New Poems | Page 5

or stars
Narrow their
heaven to his fleshly vault:
When, like a city under ocean,
To
human things he grows a desolation,
And is made a habitation
For
the fluctuous universe
To lave with unimpeded motion.
He scarcely
frets the atmosphere
With breathing, and his body shares
The
immobility of rocks;
His heart's a drop-well of tranquillity;
His
mind more still is than the limbs of fear,
And yet its unperturbed

velocity
The spirit of the simoom mocks.
He round the solemn
centre of his soul
Wheels like a dervish, while his being is

Streamed with the set of the world's harmonies,
In the long draft of
whatsoever sphere
He lists the sweet and clear
Clangour of his high
orbit on to roll,
So gracious is his heavenly grace;
And the bold
stars does hear,
Every one in his airy soar,
For evermore
Shout to
each other from the peaks of space,
As thwart ravines of azure shouts
the mountaineer.
'BY REASON OF THY LAW'.
Here I make oath--
Although the heart that knows its bitterness

Hear loath,
And credit less--
That he who kens to meet Pain's kisses
fierce
Which hiss against his tears,
Dread, loss, nor love frustrate,

Nor all iniquity of the froward years
Shall his inur-ed wing make idly
bate,
Nor of the appointed quarry his staunch sight
To lose
observance quite;
Seal from half-sad and all-elate
Sagacious eyes

Ultimate Paradise;
Nor shake his certitude of haughty fate.
Pacing the burning shares of many dooms,
I with stern tread do the
clear-witting stars
To judgment cite,
If I have borne aright
The
proving of their pure-willed ordeal.
From food of all delight
The
heavenly Falconer my heart debars,
And tames with fearful glooms

The haggard to His call;
Yet sometimes comes a hand, sometimes a
voice withal,
And she sits meek now, and expects the light.
In this Avernian sky,
This sultry and incumbent canopy
Of dull and
doomed regret;
Where on the unseen verges yet, O yet,

At intervals,

Trembles, and falls,
Faint lightning of remembered transient
sweet--
Ah, far too sweet
But to be sweet a little, a little sweet, and
fleet;
Leaving this pallid trace,
This loitering and most fitful light a
space,
Still some sad space,
For Grief to see her own poor face:-
Here where I keep my stand
With all o'er-anguished feet,
And no

live comfort near on any hand;
Lo, I proclaim the unavoided term,

When this morass of tears, then drained and firm,
Shall be a land--

Unshaken I affirm--
Where seven-quired psalterings meet;
And all
the gods move with calm hand in hand,
And eyes that know not
trouble and the worm.
THE DREAD OF HEIGHT.
If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say: We
see: your sin remaineth. JOHN ix. 41.
Not the Circean wine
Most perilous is for pain:
Grapes of the
heavens' star-loaden vine,
Whereto the lofty-placed
Thoughts of
fair souls attain,
Tempt with a more retributive delight,
And do
disrelish all life's sober taste.
'Tis to have drunk too well
The drink
that is divine,
Maketh the kind earth waste,
And breath intolerable.
Ah me!
How shall my mouth content it with mortality?
Lo, secret
music, sweetest music,
From distances of distance drifting its lone
flight,
Down the arcane where Night would perish in night,
Like a
god's loosened locks slips undulously:
Music that is too grievous of
the height
For safe and low delight,
Too infinite,
For bounded
hearts which yet would girth the sea!
So let it be,
Though sweet be great, and though my heart be small:

So let it be,
O music, music, though you wake in me
No joy, no joy
at all;
Although you only wake
Uttermost sadness, measure of
delight,
Which else I could not credit to the height,
Did I not know,

That ill is statured to its opposite;
Did I not know,
And even of
sadness so,
Of utter sadness make,

Of extreme sad a rod to mete

The incredible excess of unsensed sweet,
And mystic wall of strange
felicity.
So let it be,
Though sweet be great, and though my heart be
small,
And bitter meat
The food of gods for men to eat;
Yea, John
ate daintier, and did tread
Less ways of heat,
Than whom to their

wind-carpeted
High banquet-hall,
And golden love-feasts, the fair
stars entreat.
But ah withal,
Some hold, some stay,
O difficult Joy, I pray,

Some arms of thine,
Not only, only arms of mine!
Lest like a weary
girl I fall
From clasping love so high,
And lacking thus thine arms,
then may
Most hapless I
Turn utterly to love of basest rate;
For
low they fall whose fall is from the sky.
Yea, who me shall secure

But I of height grown desperate
Surcease my wing, and my lost fate

Be dashed from pure
To broken writhings in the shameful slime:

Lower than man, for I dreamed higher,
Thrust down, by how much I
aspire,
And damned with drink of immortality?
For such things be,

Yea, and the lowest reach of reeky Hell
Is but made possible
By
forta'en breath of Heaven's austerest clime.
These tidings from the vast to bring
Needeth not doctor nor divine,

Too well, too well
My flesh doth know the heart-perturbing thing;

That dread theology alone
Is mine,
Most native and my own;
And
ever with victorious toil
When I have made
Of the deific peaks dim
escalade,
My soul with anguish and recoil
Doth like a city in an
earthquake rock,
As at my feet the abyss is cloven then,
With
deeper menace than for other men,
Of my potential cousinship with
mire;
That all my conquered