide vision all have share, and we in all, + Infinitely companioned with the stars, the dust, + Beasts of the field, and stones, and flowers that fall! + This body that we use seems in that air + Marvellous; secret from ourselves; a power + Without which were no speech, nor deed done anywhere, + Nor could thought range and tower, + Nor seed be sown for the unborn time to reap; + Whose natural motion was ordained to be + Beautiful as a wave out of a sea + Boundless as mind asleep; + So passionately shaped, in every part perfect, + Universes are wounded in its abasement, + Crying from stone to star; + The unimagined height, the immeasurable deep, + Hungers, abysses, heavens, millions of ghosts from far + Meet in this body born to laugh and weep. + + Weep; not for the endured, ancestral ill, + Perils and plagues, that ambush all our ways, + Time’s injury, and pain’s deep-wandered maze; + These need not eyes to see, but only flesh to feel. + But of the eternal vision to partake, + And see what we have done, and what refused, + To what accepted blindness we grow used, + And what marred shapes of one another make, + This is to weep such tears as no flesh-throes have cost, + Weep for our loves, our loves, that we ourselves have slain, + The powers of loveliness that we have left forlorn. + Eyes we had and saw not, ears and we did not hear! + Ah, when the heart, full-visioned, breaks in shame and pain, + Then is the world’s hope born. + + The cry of desolation turns to praise. + If falsehood first enchant the eager mind, + And if desire be cruel, being blind, + Each by its own infirmity betrays, + And some profounder, more imperious need + Drives through all smart, whatever world to lose, + The pure vision to choose, + And tho’ Truth kill, there in the end be freed. + Open, open, gates of deliverance, open! + See, liberated spirits, see, victorious ones, + For testimony of us from homes of glory shine, + Vindicators of this brief flesh, they mingle us,— + Soiled and despoiled,—with beauty and with felicity, + And sting us from afar with the Divine. + + Hands of men stretched out in so dark a craving! + Baffled heart, clouded vision; filled with ache + To know you have maimed the world you sought to make + Your instrument and minister, enslaving + Powers of earth and air—Hands that have wrought + So glorious things, the thoughts of joy to house! + Heart that has pulsed so ardent for its vow’s + Accomplishment,—O heart so hardly taught! + O stretched-out hands! of you Eternity has need. + Give but your sacred passion and your shaping art, + The hunger of Eternity is there,— + Barren else, barren: chaos and a wilderness + Of feud and everlasting greed devouring greed, + The unshapen dream’s despair! + + Spirit of Man, dear spirit, sore opprest + With self-estrangement, and mis-choosing will, + And all satiety of gainful skill,— + Possession that was never yet possessed,— + You that have been so great a lover, giving + In innocency all for sacrifice; + Whom neither Time nor earth’s regions suffice— + You too are sought, where still your dream is living. + Over the secret oceans of uncharted mind + Who knows what voyagers, what sails invisibly + Press on, for all the lost, the foundered hopes untrue? + Who knows, through ignorant mists and storm upon that sea + What Lover, what unweariable Adventurer, + Makes still his quest of you? + + O world that is within us, yet must still + Out of the eternal mystery be wooed + Ere it be ours and, breathing in the blood, + Live in its beauty, as the miracle + Of the divine colour of flowers in night + Was not, and is not of themselves alone + Nor of the dawn-beam, but of both made one,— + A marriage-mystery of earth and light! + O undiscovered world that all about us lies + When spirit to Spirit surrenders, and like young Love sees + Heaven with human eyes! + World of radiant morning! Joy’s untravelled region! + Why lies it solitary? and O why tarry we? + Why daily wander out from Paradise? + + +III. 4 + + World-besieging Storm, from horizon heaped and menacing + Rear up the walls of thunder, till they tower + Shattering over earth, and from heart to heart reverberate, + Lancing that bright fear through the ruin-shower! + Revel, Winds, severing the bough of leafy promises + With rages from returning chaos sent! + Mockers and Destroyers, come; here is Man, predestinate + To all your arrows at his bosom bent. + Strip him of his splendours, of his conquests and dominions, + His secure boast to be earth’s lord enthroned, + Humble him: he stands forth greater in his nakedness + Than in the wealth and safety that he owned. + He that has so loved peril in all experience, + He that has gone with Sorrow all her way, + Will not now refuse or shrink; prove him to the innermost, + With worse than worst confront him: come what may, + Lo, you awake, O Trumpets of Calamity, + Some fragment of old Darkness in his breast; + Lo, to him fraternal is the stony and the terrible place: + His stricken Genius out of deeps unguessed + Rises up, grappling his reality to reality, + And still the secret in himself explores, + Bound beyond fear, the discovered and discoverer, + And in his own soul touches farthest shores. + Though he be stript of all, Powers from far replenish him, + Powers of the streaming worlds that through him stream. + O throbbing heart, O lifted arms, O tenderness, + O only capable of grief supreme! + O earth for ever mingled with unearthliness + Because the eternal with the brief is twined! + Wonder of breath that is momentary and tremulous + Suffices him who breathes eternal mind. + Vision that dawns beyond knowledge shall deliver him + From all that flattered, threatened, foiled, betrayed. + Lo, having nothing, he is free of all the universe, + And where light is, he enters unafraid. + + +THE END + + + + +[Illustration: Decoration] + + LONDON: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND GRIGGS (PRINTERS), LTD. + CHISWICK PRESS, TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE. + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75422 *** diff --git a/75422-h/75422-h.htm b/75422-h/75422-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f6dad42 --- /dev/null +++ b/75422-h/75422-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1454 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <title> + The Sirens | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + h1 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .51em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .49em; + text-indent: 1em; +} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: 33.5%; + margin-right: 33.5%; + clear: both; +} + +hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} +h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} + + +.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-style: normal; + font-weight: normal; + font-variant: normal; + text-indent: 0; + color: #A9A9A9; +} /* page numbers */ + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +/* Images */ + +img { + max-width: 100%; + height: auto; +} +img.w100 {width: 100%;} + + +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; + page-break-inside: avoid; + max-width: 100%; +} + +/* Poetry */ +/* uncomment the next line for centered poetry */ +/* .poetry-container {display: flex; justify-content: center;} */ +.poetry-container {text-align: center;} +.poetry {text-align: left; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;} +.poetry .stanza {margin: 1em auto;} +.poetry .verse {text-indent: -3em; padding-left: 3em;} + +.fs70 {font-size: 70%} +.fs80 {font-size: 80%} +.fs150 {font-size: 150%} +.fs120 {font-size: 120%} + +.no-indent {text-indent: 0em;} +.bold {font-weight: bold;} +.wsp {word-spacing: 0.3em;} + +.upper-case +{ + text-transform: uppercase; +} + +h2 {font-size: 150%; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.6em; word-spacing: .3em;} + +/* Poetry indents */ +.poetry .indent0 {text-indent: -3em;} +.poetry .indent17 {text-indent: 5.5em;} + +/* Illustration classes */ +.illowp5 {width: 5%;} +.illowp20 {width: 20%;} +.illowp30 {width: 30%;} + +img.drop-cap +{ + float: left; + margin: -0.0em 3.25em 0em 2em; +} + +.poetry .drop-cap:first-letter +{ + color: transparent; + visibility: hidden; + margin-left: -0.5em; +} + +.lh {line-height: 1.5em;} + + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75422 ***</div> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 85%"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="Cover"> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h1>THE SIRENS</h1> +<p class="center no-indent fs120 wsp bold">AN ODE</p> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<figure class="figcenter illowp30" id="i_ii" style="max-width: 49.25em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i_ii.jpg" alt="Decoration"> +</figure> +</div> + +<p class="center no-indent wsp"> +MACMILLAN AND CO., <span class="smcap">Limited</span><br> +<span class="fs80">LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA · MADRAS<br> +MELBOURNE</span><br> +<br> +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br> +<span class="fs80">NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO<br> +DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO</span><br> +<br> +THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span><br> +<span class="fs80">TORONTO</span><br> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="center no-indent fs150 bold"> +THE SIRENS</p> +<p class="center no-indent fs120 wsp lh"> +AN ODE<br> +<br> +<span class="fs70">BY</span><br> + +LAURENCE BINYON</p> +<br> +<figure class="figcenter illowp5" id="decoration" style="max-width: 5.5em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/decoration.jpg" alt="Decoration"> +</figure> +<br> +<br> +<p class="center no-indent wsp lh">MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED<br> +ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON<br> +1925</p> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="center no-indent fs80 wsp"> +COPYRIGHT<br> +<br> +<br> +PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN<br> +</p> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="center no-indent lh"> +<span class="fs80">TO</span><br> +CICELY<br> +</p> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</span></p> + +<p class="center no-indent fs150">NOTE</p> +</div> + +<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">This</span> poem was printed by hand by Richard +and Elinor Lambert at the Stanton Press and +issued by them in 1924 in a limited edition. +It has been revised for the present edition.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="PRELUDE">PRELUDE</h2> +</div> + +<div> + <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_001.jpg" width="65" height="65" alt="drop-cap"> +</div> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0 drop-cap"><span class="upper-case">I remember</span> a night of my youth, I remember a night</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Soundless!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The earth and the sea were a shadow, but over me opened</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Heaven into uttermost heaven, and height into height</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Boundless</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With stars, with stars, with stars.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I remember the dew on my face, I remember the mingled</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Homely smell of grass and unearthly beauty</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Out of the ends of the air and the unsealed darkness</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Poured in a rain, in a river,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Into my marrow,—thro’ all the veins of delight</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Poured into me.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O the divine solitude, the intoxicating silence!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I was a spirit unregioned, worthy of them;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I, even I, was a creature of infinite flight,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Born to be free.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In the midst of the worlds, as they moved, I moved with them all,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A sense and a joy; I was hidden, and yet they were nigh;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For they came to me as lovers,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Those stars from on high.