The Wild Knight and Other Poems | Page 8

Beneath this single sorrow the globe of moon and sphere
Turns to a
single jewel, so bright and brittle and dear
That I dread lest God
should drop it, to be dashed into stars below.
You that have snarled through the ages, take your answer and go.
A FAIRY TALE
All things grew upwards, foul and fair:
The great trees fought and
beat the air
With monstrous wings that would have flown;
But the
old earth clung to her own,
Holding them back from heavenly wars,


Though every flower sprang at the stars.
But he broke free: while all things ceased,
Some hour increasing, he
increased.
The town beneath him seemed a map,
Above the church
he cocked his cap,
Above the cross his feather flew
Above the birds
and still he grew.
The trees turned grass; the clouds were riven;
His feet were
mountains lost in heaven;
Through strange new skies he rose alone,

The earth fell from him like a stone,
And his own limbs beneath him
far
Seemed tapering down to touch a star.
He reared his head, shaggy and grim,
Staring among the cherubim;

The seven celestial floors he rent,
One crystal dome still o'er him bent:

Above his head, more clear than hope,
All heaven was a
microscope.
A PORTRAIT
Fair faces crowd on Christmas night
Like seven suns a-row,
But all
beyond is the wolfish wind
And the crafty feet of the snow.
But through the rout one figure goes
With quick and quiet tread;

Her robe is plain, her form is frail--
Wait if she turn her head.
I say no word of line or hue,
But if that face you see,
Your soul
shall know the smile of faith's
Awful frivolity.
Know that in this grotesque old masque
Too loud we cannot sing,

Or dance too wild, or speak too wide
To praise a hidden thing.
That though the jest be old as night,
Still shaketh sun and sphere
An
everlasting laughter
Too loud for us to hear.
FEMINA CONTRA MUNDUM

The sun was black with judgment, and the moon
Blood: but between
I saw a man stand, saying, 'To me at least
The grass is green.
'There was no star that I forgot to fear
With love and wonder.
The birds have loved me'; but no answer
came--
Only the thunder.
Once more the man stood, saying, 'A cottage door,
Wherethrough I gazed
That instant as I turned--yea, I am vile;
Yet my eyes blazed.
'For I had weighed the mountains in a balance,
And the skies in a scale,
I come to sell the stars--old lamps for new--
Old stars for sale.'
Then a calm voice fell all the thunder through,
A tone less rough:
'Thou hast begun to love one of my works
Almost enough.'
TO A CERTAIN NATION
We will not let thee be, for thou art ours.
We thank thee still, though
thou forget these things,
For that hour's sake when thou didst wake all
powers
With a great cry that God was sick of kings.
Leave thee there grovelling at their rusted greaves,
These hulking

cowards on a painted stage,
Who, with imperial pomp and laurel
leaves,
Show their Marengo--one man in a cage.
These, for whom stands no type or title given
In all the squalid tales
of gore and pelf;
Though cowed by crashing thunders from all heaven.

Cain never said, 'My brother slew himself.'
Tear you the truth out of your drivelling spy,
The maniac whom you
set to swing death's scythe.
Nay; torture not the torturer--let him lie:

What need of racks to teach a worm to writhe?
Bear with us, O our sister, not in pride,
Nor any scorn we see thee
spoiled of knaves,
But only shame to hear, where Danton died,
Thy
foul dead kings all laughing in their graves.
Thou hast a right to rule thyself; to be
The thing thou wilt; to grin, to
fawn, to creep:
To crown these clumsy liars; ay, and we
Who knew
thee once, we have a right to weep.
THE PRAISE OF DUST
'What of vile dust?' the preacher said.
Methought the whole world
woke,
The dead stone lived beneath my foot,
And my whole body
spoke.
'You, that play tyrant to the dust,
And stamp its wrinkled face,
This
patient star that flings you not
Far into homeless space.
'Come down out of your dusty shrine
The living dust to see,
The
flowers that at your sermon's end
Stand blazing silently.
'Rich white and blood-red blossom; stones,
Lichens like fire encrust;

A gleam of blue, a glare of gold,
The vision of the dust.
'Pass them all by: till, as you come
Where, at a city's edge,
Under a
tree--I know it well--
Under a lattice ledge,

'The sunshine falls on one brown head.
You, too, O cold of clay,

Eater of stones, may haply hear
The trumpets of that day
'When God to all his paladins
By his own splendour swore
To make
a fairer face than heaven,
Of dust and nothing more.'
THE BALLAD OF THE BATTLE OF GIBEON
Five kings rule o'er the Amorite,
Mighty as fear and old as night;

Swathed with unguent and gold and jewel,
Waxed they merry and fat
and cruel.
Zedek of Salem, a terror and glory,
Whose face was hid