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Robert Laurence Binyon - The Sirens
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An Ode
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 unscaled 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

I.1
 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 choirs.
 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

II.1
 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 feared not, dreamed not, named 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

III.1
 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
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