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Thus as my whole soul drank of the star-thrilled air,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I felt more than heard, like a whisper</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Invading me out of immensity, hinted, haunting</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sound</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of waves, of waves, of waves.</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">And I felt in the blood of my flesh to the roots of my hair,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That it sought me, a mind in the muteness:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In the midst of the worlds I trembled,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I in the night a mortal</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Found!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What was I? What was I? Nothing</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But a Moment, aware</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of the ruins of Time!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Yet a memory of memories awaking, I marvelled from where,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Out of shadows unshapen within me, and dust under dust,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From burial of realms and of ages, and darkness astir</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In the roots of the hungering forest, the ancientest lair,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Rose to claim</div> + <div class="verse indent0">This my body, the sap of its veins and its secret to share;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To emerge with the star-watching eyes of the venturer, Man.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And my body was brimmed with its meaning; it knew whence it came,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For I was the word on Earth’s lips</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That she needed to name.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">But tell me, I cried, O whispering, troubling waves,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Tell me, O journeying wildernesses of stars,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Why do you near me & choose me? Whither would you lure me,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The earth-child?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To be brimmed with desire overflowing the bounds of the world,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To be wingless & stretched on a longing that boundlessly craves,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Who has known not this, in the bloom of a midnight marvelling</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Earth-exiled?</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">But thus to be sought from afar by phantom waves,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In the still of the night to be neared by stooping stars,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As if all immensity sought for a home in the mind</div> + <div class="verse indent0">At its core,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">This draws my dark being up from its secret caves,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the flesh is no longer a home, nor can comforting Earth</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Shelter me more.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I am known to the Unknown; chosen, charmed, endangered:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I flow to a music ocean-wild and starry,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And feel within me, for this mortality’s answer,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sea without shore.</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span></p> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="I_THE_VICTORIES">I. THE VICTORIES</h2> +</div> + +<div> + <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_004.jpg" width="65" height="65" alt="drop-cap"> +</div> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0 drop-cap"><span class="upper-case">Masters</span> of the known and found</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Singers of a world completed,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All to a time and end ordained,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Powers foredestined to their bound</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And truth immutably contained,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A dominion mapped and meted,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Like as in Egyptian noon</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Gods of granite throned august</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Gaze on old realms round them strewn</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Far as the horizon dust,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All beneath that searching sky</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Gathered into wisdom’s eye!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Prophets of the found and known,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Chanters of the Laws unchanging,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Comes not an hour that undoes all</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With a whispered homelessness,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With a sudden touch estranging?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Certainties you deemed your own,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Housing with a friendly wall,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Glide into a doubt and guess</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Swift as when, the low light going,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Darkness on the wind comes flowing</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Out of nothing; and surmise,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Dream, desire, are frontierless;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the unroofed mind has skies</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To breathe of, where a rumour sings</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of other mind and vaster things</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Wooed to wilder destinies.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thought throbs: there a power entices</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">(Like, on a wonder-night, all June</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In a draught of stolen spices)</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not to stay, not to stay,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But to embark for the outer dark.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Only charms the untrodden way,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Only the unspelt secret rune.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Conqueror with foot superb</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Planted on the last step won,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whom the trumpet-mouths proclaim</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Destiny’s accepted son,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Robed in a resounding name,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What profounder pangs disturb</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Something that’s unquarried yet</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In the deep soul? All the gain</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Weighs but as an ashy grain</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In the world those pangs beget.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Fierce fruitions but betray</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And deliver to the hard</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hope of things unhazarded.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where that world is, who shall say?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Under western evening starred</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Black waves tempt to far-away</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Visioned walls of a wide shore,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lands the only-coveted,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Gleaming as they gleamed before</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Alexander’s dying eyes</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In the tent at Babylon.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Dumb his soldiers streamed beside him,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Dumb’d with grief that only saw</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The pillar of the world undone,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nor guessed what potent visions gnaw</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">The unsated mind with cruelties,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ramparts where Time’s jealous spies,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sentinelled afar, deride him,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Mocking all that passion willed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With the frustrate and the unfulfilled.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O the inexorable Lure</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Spur to the demon hearts of men!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ravening Genghis, hot Timour,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the empire-storming Saracen,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Fate’s infuriate charioteers,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Fly from a whisper in their ears</div> + <div class="verse indent0">(Earth before them, Time behind)</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whispering, ‘Haste, ere blood be chill,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Storm and scatter, work your will!’</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hunters hunted in the mind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hunting what they cannot name,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thunder over earth, to find</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nothing. Though the harvest black</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Be reaped in rue and curse and wrong,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">There’s a thing they cannot tame.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Still they keep their torrent-track,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Maddened by a shadowy song</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sung beyond the reach of sense.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What song is this which wastes the worth</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of human things, and distastes earth,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And fevers with magnificence</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of swiftness trampling, ruin-crowned,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Toward a goal that none has found?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is it the song the Adventurer stole</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Body-bound upon the mast</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For the enchantment of his soul?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over farthest foam of waves</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">That are sailors’ restless graves,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He heard exulting as he passed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Perilous voices challenging</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The mortal heart of him, and fear</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Became a glory, so to hear</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Secure as an immortal, sing</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The Sirens.</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span></p> + +<p>I. 2</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Whither is she gone, wing’d by the evening airs,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Yon sail that draws the last of light afar,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On the sea-verge alone, despising other cares</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Than her own errand and her guiding star?