35 Sonnets | Page 2

mask feels no inside to the mask?But looks out of the mask by co-masked eyes.?Whatever consciousness begins the task?The task's accepted use to sleepness ties.?Like a child frighted by its mirrored faces,?Our souls, that children are, being thought-losing,?Foist otherness upon their seen grimaces?And get a whole world on their forgot causing;?And, when a thought would unmask our soul's masking,?Itself goes not unmasked to the unmasking.
IX.
Oh to be idle loving idleness!?But I am idle all in hate of me;?Ever in action's dream, in the false stress?Of purposed action never set to be.?Like a fierce beast self-penned in a bait-lair,?My will to act binds with excess my action,?Not-acting coils the thought with raged despair,?And acting rage doth paint despair distraction.?Like someone sinking in a treacherous sand,?Each gesture to deliver sinks the more;?The struggle avails not, and to raise no hand,?Though but more slowly useless, we've no power.?Hence live I the dead life each day doth bring,?Repurposed for next day's repurposing.
X.
As to a child, I talked my heart asleep?With empty promise of the coming day,?And it slept rather for my words made sleep?Than from a thought of what their sense did say.?For did it care for sense, would it not wake?And question closer to the morrow's pleasure??Would it not edge nearer my words, to take?The promise in the meting of its measure??So, if it slept, 'twas that it cared but for?The present sleepy use of promised joy,?Thanking the fruit but for the forecome flower?Which the less active senses best enjoy.?Thus with deceit do I detain the heart?Of which deceit's self knows itself a part.
XI.
Like to a ship that storms urge on its course,?By its own trials our soul is surer made.?The very things that make the voyage worse?Do make it better; its peril is its aid.?And, as the storm drives from the storm, our heart?Within the peril disimperilled grows;?A port is near the more from port we part--?The port whereto our driven direction goes.?If we reap knowledge to cross-profit, this?From storms we learn, when the storm's height doth drive--?That the black presence of its violence is?The pushing promise of near far blue skies.?Learn we but how to have the pilot-skill,?And the storm's very might shall mate our will.
XII.
As the lone, frighted user of a night-road?Suddenly turns round, nothing to detect,?Yet on his fear's sense keepeth still the load?Of that brink-nothing he doth but suspect;?And the cold terror moves to him more near?Of something that from nothing casts a spell,?That, when he moves, to fright more is not there,?And's only visible when invisible?So I upon the world turn round in thought,?And nothing viewing do no courage take,?But my more terror, from no seen cause got,?To that felt corporate emptiness forsake,?And draw my sense of mystery's horror from?Seeing no mystery's mystery alone.
XIII.
When I should be asleep to mine own voice?In telling thee how much thy love's my dream,?I find me listening to myself, the noise?Of my words othered in my hearing them.?Yet wonder not: this is the poet's soul.?I could not tell thee well of how I love,?Loved I not less by knowing it, were all?My self my love and no thought love to prove.?What consciousness makes more by consciousness,?It makes less, for it makes it less itself,?My sense of love could not my love rich-dress?Did it not for it spend love's own love-pelf.?Poet's love's this (as in these words I prove thee):?I love my love for thee more than I love thee.
XIV.
We are born at sunset and we die ere morn,?And the whole darkness of the world we know,?How can we guess its truth, to darkness born,?The obscure consequence of absent glow??Only the stars do teach us light. We grasp?Their scattered smallnesses with thoughts that stray,?And, though their eyes look through night's complete mask,?Yet they speak not the features of the day.?Why should these small denials of the whole?More than the black whole the pleased eyes attract??Why what it calls ?worth? does the captive soul?Add to the small and from the large detract??So, put of light's love wishing it night's stretch,?A nightly thought of day we darkly reach.
XV.
Like a bad suitor desperate and trembling?From the mixed sense of being not loved and loving,?Who with feared longing half would know, dissembling?With what he'd wish proved what he fears soon proving,?I look with inner eyes afraid to look,?Yet perplexed into looking, at the worth?This verse may have and wonder, of my book,?To what thoughts shall't in alien hearts give birth.?But, as he who doth love, and, loving, hopes,?Yet, hoping, fears, fears to put proof to proof,?And in his mind for possible proofs gropes,?Delaying the true proof, lest the real thing scoff,?I daily live, i'th' fame I dream to see,?But by my thought of others' thought of me.
XVI.
We never joy enjoy to that full point?Regret doth wish joy had enjoyèd been,?Nor have the strength regret to disappoint?Recalling