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Robert Laurence Binyon - Unsated Memory
Work rating: Low

Emerging from deep sleep my eyes unseal
 To a pursuing strangeness. O to be
 Where but a moment past I was, though where
 The place, the time I know not, only feel
 Far from this banished and so shrunken me,
 Struck conscious to the alien dawn`s blank peer!

 Between two worlds, homeless, I doubt of both,
 Knowing only that I seemed possessing realms
 And now have nothing. In this glimmering cave
 Of daylight, whither I return so loath,
 The emptiness of silence overwhelms;--
 Still, vision--haunted, like the blind, I crave.

 For splendour beats along my blood in gleams
 As of a skyey largeness closed and lost,
 That memory torments itself to clutch,
 Hungering unsated for that light of dreams
 Pursued down shadowy paths that foil, exhaust,
 And lose me in a cloud I cannot touch.

 Fixed as in frost the motionless dim shape
 Of each accustomed thing about my bed
 Is like an enmity at watch for stale
 Habit to repossess me past escape.
 In the dead light all seems apart and dead,
 Yet menaces. The ticked hour is my jail.

 Yet I had sense as of a forge whose blast
 Could fuse this stark world into glorious flow
 Of young power streaming irresistible,
 And I, dilated, roamed a region vast,
 Feasting in vision, with a soul aglow,
 And Time a steed to pace or race at will.

 Where is that world that I am fallen from?
 Look, as a sea--weed left at ebb to pine
 Hueless and shrunken, that had liberty
 To wander sparkle--fresh in its own foam,
 Trailing its rosy hair in the long brine,
 So am I cast up; from what haunted sea?

 An ocean of the mind, without access
 Save in the labyrinths of sleep, a main
 Deep with the memory of all memories,
 Thoughts, and imaginations numberless
 That ever lodged in the brief--living brain,
 Washing our sun--lit ignorance: was it this?

 Then miserable I, that have but sucked
 Dull oozings, vanished into vaporous dew,
 From springs that custom closes like a stone
 And leaden fear and clayey doubt obstruct.
 Heir of the earth`s youth and of all it knew,
 What am I but a vessel charged with oblivion?

 Ah, surely I was rather native there
 Where all desires were lovely, and the power
 Of Time irrevocably creeping sure
 Was uncreated, than in this numb air
 Of mapped days and of hour pursuing hour,
 Endless impediment and forfeiture.

 O we go shrouded from ourselves, and hide
 The soul from its own splendour, and encrust
 The virgin sense with thinking. Then some chance
 Moment reveals us: we are deified,
 Feeling and seeing; gold gleams from the rust;
 And, marvelling at our lost inheritance,

 We breathe the air of beauty; we regale
 The mind with innocence; joy has no stint;
 And we are chartered for the world`s wide sea,
 Reason the rudder, not the sky--filled sail.--
 Still clings about us some imputing hint
 Of strangeness, even in self--captivity.

 Before me comes a vision of the old,
 With dear experience sunken in their eyes
 And furrowed on their faces; scarce a spark
 Betrays the quick fire that once made them bold.
 All their strength`s only for that enterprise
 Which takes them soon into the engulfing dark.

 I think of old ships stranded, how they stir
 The mind to see their beauty in its decay.
 For they, unmemoried and mute, have been
 Companions of the wild winds without fear,
 And carried far adventure, who shall say
 Into what glories we have never seen?
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