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">She leaves the safe land, leaves the roofs, and the long roads</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Travelling the hills to end for each at his own hearth.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">She leaves the silence under slowly-darkening elms,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The friendly human voices, smell of dew and dust,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And generations of men asleep in the old earth.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Between two solitudes she glides and fades,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And round us falls the darkness she invades.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Waters empty and outcast, O barren waters!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What have your wastes to do</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With the earth-treader, the earth-tiller; this frail</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Body of man; the sower, whom the green shoot gladdens;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hewer of trees; the builder, who houses him from the bleak winds,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And whom awaits at last long peace beneath the grass</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In soil his fathers knew?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What shall he hope for from your careless desolation,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lion-indolence, or cold roar of your risen wrath?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What sows he in your furrows, or what fruit gathers</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But hazard, loss, and his own hard courage?...</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Yon sail goes like a spirit seeking you.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">I heard a trumpet from beyond the moon,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Piercing ice-blue gulfs of air,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Cry down the secret waters of the world,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Under the far sea-streams, to summon there</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">The foundered ships, the splendid ships, the lost ships.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In their ribb’d ruin and age-long sleep they heard,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where each had found her shadowy burial-bed,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Clutched in blind reef, shoal-choked or shingle-bound;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Heard from betraying isles and capes of dread</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In corners of all oceans, where the light</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Gropes faltering over their spilt merchandize:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And shapes at last were stirred</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On glimmerless abysses’ oozy floors</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Known to the dark fins only and drowned eyes;—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sunk out of memory, they that glided forth</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Bound from cold rivers to the tropic shores,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or questing up the white gloom of the North,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or shattered in the glory of old wars,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The laden ships, the gallant ships, the lost ships!</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">I saw them clouding up over the verge,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ghosts that arose out of an unknown grave,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Strange to the buoyant seas that young they rode upon</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And strange to the idle glitter of the wave.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Magically re-builded, rigged and manned,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">They stole in their slow beauty toward the land.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Mariners, O mariners!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I heard a voice cry; Home, come home!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Here is the rain-fresh earth; leaf-changing seasons; here</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Spring the flowers; and here, older than memory, peace</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Tastes on the air sweet as honey in the honey-comb.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Smells not the hearth-smoke better than spices of India?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Are not children’s kisses dearer than ivory and pearls?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And sleep in the hill kinder than nameless water</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the cold, wandering foam?</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">Dear are the names of home, I heard a far voice answer,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Pleasant the tilled valley, the flocks and farms; and sweet</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The hum in cities of men, and words of our own kin.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But we have tasted wild fruit, listened to strange music;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And all shores of the earth are but as doors of an inn;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We knocked at the doors, and slept; to arise at dawn and go.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We spilt blood for gold, trafficked in costly cargoes,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But knew in the end it was not these we sailed to win;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Only a wider sea; room for the winds to blow,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And a world to wander in.</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span></p> + +<p>I. 3</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">O divine summits and O unascended solitudes!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O alone soaring over care and stain!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Who without wing shall set foot upon your pinnacles?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or who your spaciousness of light attain?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Flames in the dawn-cold, towering incredible,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When else the earth is shadow-drowned and prone,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Veiled and unveiled by the misty-footed winds that guard</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Bright chasm and black gulf round a thunder-throne,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Realmed with a vision beyond reaches of mortality,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thither some splendour in the mind aspires,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sharing the terror of your dark, tumultuous sisterhood,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Silent in glory as of chanting quires.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Changing and changeless, O far-illumined Presences</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In apparition from some world august,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Up from this flesh have you drawn us, as in ecstasy</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That thirsts to elude this forfeiture of dust.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Even on your last heights man has set his perilous foot,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And mid the void as on some dazzling shore</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Stands in the vast air, stricken and insatiate,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Wingless, a spirit craving wings to soar.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Now at last voyaging a fabulous dominion</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Surpassing all the measures of his kind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He, a free rider of the undulating silences,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Has in himself begotten a new mind;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Made him a companion of the winds of Heaven, travelling</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Unpaven streets of cloudy golden snows,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Piercing forlorn mist, cold though it encompass him</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Like a dead mind that nothing sees or knows,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Vacant, a cavern fleecy and immaterial,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A soundless vapour that he pulses through,</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">Suddenly emerging, and swims into the sun again</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And steers his path up toward the topless blue;—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Towers in the frosty flame-apparelled mystery</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of brain-intoxicating sharp sapphire</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Round him and above him, throbbing in the midst of it,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A daring, a defiance, a desire!</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Mote in the hollow vast, drowned amid the vivid light,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Invading far and far the virgin sky,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Charioting with beats of fire the fiery-beating heart of man</div> + <div class="verse indent0">(O heart of flesh, O force of dread!) on high!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Careless of death is he, riding in the eagle’s ways</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Above the peak and storm, so dear a sting</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Drives him unresting to strive beyond the boundaries</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of his condition, being so brief a thing,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Being a creature perishable and passionate,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To drink the bright wine, danger, and to woo</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Life on the invisible edge of airy precipices,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A lover, else to his own faith untrue,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Giving the glory of youth for flower of sacrifice</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Upon the untried way that he must tread,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So that he savour the breath of life to the uttermost,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Breath only sweet when all is hazarded.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is it that, moving in a rapture of deliverance</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From chains of time and paths of dust and stone,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Serving a spirit of swiftness irresistible,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He makes his pilgrimage, alone, alone,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Seeking a privacy of boundlessness, abandoning</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A self surpassed, yet other worlds to dare?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nay, in that element hailing his predestinate</div> + <div class="verse indent0">World, and exulting to be native there?