Miscellany of Poetry | Page 2

test be tried!
Dare your uttermost, be
Completely, and of your own,
like him, be justified.
NUMBERS
Trefoil and Quatrefoil!
What shaped those destinied small silent
leaves
Or numbered them under the soil?
I lift my dazzled sight

From grass to sky,
From humming and hot perfume
To scorching,
quivering light,
Empty blue!--Why,
As I bury my face afresh
In a
sunshot vivid gloom--
Minute infinity's mesh,
Where spearing side
by side
Smooth stalk and furred uplift
Their luminous green secrets
from the grass,
Tower to a bud and delicately divide--
Do I think of
the things unthought
Before man was?
Bodiless Numbers!
When there was none to explore
Your winding
labyrinths occult,
None to delve your ore
Of strange virtue, or do

Your magical business, you
Were there, never old nor new,
Veined
in the world and alive:--
Before the Planets, Seven;

Before these
fingers, Five!

You that are globed and single,
Crystal virgins, and you that part,

Melt, and again mingle!
We have hoisted sail in the night
On the
oceans that you chart:
Dark winds carry us onward, on;
But you are
there before us, silent Answers,
Beyond the bounds of the sun.
You
body yourselves in the stars, inscrutable dancers,
Native where we are
none.
O inhuman Numbers!
All things change and glide,
Corrupt and
crumble, suffer wreck and decay,
But, obstinate dark Integrities, you
abide,
And obey but them who obey.
All things else are dyed
In
the colours of man's desire:
But you no bribe nor prayer
Avails to
soften or sway.
Nothing of me you share,
Yet I cannot think you
away.
And if I seek to escape you, still you are there
Stronger than
caging pillars of iron
Not to be passed, in an air
Where human wish
and word
Fall like a frozen bird.
Music asleep
In pulses of sound, in the waves!
Hidden runes rubbed
bright!
Dizzy ladders of thought in the night!
Are you masters or
slaves--
Subtlest of man's slaves,--
Shadowy Numbers?
In a vision I saw
Old vulture Time, feeding
On the flesh of the
world; I saw
The home of our use undated--
Seasons of fruiting and
seeding
Withered, and hunger and thirst
Dead, with all they fed on:

Till at last, when Time was sated,
Only you persisted,
Dædal
Numbers, sole and same,
Invisible skeleton frame

Of the peopled
earth we tread on--
Last, as first.
Because naught can avail
To wound or to tarnish you;
Because you
are neither sold nor bought,
Because you have not the power to fail

But live beyond our furthest thought,
Strange Numbers, of infinite
clue,
Beyond fear, beyond ruth,
You strengthen also me
To be in
my own truth.
THE CHILDREN DANCING

Away, sad thoughts, and teasing
Perplexities, away!
Let other blood
go freezing,
We will be wise and gay;
For here is all heart-easing,

An ecstasy at play!
The children dancing, dancing,
Light upon happy feet,
Both eye
and heart entrancing,
Mingle, escape, and meet,
Come joyous-eyed
advancing
And floatingly retreat.
Now slow, now swifter treading
Their paces timed and true,
An
instant poised, then threading
A maze of printless clue,
The music
smoothly wedding
To motions ever new.
They launch in chime, and scatter
In looping ripples; they
Are
Music's airy matter,
And their feet move, the way
The raindrops
shine and patter
On tossing flowers in May.
As if those flowers were singing
For joy of the bright air,
As if you
saw them springing
To dance the breeze--so fair
The lissom bodies
swinging,
So light the flung-back hair.
And through the mind enchanted
A happy river goes,
By its own
young carol haunted
And bringing, where it flows,
What all the
world has wanted
But who in this world knows?

F. V. BRANFORD
FAREWELL TO MATHEMATICS
I laboured on the anvil of my brain
And beat a metal out of pageantry.

Figure and form I carry in my train
To load the scaffolds of
Eternity.
Where the masters are
Building star on star;
Where, in
solemn ritual,
The great Dead Mathematical
Wait and wait and wait
for me.

To the deliberate presence of the Sun
(Bright cynosure of every
darkling sign,
Wherein all numbers consummate in One,)
Poised on
the bolt of an Un-finite line,
As one whose spirit's state,
Is unafraid
but desperate,
Through far unfathomed fears,
Through Time to
timeless years,
I soar, through Shade to Shine.
They say that on a night there came to Euler,
As eager-eyed he stared
upon a star,
And fought the far infinitude, a toiler
Like to himself
and me, for things that are
Buried from the eyes alone
Of men
whose sight is made of stone,
And led him out in ecstasy,
Over the
dim boundary
By the pale gleam of a scimitar.
Then Euler, mindful of thy lesser need,
Be thou my pilot in this
treacherous hour,
That I be less unworth thy greater meed,
O my
strong brother in the halls of power;
For here and hence I sail
Alone
beyond the pale.
Where square and circle coincide,
And the
parallels collide,
And perfect pyramids flower.
RETURN
The hearts of the mountains were void,
The sea spake foreign tongues,

From the speed of the wind I gat me no breath,
And the temples of
Time were as sepulchres.
I walked about the world in the midnight,

I stood under water, and over stars,
I cast Life from me,
I handled
Death,
I walked naked into lightning,
I had so great a thirst for God.

The heart of the Mountain overfloweth,
The sea speaketh clear words,

The Ark is brought to the Tabernacle.
Lightnings, that withered in
the sky,
Are become great beacons roaring in a wind
I