New Poems | Page 8

and night of our forebeings.--
SIR THOMAS BROWNE.
Et lux in tenebris erat, et tenebrae eam non comprehenderunt.--
ST. JOHN.
Cast wide the folding doorways of the East,
For now is light
increased!
And the wind-besomed chambers of the air,
See they be
garnished fair;
And look the ways exhale some precious odours,

And set ye all about wild-breathing spice,
Most fit for Paradise.

Now is no time for sober gravity,
Season enough has Nature to be
wise;
But now discinct, with raiment glittering free,
Shake she the
ringing rafters of the skies
With festal footing and bold joyance sweet,

And let the earth be drunken and carouse!
For lo, into her house

Spring is come home with her world-wandering feet,
And all things
are made young with young desires;
And all for her is light increased

In yellow stars and yellow daffodils,
And East to West, and West
to East,
Fling answering welcome-fires,
By dawn and day-fall, on

the jocund hills.
And ye, winged minstrels of her fair meinie,
Being
newly coated in glad livery,
Upon her steps attend,
And round her
treading dance and without end
Reel your shrill lutany.
What
popular breath her coming does out-tell
The garrulous leaves among!

What little noises stir and pass
From blade to blade along the
voluble grass!
O Nature, never-done
Ungaped-at Pentecostal
miracle,
We hear thee, each man in his proper tongue!
Break,
elemental children, break ye loose
From the strict frosty rule
Of
grey-beard Winter's school.
Vault, O young winds, vault in your
tricksome courses
Upon the snowy steeds that reinless use
In
coerule pampas of the heaven to run;
Foaled of the white sea-horses,

Washed in the lambent waters of the sun.
Let even the slug-abed
snail upon the thorn
Put forth a conscious horn!
Mine elemental
co-mates, joy each one;
And ah, my foster-brethren, seem not sad--

No, seem not sad,
That my strange heart and I should be so little glad.

Suffer me at your leafy feast
To sit apart, a somewhat alien guest,

And watch your mirth,
Unsharing in the liberal laugh of earth;

Yet with a sympathy,
Begot of wholly sad and half-sweet memory--

The little sweetness making grief complete;
Faint wind of wings
from hours that distant beat,
When I, I too,
Was once, O wild
companions, as are you,
Ran with such wilful feet.
Wraith of a
recent day and dead,
Risen wanly overhead,
Frail, strengthless as a
noon-belated moon,
Or as the glazing eyes of watery heaven,
When
the sick night sinks into deathly swoon.
A higher and a solemn voice
I heard through your gay-hearted noise;

A solemn meaning and a stiller voice
Sounds to me from far days
when I too shall rejoice,
Nor more be with your jollity at strife.
O
prophecy
Of things that are, and are not, and shall be!
The
great-vanned Angel March
Hath trumpeted
His clangorous 'Sleep
no more' to all the dead--
Beat his strong vans o'er earth, and air, and
sea.
And they have heard;
Hark to the Jubilate of the bird
For
them that found the dying way to life!
And they have heard,
And

quicken to the great precursive word;
Green spray showers lightly
down the cascade of the larch;
The graves are riven,
And the Sun
comes with power amid the clouds of heaven!
Before his way
Went
forth the trumpet of the March;
Before his way, before his way

Dances the pennon of the May!
O earth, unchilded, widowed Earth,
so long
Lifting in patient pine and ivy-tree
Mournful belief and
steadfast prophecy,
Behold how all things are made true!
Behold
your bridegroom cometh in to you,
Exceeding glad and strong.

Raise up your eyes, O raise your eyes abroad!
No more shall you sit
sole and vidual,
Searching, in servile pall,
Upon the hieratic night
the star-sealed sense of all:
Rejoice, O barren, and look forth abroad!

Your children gathered back to your embrace
See with a mother's
face.
Look up, O mortals, and the portent heed;
In very deed,

Washed with new fire to their irradiant birth,
Reintegrated are the
heavens and earth!
From sky to sod,
The world's unfolded blossom
smells of God.
O imagery
Of that which was the first, and is the last!
For as the
dark, profound nativity,
God saw the end should be,
When the
world's infant horoscope He cast.
Unshackled from the bright
Phoebean awe,
In leaf, flower, mould, and tree,
Resolved into
dividual liberty,
Most strengthless, unparticipant, inane,
Or suffered
the ill peace of lethargy,
Lo, the Earth eased of rule:
Unsummered,
granted to her own worst smart
The dear wish of the fool--

Disintegration, merely which man's heart
For freedom understands,

Amid the frog-like errors from the damp

And quaking swamp
Of
the low popular levels spawned in all the lands.
But thou, O Earth,
dost much disdain
The bondage of thy waste and futile reign,
And
sweetly to the great compulsion draw
Of God's alone
true-manumitting law,
And Freedom, only which the wise intend,

To work thine innate end.
Over thy vacant counterfeit of death

Broods with soft urgent breath
Love, that is child of Beauty and of
Awe:
To intercleavage of sharp warring pain,
As of contending

chaos come again,
Thou wak'st, O Earth,
And work'st from change
to change and birth to birth
Creation old as hope, and new as sight;

For meed of toil not vain,
Hearing once more the primal fiat toll:-

'Let there be light!'
And there is light!
Light flagrant, manifest;

Light to the zenith, light from pole to pole;
Light from the East that
waxeth to the West,
And with its puissant goings-forth
Encroaches
on the