</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span></p> + +<p>I. 4</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Hymn the Finders! Hymn the bold</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Trusters of Earth, those patient ones,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That listen to the subtle words</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of Silence in the streams and stones;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ponderers of the secret-souled</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Bodies quick with ignorant being;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Followers of the clues that thread</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Differences and accords;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Wooers of what powers agreeing</div> + <div class="verse indent0">May the hands of man bestead;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Seers who have turned aside</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From the greeds that ask and ache</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Blinded to all else beside,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Letting the clear spirit take</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Truth from vision open-eyed.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Breaks the bud for him that sees</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In a world of promises.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Hymn the breaker of the dark,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hymn the finder of the flame,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Troubler of the essential spark</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lurking in the withered pith</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or from stony prison freed,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Friend and fury, holy need</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And fierce destroyer, hard to tame,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Risen, a God to wrestle with!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hymn the bender of the wheel,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Mother of the shapes of speed!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hymn the launcher of the keel</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Carrying thought’s arrow-aim</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">Beyond the sundown,—sowing seed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of man on coasts untrod before,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To widen memory’s haunted shore</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And add the nearness of a name.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Far-descended old desire!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That stirred in swarming forest-ages,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Prowled by fear whose stealthy eye</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Watched from glooms, where hunger-rages</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ravened; see at last the Hand</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Emerging human, stretched to try</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Shapes of things with wondering pleasure,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When its strength forgets to kill;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Tempted on to understand,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Serving ways of secret will,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Fit and fashion, poise and measure.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hymn the hand that builds the wall</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And spans the river, and arches over</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Man the worshipper and lover</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Song-like stone; the hand so strong</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To strike, yet in whose touch is all</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Life’s mystery that wooes from things</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Their strength, as music from the strings,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Touch of the mind that seeks behind</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The world for the befriending Mind.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Hymn the openers of the gates,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hymn the changers of the fates!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hymn the seekers! them that saw,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Past the seeming starry roof</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">Of human earth, in mazy plan</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Bright eternities of law;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Them that neared those orbs to man,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Unafraid, and put to proof</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Divination’s ancient scheme;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Stept into the timeless stream,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Star-like spirits among the stars!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hymn the seekers! Chosen souls,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Grapnel’d in the very marrow</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By a thought that night and day</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Draws them whither their unknown</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Mighty lover far away</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Beckons them to the frore Poles</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or new meridians; like to him</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Who climbed in Panama the tree,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And splendour of untravelled sea</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Smote him like a glorious arrow:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Never shall he rest again</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Till he sail that virgin main!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or like him who quietly</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sitting in his Polar tent</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Found so great a way to die;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hope-forsaken, famine-spent,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Wrote his words of faith and cheer</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Till the pen dropt from the hand</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That wrote them.</div> + <div class="verse indent17">Hymn the lost, who never</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Found, but kept high heart to steer</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Onward toward the mark they meant,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sailing out of sight of land.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Wail not them, nor lost endeavour,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For they heard what tranced the ear,</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">Filled the exulting soul, the song</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Pale and prudent mortals fear,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Song of those who, out of Time,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sing the heights the immortals climb,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The Sirens.</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span></p> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="II_PENUMBRA">II. PENUMBRA</h2> +</div> + +<div> + <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_017.jpg" width="65" height="65" alt="drop-cap"> +</div> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0 drop-cap"><span class="upper-case">Hearken</span> to the hammers, endlessly hammering,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The din of wheels, the drone of wheels, the furnaces</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Panting, where Man as in a demon-palace toils</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To forge the giant creatures of his brain.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He has banished the spring and the innocence of leaves</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From the blackened waste he has made; the infected sky</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Glooms with a sun aghast, and the murk of the night</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is peopled with tall flames like spirits insane.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">He strips himself to the heat, not of the jovial sun,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But of the scorch of furnaces; with naked breast</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sweating beneath the iron and blear glass, amid</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The hammers’ hammering and the wheels’ roar.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not with grapes of October trodden underfoot</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Spurting juices of ripeness in runnels, his vats</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Brim, but with gushes flickered-over and blinding,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Unshapen spilth and blaze of molten ore.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">With a finger he lifts the weight of mountain-sides</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Poised; the metal mass he shears red-hot in a trice;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He has given to the animate iron thews of force,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A Titan’s pulse, and breath of fiery draught.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Monsters mightier far than himself he creates</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To swim storming seas, and to mount in miles of air,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To deride Space and the old opposition of Time:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Their speed is like strong drink that he has quaffed.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">He has the tamed lightning to do his bidding, draws</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Energies out of the veins of earth; he is armed</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">From all elements, woven as in a magic web;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He has stolen seeds of Death, wherewith to fight.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He holds fabled terrors of the ancient gods in his hand—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In a handful of dust, earthquake and pestilence;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He exults to destroy, to obliterate, to be</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lord of the powers of the engulfing night.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Deafened with the hammers, inebriate with the sound</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of the powers he has raised out of their jealous lair,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He has fever within him, he becomes dizzy,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And craves, and knows not whither he is bound.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Shall he attain god-like felicity of ease,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Supreme articulate voice of nature’s striving,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or builds he a vast prison for himself, a slave</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With iron of his own strong forging crowned?</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Insatiable of ransacked worlds, and exulting</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Furiously in feet-supplanting speed, the proud-eyed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Victor, he who has come so far, so far, looks forth</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To achieve the eluded glory of his goal.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What solitude is this that suddenly he enters?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Voices of earth no more with anchoring kindness call.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The fevered hammers throb; but deep within he knows</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The desert he has made in his own soul.