The Wild Knight and Other Poems | Page 2

ere 'twas good enough for her,?He tried it on Eternity.
Beneath the gnarled old Knowledge-tree?Sat, like an owl, the evil sage:?'The World's a bubble,' solemnly?He read, and turned a second page.?'A bubble, then, old crow,' I cried,?'God keep you in your weary wit!?'A bubble--have you ever spied?'The colours I have seen on it?'
THE HAPPY MAN
To teach the grey earth like a child,?To bid the heavens repent,?I only ask from Fate the gift?Of one man well content.
Him will I find: though when in vain?I search the feast and mart,?The fading flowers of liberty,?The painted masks of art.
I only find him at the last,?On one old hill where nod?Golgotha's ghastly trinity--?Three persons and one god.
THE UNPARDONABLE SIN
I do not cry, beloved, neither curse.?Silence and strength, these two at least are good.?He gave me sun and stars and ought He could,?But not a woman's love; for that is hers.
He sealed her heart from sage and questioner--?Yea, with seven seals, as he has sealed the grave.?And if she give it to a drunken slave,?The Day of Judgment shall not challenge her.
Only this much: if one, deserving well,?Touching your thin young hands and making suit,?Feel not himself a crawling thing, a brute,?Buried and bricked in a forgotten hell;
Prophet and poet be he over sod,?Prince among angels in the highest place,?God help me, I will smite him on the face,?Before the glory of the face of God.
A NOVELTY
Why should I care for the Ages?Because they are old and grey??To me, like sudden laughter,?The stars are fresh and gay;?The world is a daring fancy,?And finished yesterday.
Why should I bow to the Ages?Because they were drear and dry??Slow trees and ripening meadows?For me go roaring by,?A living charge, a struggle?To escalade the sky.
The eternal suns and systems,?Solid and silent all,?To me are stars of an instant,?Only the fires that fall?From God's good rocket, rising?On this night of carnival.
ULTIMATE
The vision of a haloed host?That weep around an empty throne;?And, aureoles dark and angels dead,?Man with his own life stands alone.
'I am,' he says his bankrupt creed:?'I am,' and is again a clod:?The sparrow starts, the grasses stir,?For he has said the name of God.
THE DONKEY
When fishes flew and forests walked?And figs grew upon thorn,?Some moment when the moon was blood?Then surely I was born;
With monstrous head and sickening cry?And ears like errant wings,?The devil's walking parody?On all four-footed things.
The tattered outlaw of the earth,?Of ancient crooked will;?Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,?I keep my secret still.
Fools! For I also had my hour;?One far fierce hour and sweet:?There was a shout about my ears,?And palms before my feet.
THE BEATIFIC VISION
Through what fierce incarnations, furled?In fire and darkness, did I go,?Ere I was worthy in the world?To see a dandelion grow?
Well, if in any woes or wars?I bought my naked right to be,?Grew worthy of the grass, nor gave?The wren, my brother, shame for me.
But what shall God not ask of him?In the last time when all is told,?Who saw her stand beside the hearth,?The firelight garbing her in gold?
THE HOPE OF THE STREETS
The still sweet meadows shimmered: and I stood?And cursed them, bloom of hedge and bird of tree,?And bright and high beyond the hunch-backed wood?The thunder and the splendour of the sea.
Give back the Babylon where I was born,?The lips that gape give back, the hands that grope,?And noise and blood and suffocating scorn?An eddy of fierce faces--and a hope
That 'mid those myriad heads one head find place,?With brown hair curled like breakers of the sea,?And two eyes set so strangely in the face?That all things else are nothing suddenly.
ECCLESIASTES
There is one sin: to call a green leaf grey,?Whereat the sun in heaven shuddereth.?There is one blasphemy: for death to pray,?For God alone knoweth the praise of death.
There is one creed: 'neath no world-terror's wing?Apples forget to grow on apple-trees.?There is one thing is needful--everything--?The rest is vanity of vanities.
THE SONG OF THE CHILDREN
The World is ours till sunset,?Holly and fire and snow;?And the name of our dead brother?Who loved us long ago.
The grown folk mighty and cunning,?They write his name in gold;?But we can tell a little?Of the million tales he told.
He taught them laws and watchwords,?To preach and struggle and pray;?But he taught us deep in the hayfield?The games that the angels play.
Had he stayed here for ever,?Their world would be wise as ours--?And the king be cutting capers,?And the priest be picking flowers.
But the dark day came: they gathered:?On their faces we could see?They had taken and slain our brother,?And hanged him on a tree.
THE FISH
Dark the sea was: but I saw him,?One great head with goggle eyes,?Like a diabolic cherub?Flying in those fallen skies.
I have heard the hoarse deniers,?I have known the wordy wars;?I have seen a man, by shouting,?Seek to orphan all the stars.
I have seen a fool half-fashioned?Borrow from the heavens a tongue,?So