Of markets, and broad echoing streets that drownThe heart’s own silent music. Though they tooSing in their proper rhythm, and still delightThe friendly ear that loves warm human kind,Yet it is good to leave them all behind,Now when from lily dawn to purple nightSummer is queen,Summer is queen in all the happy land.Far, far away…
The good is dead. Let us curse God most High.Four thousand years of toil and hope and thoughtWherein man laboured upward and still wroughtNew worlds and better, Thou hast made as naught.We built us joyful cities, strong and fair,Knowledge we sought and gathered wisdom rare.And all this time you laughed upon our care,And suddenly the…
Unerringly the Archtypes, all the veritiesWhich mortals lack or indirectly learn.Transparent in primordial truth, unvarying,Pure Earthness and right Stonehood from their clear,High eminence are seen; unveiled, the seminalHuge Principles appear.The Tree-ness of the tree they know-the meaning ofArboreal life, how from earth’s salty lapThe solar beam uplifts it; all the holinessEnacted by leaves’ fall and…
There is a house that most of all on earth I hate.Though I have passed through many sorrows and have beenIn bloody fields, sad seas, and countries desolate,Yet most I fear that empty house where the grasses greenGrow in the silent court the gaping flags between,And down the moss-grown paths and terrace no man treadsWhere…
Full of soft streams and little winds that creepThe murmuring boughs between.A hollow cup above the ocean placedWhere nothing rough, nor loud, nor harsh shall be,But woodland light and shadow interlacedAnd summer sky and sea.There in the fragrant twilight I will raiseA secret altar of the rich sea sod,Whereat to offer sacrifice and praiseUnto my…
When the concrete spreads and the town conquersThe country’s heart; when contraceptiveTarmac’s laid where farm has faded,Tramline flows where slept a hamlet,And shop-fronts, blazing without a stop fromDover to Wrath, have glazed us over?Simplest tales will then bewilderThe questioning children, “What was a chestnut?Say what it means to climb a Beanstalk,Tell me, grandfather, what an…
Process, clearly, a slow curse,Drained through centuries, left them thus.At some transitional stage, then, a luckless few,No doubt, must have had eyes after the up-to-date,Normal type had achieved snugDarkness, safe from the guns of heavn;Whose blind mouths would abuse words that belonged to theirGreat-grandsires, unabashed, talking of light in someEunuch’d, etiolated,Fungoid sense, as a symbol…
Breathing more freely in that larger climeAnd learning wiselier to deserve the whole.Your Spirit, Master, has been close at handAnd guided me, still pointing treasures rare,Thick-sown where I before saw nothing fairAnd finding waters in the barren land,Barren once thought because my eyes were dim.Like one I am grown to whom the common fieldAnd often-wandered…
Blasted with the lightning sharp-giant boulders strewn between,And the mountains rise above, and the cold ravineEchoes to the crushing roar and thunder of a mighty riverRaging down a cataract. Very tower and forest quiverAnd the grey wolves are afraid and the call of birds is drowned,And the thought and speech of man in the boiling…
In the sweet dim Isle of Apples over the wide sea’s breast,Open the gates for me!Sorely pressed have I beenAnd driven and hurt beyond bearing this summer day,But the heat and the pain together suddenly fall away,All’s cool and green.But a moment agone,Among men cursing in fight and toiling, blinded I fought,But the labour passed…