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">O where is now the dew-dropt radiance of morning,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That sistered with him leafing tree and rippling stream,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When simple of heart in the sun with a free body</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He accepted all the boundaries of his mind?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Full of fears he was then, shadowed with helpless need</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To propitiate Powers that threatened each footstep.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Has he escaped from those old terrors, to be prey</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of fears more terrible because less blind?</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span></p> + +<p>II. 2</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Ah, did men feign you once, triumphant Sirens,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Omnipotent in your lure</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On a far spice-island over legendary surges</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Singing, and divine you with the famished eyes of mariners,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Listen in a trance to your voices, but listen</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In a dream secure?</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Lost amid strange and hungry waters</div> + <div class="verse indent0">They fabled the storm-worn sailor stung</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By a vision of arms outstretched at the end of the world,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Eternal woman, wonderful, with a bosom</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Heaved as with love, and with warm, white eyelids</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over eyes cruel and young.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From those voluptuous throats, magical throats,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As out of a coral-lipped, an ivory-coloured</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Dazzling flower, tormenting sweetness floats,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sweetness of voices, odour of strange, strange longing</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Felt on the flesh like trail of perfumed hair,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In sound that stole like soft arms round the soul</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Drawn thither and inescapably aware</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of nothing but the extreme ache to press</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lips on those lips, that thirst to suck the breath,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The heart’s blood, into theirs, till eyes grow dull,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Till lips be lips no longer, and only a skull</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Roll from your feast of death,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O sated Sirens!</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">But what if it be that fond perfidious Voices</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With different music lure</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Even us who have cast far from us the fables of old?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">If the pride of our quest undo us, and they enchant us</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">Simple as those lost mariners, but no longer</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In dream secure?</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">If not with sorcery of song in a scarlet mouth</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And with eyes of desire</div> + <div class="verse indent0">You ensnare the easy senses and perishing flesh,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But with spiritual lure you hunger to entice us</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Beyond the borders of knowledge, O evilly enamoured,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O terrible choir?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">If shadowy at the end of time you wait,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Wooing subtly the while Man’s spirit, tempted</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On ever more extravagant quest, and bait</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His blood with charm of secrecy and peril,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ay, and waylay the longings of his mind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Yielding by dear degrees what he exults to seize,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Until he glows to seem the unconfined</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Master of earth, the world’s sole will, but only</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That you may taste his glory, spent and shared,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Before you press upon his lips the last</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Kiss of annihilation, and he be cast</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Into the void prepared,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Malignant Sirens!</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span></p> + +<p>II. 3</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Whither, Whither?’ I heard a crying</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That asked of Night, and there was none replying.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Whither, into what land of change and wrack,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Into what time out-racing thought and will,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With feet borne onward and mind beaten back</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over an earth that our lost loves has buried,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Against a dark wind blowing chill,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whither are we driven, whither hurried?</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Lovely vales of our youth, where haunted</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Peace of the ripening years, and hope that vaunted</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Its strength so rooted in earth’s purposes</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That children’s children should possess peace there!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O sunny vales, and corn, and guardian trees,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Shut off by the blind rain’s down-dropping curtain,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Vanished, as if they never were,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And doubt alone were certain!</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Heaven we feigned in a time perfecting</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Our missed design, and beauty of our neglecting.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">There should we live completed in an age</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Wise from our loss and rich with all our spoil,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A race redeeming its lost heritage,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not by vain fears checked, nor by vain hopes cheated.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">—If that heaven fade, and futureless we toil,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And battle already defeated?</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Words of beauty, words of assuaging</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Majesty saw we on high above time’s raging</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Inscribed as over some vast porch serene;</div> + <div class="verse indent0"><span class="smcap">Pardon</span>: the heart flowed out on tides of peace.</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span> + <div class="verse indent0"><span class="smcap">Justice</span>: the soiled soul hasted to be clean.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">One word we named not, dreamed not, feared not even,</div> + <div class="verse indent0"><span class="smcap">The end</span>.—If All utterly cease;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Earth, Time, Desire, Hell, Heaven?’</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Titan spirit of god-like stature;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Star-measurer, holder of deep clues of nature;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Maker, but half-aware of what he makes,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of what the extravagant flame in him devours,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And what unshapen Vastness he awakes,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Toiled in the terrible webs his mind invented,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And caught in flame that twists and towers,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Man strives with himself tormented.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Born for ever to move, the Dancer</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of dark Creation’s dream, its destined answer,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Joy were those limbs created to express!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Now like one darkly stumbling, while his brain</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Puzzles each motion with too anxious stress,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Under the glory of stars that move unhalting</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He burns with the old need onward still to strain,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Mis-timed, way-lost, defaulting.</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span></p> + +<p>II. 4</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Hearken to the eternal lovers rejoicing!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A sunrise in their hearts, a music in their veins,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Their bodies make sweet singing to one another;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">They bathe in beams from one another’s eyes.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">They rejoice to belong to the Eternal Delight</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Upon whose universe of buoyance they are launched,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That questions not of its way nor of its haven</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But is both way and haven where it hies.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">They marvel to be born in a new element,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To meet like streams as they go chiming to the sea,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To move like flames that touch and tremble; and marvelling</div> + <div class="verse indent0">They look back on the voided shell they quit.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Dawn within dawn, light within light, unfolds for them</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The secret of the world that flowing overflows</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The sun and the moon and the farthest of the stars,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And it abounds in them, and they in it.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Beautiful are their fears as the shy-footed fawns</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Safe only in wildness from the old hunter, Time,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To be assured in shadow of the heart’s solitude,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where joy finds joy that never Time records.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">They have made virgin words of that soiled alphabet</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Wherewith have been written histories of sorrow,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Labour and long defeat, and proud and vain conquest;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And all their lore is those sufficing words.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Magnificent they match the music of a name</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Against abhorred Silence and terrors of the abyss,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The trust of a smile against all-ignoring Night,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And one low voice against Oblivion’s greed.