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Robert Laurence Binyon - The Mirror
Work rating: Low

I
 Where is all the beauty that hath been?
 Where the bloom?
 Dust on boundless wind? Grass dropt into fire?
 Shall Earth boast at last of all her teeming womb,
 All that suffered, all that triumphed to inspire
 Life in perfect mould and speech, the proud mind`s lamp serene--
 Nothing? Space be starry in tremendous choir--
 For whom?

 In this deserted chamber, as the evening falls,
 Silent curtains move no fold;
 Long has ebbed the floor`s pale gold;
 Shadows deepen down the silent walls.
 The air is mute as dreams beneath a sleeper`s face,
 Distant, undivined;
 But every hovering shadow seems to hold
 Want untold.
 The look of things forsaken, each in its own place,
 Memories without home in any mind,
 Idle, rich neglect and perfume old--
 Over these the glimmer of the twilight fades;
 Infinite human solitude invades
 Forms relinquished, hues resigned.

 O little mirror, round and clear,
 In solemn--coloured shadow lying
 Cold as the moon, pale as a tear,
 With spiritual silver beam replying,
 Indifferently to all things as to one;
 Beauty`s relic and oblivion,
 But void, void, void! Desolate as a cave
 Abandoned even of the breaking wave,
 A home of youth and mirth, when all its guests are gone!
 As I touch thee in the silence here,
 Where thou liest alone, apart,
 Through the silence of my heart
 Thou flashest elfin flames of fear.

 Like a thought of lost delight,
 Like love--sweetness, like despair,
 Come faint spices of the night
 Floating on the darkened air.
 The air is tender with the sense of dew,
 Is tranced, is dim, is heavy, as if there hung
 Within the tinges of its shadowy hue
 Ghosts of lost flowers, with all their petals young,
 And the young beauty they made incense to.

 O forlorn mirror, is there nothing thine?
 The cup is emptied of its fragrant wine,
 The dress is vacant of the breathing form,
 And thou that gleam`st
 All absence of what once moved gracious, white and warm
 In thy clear wells, or luminously mused,
 O little mirror long disused,
 Laid in this empty bower`s recess,
 Thou thyself seem`st
 The soul and mystery of emptiness.

 Yet if I should raise thee now,
 As once and oft, thou knowest how,
 Hand and slim wrist, smooth as a flower--stem, raised
 Thy silent radiance, and with intent brow
 Eyes within thee gazed
 Seeking thine oracle,
 Shall not from these pellucid secrecies appear
 Not I, nor any shape of this dim room,
 But all that in thy cave of lambent gloom
 Hath dwelt and still may dwell,
 Ambushed like visions bound in sleeping memory`s cell;
 All that thy brightness buries as the sea
 Tossed bones and crusted gold: had I the key,
 Might`st thou not open depths, might`st thou not yield,
 Wonder of wonders! what since time began
 Was never yet revealed,
 The unmapped, unmeasured, secret heart of man?
 Half--shut eyes voluptuously
 Lightening, as the bosom swells and glows;
 Smile to smile flowering from an ardent thought:
 O what moments didst thou deify
 With the promise of life crushed to wine
 Redder than the cheek`s triumphant rose!
 --But from deeper places hast thou brought
 Nothing? Are not other answers thine?

 Hast thou not heard, hast thou not seen,
 Hast thou not shown, hast thou not found
 Shames unwhispered, terrors bound,
 Earthquake pangs of aghast surmise,
 When with itself the heart has been
 Face to face in an hour profound?
 Out of thee what ghosts shall rise,
 Shapes and gestures, and accusing eyes!
 World--flattered faces in midnights of pain;
 Faces defaced by tiger--lusts insane;
 Faces appalled before a self unguessed;
 Ashaming dawns on faces fallen and dispossessed!
 O what glimpses hast thou flashed in dread,
 With what hauntings wast thou visited,
 Apparitions of a soul made bare
 Shuddering at the thing it looked on there!
 But thou art stainless, though the heart has bled,
 Thou art silent as the air
 Or the wave that closes smooth above the drowner`s head.

 No man hath seen his soul
 Save for a glimpse in the night
 Brief as an ember of coal
 Blown for an instant bright.
 To see his own soul as it is,
 Eternity must enter him
 With the torches of Seraphim
 That have shone to the last abyss.
 Mirror, couldst thou show the spirit this,
 Then within this narrow room
 Were the Judgment and the Doom.
 For by so much as its own self it knew,
 Searched by that burning vision through and through
 To the innermost of where it crouched and hid
 Amid the husks of the mean deeds it did,
 Amid the shadow of all it shunned, the quest
 It turned from, and in palterings acquiesced,
 To the uttermost of what its eager passion
 Caught of the glory springing to re--fashion
 Hope and the world, and great with pity saw
 Life darkly wrestling with the angel, Law--
 By such a measure, molten in that fire,
 Should the soul mete itself on God`s desire,
 Suffer at last all wisdom, and endure
 The beam and vision of a thought all--pure.
 O were not this to taste Heaven`s dawn, or dwell,
 Because of knowledge, in the pains of Hell?


II
 Where is all the wailing, all the want
 That sorrow tore
 From Love`s bleeding breast? Extinguished quite?
 Shall the wide--winged glory of hope extravagant,
 Shall the laughter, shall the song that sprang to soar
 Fall, and no ear hearken, and their falling flight
 Echoless waste walls of adamant
 Ignore?

