Moments of Vision | Page 8

lures life on.
Show me again the day
When from the sandy bay
We looked

together upon the pestered sea! -
Yea, to such surging, swaying,
sighing, swelling, shrinking,
Love lures life on.
Show me again the hour
When by the pinnacled tower
We eyed
each other and feared futurity! -
Yea, to such bodings, broodings,
beatings, blanchings, blessings,
Love lures life on.
Show me again just this:
The moment of that kiss
Away from the
prancing folk, by the strawberry-tree! -
Yea, to such rashness,
ratheness, rareness, ripeness, richness,
Love lures life on.
Begun November 1898.
"IN THE SEVENTIES"
"Qui deridetur ab amico suo sicut ego."--JOB.
In the seventies I was bearing in my breast,
Penned tight,
Certain starry thoughts that threw a magic light
On
the worktimes and the soundless hours of rest
In the seventies; aye, I
bore them in my breast
Penned tight.
In the seventies when my neighbours--even my friend -
Saw me pass,
Heads were shaken, and I heard the words, "Alas,
For
his onward years and name unless he mend!"
In the seventies, when
my neighbours and my friend
Saw me pass.

In the seventies those who met me did not know
Of the vision
That immuned me from the chillings of mis-prision

And the damps that choked my goings to and fro
In the seventies; yea,
those nodders did not know
Of the vision.
In the seventies nought could darken or destroy it,
Locked in me,
Though as delicate as lamp-worm's lucency;
Neither
mist nor murk could weaken or alloy it
In the seventies!--could not
darken or destroy it,
Locked in me.
THE PEDIGREE
I
I bent in the deep of night
Over a pedigree the chronicler gave
As
mine; and as I bent there, half-unrobed,
The uncurtained panes of my
window-square let in the watery light
Of the moon in its old age:
And green-rheumed clouds were hurrying
past where mute and cold it globed
Like a drifting dolphin's eye seen through a lapping wave.
II
So, scanning my sire-sown tree,
And the hieroglyphs of this spouse
tied to that,
With offspring mapped below in lineage,
Till the tangles troubled me,

The branches seemed to twist into a seared and cynic face
Which winked and tokened towards the window like a Mage

Enchanting me to gaze again thereat.
III
It was a mirror now,
And in it a long perspective I could trace
Of
my begetters, dwindling backward each past each
All with the kindred look,
Whose names had since been inked down
in their place
On the recorder's book,
Generation and generation of my mien, and
build, and brow.
IV
And then did I divine
That every heave and coil and move I made

Within my brain, and in my mood and speech,
Was in the glass portrayed
As long forestalled by their so making it;

The first of them, the primest fuglemen of my line,
Being fogged
in far antiqueness past surmise and reason's reach.
V
Said I then, sunk in tone,
"I am merest mimicker and counterfeit! -
Though thinking, I AM I
AND WHAT I DO I DO MYSELF
ALONE."
--The cynic twist of the page thereat unknit
Back to its
normal figure, having wrought its purport wry,
The Mage's mirror left the window-square,
And the stained moon and
drift retook their places there.
1916.
THIS HEART
A WOMAN'S DREAM

At midnight, in the room where he lay dead
Whom in his life I had
never clearly read,
I thought if I could peer into that citadel
His heart, I should at last know full and well
What hereto had been known to him alone,
Despite our long sit-out of
years foreflown,
"And if," I said, "I do this for his memory's sake,
It would not wound him, even if he could wake."
So I bent over him. He seemed to smile
With a calm confidence the
whole long while
That I, withdrawing his heart, held it and, bit by bit,
Perused the unguessed things found written on it.
It was inscribed like a terrestrial sphere
With quaint vermiculations
close and clear -
His graving. Had I known, would I have risked the
stroke
Its reading brought, and my own heart nigh broke!
Yes, there at last, eyes opened, did I see
His whole sincere symmetric
history;
There were his truth, his simple singlemindedness,
Strained, maybe, by time's storms, but there no less.
There were the daily deeds from sun to sun
In blindness, but good
faith, that he had done;
There were regrets, at instances wherein he
swerved
(As he conceived) from cherishings I had deserved.
There were old hours all figured down as bliss -
Those spent with
me--(how little had I thought this!)
There those when, at my absence,
whether he slept or waked,
(Though I knew not 'twas so!) his spirit ached.

There that when we were severed, how day dulled
Till time joined us
anew, was chronicled:
And arguments and battlings in defence of me
That heart recorded clearly and ruddily.
I put it back, and left him as he lay
While pierced the morning pink
and then the gray
Into each dreary room and corridor around,
Where