</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">Difference drew them to the enamoured wrestle,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Chosen, inevitable dear antagonists;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">They cry one to the other; ‘Alone I was not I,’</div> + <div class="verse indent0">‘O lovely danger!’ and ‘O my angel need!’</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Because thy sweetness is so troubling and so sharp,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Full of blood-thrilling strangeness, unexplored peril,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Never to be possessed, always to be desired,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thou unknown world, I will dare all for thee.’</div> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Though in a moment thou hast made me to forget</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All that I was and had, triumphing I hold thee;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To thy darkness of strength I give and commit me;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Here is thy world, O sail upon my sea!’</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">As the East that quickens and flushes to the height</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Answering the ardour of the West, and as a rose</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Quivers on the western cloud before the dayspring,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Divided as the East and West they are:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But upon ways invisible to mortal sense</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Moves their bright union, where was created new</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Love’s wondrous world; from the darkness it emerges;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">It is their Evening and their Morning Star.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Out of the hollows of unpenetrated Night</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From afar calls to them, though they have known it not,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A voice that is theirs, yet is not theirs, a new voice</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Never yet heard, yet older than all things;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Laughter of a child’s voice, sweeter than any sound</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On the earth or in the air, voice of eternal joy,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Victorious over the bowed wisdom of mortals,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A well beyond the world, that springs and sings.</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span></p> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="III_THE_UNDISCOVERED_WORLD">III. THE UNDISCOVERED WORLD</h2> +</div> + +<div> + <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_025.jpg" width="65" height="65" alt="drop-cap"> +</div> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0 drop-cap"><span class="upper-case">O in</span> a living stream to bathe</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That runs its course from spring to sea!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And O to cast this aching mesh</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of iron bands that starkly swathe</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Limbs that labour, neck to knee!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To feel the wind upon the flesh,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Wind that was before man was,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Blowing out of blue divine;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Feel the feet on morning grass</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lightly firm, and body bare</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over-showered with beams so fine</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As cleanse the very heart of care!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sages, had you found but this</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For the mind, so it could use</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What the body knows of bliss</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When all thought it loves to lose</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Merely poising in the sun,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sure of powers a-spring within it</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Rippling out to leap and run,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Like for memory’s waiting ear</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Silence, ere the music win it:—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When unreasoned joy alone</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Brims the body, itself its own</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Infinity unquestioning;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Careless, Life is O so near,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Death a legendary thing,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Breath and blood like bells that ring;—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sages, had you art to find</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Such a glory for the mind,</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">Not with eyes that are too wise</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But the lover’s wonder-vision</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Seeing far and seeing near</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As within one radiant sphere</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All things living, joined and whole,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Bloomed with light of Paradise;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sages then—but who has taught</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Such an end for labouring thought,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Such a nakedness of soul;—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What but probing, doubting, and division?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hark, on iron iron’s endless clamour!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The hours, the hours, drive swifter than we strain—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Earth changes not, but who has changed us,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As if a Fury with a shadowy hammer</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nailed the nails into the fiery brain?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Who has estranged us?</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">What dark enemy within</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Makes of Earth an enemy?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is it not he who sought of old</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Secrets of her wealth to win,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hot with greed and overbold,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Aching to possess her? he,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Searching labyrinthine veins,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thirsted for yet rarer gains,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And through patient nights perused</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Each divided element,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Curious of that pregnant dust</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which with intent hand he bruised;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Crucibled in fire the grains</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That should subtly be cajoled</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In the end to yield his lust</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">Feasts of gold—a continent</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Molten into dazzling gold!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">(Were not heard the Sirens then</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Deriding the poor dreams of men?)</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nay, but he would scrutinize</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Even Night’s deep-ordered scheme,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And spell his own proud destinies</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In scripture of the starry stream.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Coveting what power those skies</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Might enthrone, he sought a charm</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That should warp them and should woo.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To his use, and by such aid</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To disimperil of one harm</div> + <div class="verse indent0">This brief body, would undo</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A universe. And he arrayed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In a constellated robe</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His heaven-projected effigy,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Because his spirit was afraid</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of its nakedness, nor dared</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Terrors of the truth to probe;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Rather chose itself to ensky</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In a dream. But no night bared</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To him her grandeur, swerved no spheres</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To the wrench of human fears.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Earth and Night to crave of lust</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Yield but fruitlessness and dust;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Dust to lust, to greed a weed!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Mockers rise from those forgotten years:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">‘This is he, the self-dupe, still the same</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Vaunter of a world of his defiling!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Claiming heavens, with only will to maim.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Who is this to own an earth’s empire,</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">In whose blood is mud, and this aviling</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Squalor of desire?’</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Lo, with feet on fiery ashes</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Earth’s foiled master casts his eyes</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Round his world-abode. Time’s heir,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Freed by blood of martyrs, wise</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With myriad lives of thought and care,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Into Doubt’s dim future gropes,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Black with omen, lit with flashes!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lo, beneath his heaven of hopes</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Falling palaces of dream,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Proudly pillared; regions wreckt,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Peopled with stray flames that seem</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hot greeds from his burning brain</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the very earth infect.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lo, like bodies for his fear</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Shadowy shapes of force insane</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Menacing in murk appear,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Primed with energy to kill,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Engines of his intellect,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Incarnations of his will!