 Draw wide the curtain! Fabulous, remote
 Night is come.
 Over Earth`s lost bosom fragrant breathings float
 Into glimmering heights of gloom,
 But upon the solitary verge extreme
 Steals a beam.
 Hushed and sudden, ere the eye could note,
 Lo, the moon is there!
 Innocence of splendour, gazing bare,
 Drenches leaves in quiet, thought in dream.

 Is it Earth`s pale mirror lifted lone
 For an answer to her million sighs?
 Can that far Tranquillity atone
 In the gaze of those unnumbered eyes
 For the pang and for the moan,
 For the heart`s dim burial and long dirge,
 Luring, as she lures the mutinous sea--surge,
 To her will of peace this human tide?
 From a charmed shadow on the shorn hill--side
 Hand--in--hand lovers through the trees emerge,
 And pause; their very souls are glorified,
 Their feet tread airy on immaterial ground,
 With marvelling gaze they feel
 That well of spiritual light o`erflow
 The listening hush, and steal
 Fear and trouble, as though
 The world were one vast music of ethereal sound
 And they a stillness in the midst of it.
 Peace, peace and pity! pardon, pity, peace,
 Passing all mortal wit!
 O truth long--sought and magically found,
 O wonder and release!
 O secret of the world long--hidden in day`s dust!
 They bathe their hearts in that sweet dew, their hands
 Thrill clasping in a touch that understands
 Nothing magnificent but a divine surrender
 Absolving and august.
 To distances immersed and tender
 Unfolds this vale of struggle hard and pent,
 Region of unwon ravishment
 In unadventured lands,
 A place of leaves and lonely light and leafy scent
 Storied like that old forest of the perilous Fleece.

 Sorceress of million nights!
 Hast thou charmed indeed the brew,
 When the stealth of perverse rites--
 Mouths that mutter, hands that strew,--
 Love tormented and malign,
 Flushed with terror like a maddening wine,
 Sought another`s rue?
 Hecate of the cross--roads, hast thou hearkened
 To the sailing witch`s mew
 And the felon raven`s croak
 When the shuddering winds were darkened
 And the leaves rushed from the withered oak?
 Ah, not these foul toys would I invoke!
 O for some supreme enchanting spell,
 Voice of a God crying aloud,
 Felt and feared on Earth`s heart--strings,
 To conjure and to compel
 Like a spectre from the shroud
 Or like incense--dust that springs
 Into fire and fragrant cloud,
 Out of thy blind caves and cold recesses,
 Out of that blank mirror`s desert beam
 All the unnumbered longings and wild prayers,
 Infinite heart--broken tendernesses,
 Indignations and despairs
 That from man`s long wound of passion stream,
 Sucked like vapour, like a mist of tears
 Into that imagined peace, that ecstasy!
 O surely, surely, thou hast wrought thy part
 In every secret and tempestuous heart,
 Thou that hast gleamed on thousand battle--crimsoned spears,
 Thou that wast radiant on Gethsemane!

 She has seen not, she has heard not.
 Hearts have leapt for her, but she has stirred not.
 Pity she has made, but none has had,
 Though her magic mingles with Earth`s want
 And the trouble of Earth`s tender sons,
 Thunder of the builded Babylons,
 Music of the dreaming poet`s chant,
 Venture of the steering argosies,
 With a light as of divine fulfilment clad
 Breathing in for ever syllables of peace.
 Peace, is it peace? Yet Earth, dark Earth,
 Mother, O Mother, thou that nourishest
 In the blind patience of thy teeming breast
 Hope without end; who drivest life to birth,
 Yet numberest not our dear and sacred dead,
 Unheeding of our anguish and lost cries
 So thou mayst build beyond us, in our stead,
 A race enriched with all for which we bled,
 Of haughtier stature and of kinglier eyes;
 Thou of whose vast desire strong realms of old,
 The dynasty of empires, were but waves
 That towered and crashed into their splendid graves,
 For thine unresting hunger to remould
 Yet mightier, O insatiable! Doth fear
 Not shake thee, Mother, seest thou not ev`n here
 In that cold mirror`s answer what shall steep
 Thee also in oblivion? Thou shalt keep
 Of all the fruit of thy most fiery spring,
 Stored riches of thy sleepless trafficking,
 And proud perfection thou hast travailed for,
 Nothing! The beauty that thy body bore
 Fresh and exulting (Mother, dost not weep?)
 Laughter of streams, young flowers, and starry seas,
 Pillar and palace, heaven--faced images
 That man has wrought, his tossing heart to ease,
 Nothing! To cloud shall vanish the deed done;
 The bannered victory, the wrong borne alone,
 Nothing! and thou be desolate and none
 To feel thy desolation: emptiness,
 Night within night, immense and issueless,
 Till as a breath upon the mirror dies,
 Fades the last smoke of thy long sacrifice.

 Out of the deeps, trembling, the soul
 Cries through night to the silent pole:
 ``I that am want, I that am grief,
 I that am love, I that am mirth,
 I that am fear, I that am fire,
 Though thou clothe me in beauty brief,
 Though I have worn thy sweet attire,
 I, thy endless sorrow, Earth,
 Dwell in the glory of God`s desire,
 That kneads for ever in the flesh
 Of man, to make his spirit afresh,
 A marvel more than all thy wandering seas,
 And mightier than thy caverned mysteries,
 Nor stays nor sleeps, but world on world transfuses
 Melted ever to diviner uses,
 Through infinite swift changes burning,
 Itself the end, no end discerning,
 Till all the universe be wrought
 Into its far perfecting thought.
 Then this mind of cloud and rue
 Shall in eternal mind be new,
 Mirror of God, pure and alone,
 See and be seen, know and be known.``
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