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Those old siren-songs of air</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Change into a song abhorred,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Chanting softly, Revel, Lord!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Triumph, Master! This you sought!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">This your own proud hands have wrought!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Now the lover’s loathing taste</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Comes on him for what he burned</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So imperiously to clutch.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where is now the bliss embraced,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where the conquest? At a touch</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">All’s to desolation turned.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is it he, or Earth, betrays?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">She that seemed to sting him on</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To possession, once possessed,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Dispossesses him. Her breast</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Stony grows, and hard her gaze.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">—Yet, oh, could she again be wooed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In her own, her chosen ways,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Shall she not transform her mood,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Glorify with truth his quest,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Give, as lovers give, entire</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Body to body, mind to mind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ay, and more than these can find,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Spirit to spirit? Beauty of Desire,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Beauty beyond possession still is breathing,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Beauty in us defaced!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O secret spring eternal, muddied here,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Soiled and sunken, troubled into seething!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Torrent of Desire, by greed and fear</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Spilled into waste!</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span></p> + +<p>III. 2</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Be still! Wash out this dull roar from the ear</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That fevers Time; be emptied the hot brain</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of clamorous, intricately-teasing toil.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Let spiritual Silence brim again</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The mind’s well to a mirror virgin-clear;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All these invented cares smoothe and uncoil.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Contemplate Silence; the wild Silence, ere</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Music or word was; waste, unshapen sound;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Crying of wind; moaning of sea; stammer of storm;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Gropings as for a being nowhere found;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Mateless desires, frustrated throbs of air,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Without home, without form.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">They sought a lodge in haunted flesh, they sought</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The inward tingling sense’s touched accord;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To be delivered, to be born perfect</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On shapes of lips, a breathed, a living word,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A flower that seeds its riches, thought from thought,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Incarnate sound, mysterious and elect.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Contemplate Silence! The unwithered womb</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of all music infinite as desire;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All words, releasing tears and bliss; all song,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That wins at last a universe for choir,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And there the enlarged spirit has full room,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">There its desires and its delights belong.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">All speech, all song, all music still unborn,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Waits there for its futurity of mind</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To become human; yet it holds some tone</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">Drawn from a something vaster than mankind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As from profounder heart-strings torn,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And yet complete in man alone;</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">As if behind him travailing, the whole</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Dark world were seeking in this eloquent flesh</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Some other self, and sighing here to be</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Born afresh, born afresh;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To win a world yet undiscovered in the soul:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">‘O Voice,’ it cries, ‘utter; O Hands, deliver me!’</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">With such a dark quest in desirous eyes,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From the ancient East, as through a silent gate</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In the mind’s city and labyrinth of thought,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Those Magian Kings, of knowledge satiate,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of riches satiate, and forlornly wise,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Down desert gorges brought</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Gifts for the Unknown: nay, but Earth from far</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In yearning sent them, her ambassadors.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Rocks opened veins of gold, trees oozed their blood,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Spices sighed, gems burned up from cavern-floors,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The very Night had made Desire a star,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That over against them, strange and certain, stood;</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">And thither laden with Earth’s hope and want,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Her symbol’d sighs and riches of her pain,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Down separate passes of the mountain streaming</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Wound onward each amid his marvelling train,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Those sages drawn from towers of midnight haunt</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By their prophetic dreaming;</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">And trumpet thrilled to trumpet thro’ the night,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And torches told of glistering strange attire,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where met those three kings on one errand led.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What image shaped they of the World’s Desire,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What presence throned in majesty and might,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As they went musing, deep in hope and dread,</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">And under vast cope of the wheeling skies</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Found but a naked child, a child new-born?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Wisdom resigned the crown of her enthroning;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All her impassioned question was forsworn:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In wonder she saw all things with new eyes.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Then, there were songs of joy; now, sound of a world groaning.</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span></p> + +<p>III. 3</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Mystery of Dawn, ere yet the glory streams</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Risen over earth, and pauses in that hush</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When far, as from an ecstasy, clouds flush,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And hills lift up their pureness into dreams</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of light that not yet colours the cold flower,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the earth-clasping, heaven-desiring tree</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Trembles in virginal expectancy—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What breath of the unknown Power</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is this that, spirit to spirit, as with a spousal kiss</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Comes seeking us, even us, through shadow and dew,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Seeking in this soiled flesh what undiscovered world</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Beyond tears, beyond bliss, beyond wisdom, beyond</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Time? what recaptured harmony of earth and heaven?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What world made new?</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">A world so strange, the spirit thrills to flame,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Transfigured in a wonder of release!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A world so near, it has no other name</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Than light and breath! Where lost we, then, this peace?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Wanting what charm to cleanse</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Our eyes? To see; is this the last of gifts,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That, as the scales drop, the heart so uplifts?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O world where no possession is of men’s,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where the will rages not with fever to destroy</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Differing wills, or warp another life to its use,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But each lives in the light of its own joy!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In one wide vision all have share, and we in all,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Infinitely companioned with the stars, the dust,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Beasts of the field, and stones, and flowers that fall!</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">This body that we use seems in that air</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Marvellous; secret from ourselves; a power</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Without which were no speech, nor deed done anywhere,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nor could thought range and tower,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nor seed be sown for the unborn time to reap;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whose natural motion was ordained to be</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Beautiful as a wave out of a sea</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Boundless as mind asleep;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So passionately shaped, in every part perfect,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Universes are wounded in its abasement,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Crying from stone to star;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The unimagined height, the immeasurable deep,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hungers, abysses, heavens, millions of ghosts from far</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Meet in this body born to laugh and weep.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Weep; not for the endured, ancestral ill,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Perils and plagues, that ambush all our ways,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Time’s injury, and pain’s deep-wandered maze;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">These need not eyes to see, but only flesh to feel.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But of the eternal vision to partake,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And see what we have done, and what refused,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To what accepted blindness we grow used,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And what marred shapes of one another make,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">This is to weep such tears as no flesh-throes have cost,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Weep for our loves, our loves, that we ourselves have slain,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The powers of loveliness that we have left forlorn.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Eyes we had and saw not, ears and we did not hear!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ah, when the heart, full-visioned, breaks in shame and pain,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Then is the world’s hope born.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">The cry of desolation turns to praise.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">If falsehood first enchant the eager mind,</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">And if desire be cruel, being blind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Each by its own infirmity betrays,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And some profounder, more imperious need</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Drives through all smart, whatever world to lose,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The pure vision to choose,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And tho’ Truth kill, there in the end be freed.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Open, open, gates of deliverance, open!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">See, liberated spirits, see, victorious ones,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For testimony of us from homes of glory shine,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Vindicators of this brief flesh, they mingle us,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Soiled and despoiled,—with beauty and with felicity,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And sting us from afar with the Divine.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Hands of men stretched out in so dark a craving!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Baffled heart, clouded vision; filled with ache</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To know you have maimed the world you sought to make</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Your instrument and minister, enslaving</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Powers of earth and air—Hands that have wrought</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So glorious things, the thoughts of joy to house!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Heart that has pulsed so ardent for its vow’s</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Accomplishment,—O heart so hardly taught!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O stretched-out hands! of you Eternity has need.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Give but your sacred passion and your shaping art,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The hunger of Eternity is there,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Barren else, barren: chaos and a wilderness</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of feud and everlasting greed devouring greed,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The unshapen dream’s despair!</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Spirit of Man, dear spirit, sore opprest</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With self-estrangement, and mis-choosing will,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And all satiety of gainful skill,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Possession that was never yet possessed,—</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">You that have been so great a lover, giving</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In innocency all for sacrifice;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whom neither Time nor earth’s regions suffice—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">You too are sought, where still your dream is living.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over the secret oceans of uncharted mind</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Who knows what voyagers, what sails invisibly</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Press on, for all the lost, the foundered hopes untrue?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Who knows, through ignorant mists and storm upon that sea</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What Lover, what unweariable Adventurer,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Makes still his quest of you?</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">O world that is within us, yet must still</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Out of the eternal mystery be wooed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ere it be ours and, breathing in the blood,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Live in its beauty, as the miracle</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of the divine colour of flowers in night</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Was not, and is not of themselves alone</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nor of the dawn-beam, but of both made one,—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A marriage-mystery of earth and light!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O undiscovered world that all about us lies</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When spirit to Spirit surrenders, and like young Love sees</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Heaven with human eyes!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">World of radiant morning! Joy’s untravelled region!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Why lies it solitary? and O why tarry we?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Why daily wander out from Paradise?</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span></p> + +<p>III. 4</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">World-besieging Storm, from horizon heaped and menacing</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Rear up the walls of thunder, till they tower</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Shattering over earth, and from heart to heart reverberate,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lancing that bright fear through the ruin-shower!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Revel, Winds, severing the bough of leafy promises</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With rages from returning chaos sent!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Mockers and Destroyers, come; here is Man, predestinate</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To all your arrows at his bosom bent.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Strip him of his splendours, of his conquests and dominions,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His secure boast to be earth’s lord enthroned,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Humble him: he stands forth greater in his nakedness</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Than in the wealth and safety that he owned.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He that has so loved peril in all experience,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He that has gone with Sorrow all her way,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Will not now refuse or shrink; prove him to the innermost,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With worse than worst confront him: come what may,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lo, you awake, O Trumpets of Calamity,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Some fragment of old Darkness in his breast;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lo, to him fraternal is the stony and the terrible place:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His stricken Genius out of deeps unguessed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Rises up, grappling his reality to reality,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And still the secret in himself explores,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Bound beyond fear, the discovered and discoverer,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And in his own soul touches farthest shores.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Though he be stript of all, Powers from far replenish him,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Powers of the streaming worlds that through him stream.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O throbbing heart, O lifted arms, O tenderness,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O only capable of grief supreme!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O earth for ever mingled with unearthliness</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Because the eternal with the brief is twined!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Wonder of breath that is momentary and tremulous</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">Suffices him who breathes eternal mind.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Vision that dawns beyond knowledge shall deliver him</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From all that flattered, threatened, foiled, betrayed.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lo, having nothing, he is free of all the universe,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And where light is, he enters unafraid.</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> +<br> +<br> + +<p class="center no-indent fs80">THE END</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<figure class="figcenter illowp20" id="i_039" style="max-width: 14.625em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i_039.jpg" alt="Decoration"> +</figure> +</div> + +<p class="center no-indent fs80"> +LONDON: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND GRIGGS (PRINTERS), LTD.<br> +CHISWICK PRESS, TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.<br> +</p> +<br> +<br> + +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75422 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/75422-h/images/cover.jpg b/75422-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..a8340cf --- /dev/null +++ b/75422-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/75422-h/images/decoration.jpg b/75422-h/images/decoration.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..0648f31 --- /dev/null +++ b/75422-h/images/decoration.jpg diff --git a/75422-h/images/i_001.jpg b/75422-h/images/i_001.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..966482f --- /dev/null +++ b/75422-h/images/i_001.jpg diff --git a/75422-h/images/i_004.jpg b/75422-h/images/i_004.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..4f4f1e8 --- /dev/null +++ b/75422-h/images/i_004.jpg diff --git a/75422-h/images/i_017.jpg b/75422-h/images/i_017.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..0c78b5f --- /dev/null +++ b/75422-h/images/i_017.jpg diff --git a/75422-h/images/i_025.jpg b/75422-h/images/i_025.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..0a581de --- /dev/null +++ b/75422-h/images/i_025.jpg diff --git a/75422-h/images/i_039.jpg b/75422-h/images/i_039.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9f3a6f6 --- /dev/null +++ b/75422-h/images/i_039.jpg diff --git a/75422-h/images/i_ii.jpg b/75422-h/images/i_ii.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..6d5ea43 --- /dev/null +++ b/75422-h/images/i_ii.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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