May we who shrank to find him weak
Remember that he cannot speak.
For envy that we may recall,
And for our faith before the fall,
May we who are alive be slow
To tell what we shall never know.
For penance he would not confess,
And for the fateful emptiness
Of early triumph undermined,
May we now venture to be kind.
Similar Posts
“No, Mary, there was nothing—not a word.
Yourself, and he may listen—or at leastLook up at you, and let you see his eyes.I might as well have been the sound of rain,A wind among the cedars, or a bird;Or nothing. Mary, make him look at you;And even if he should say that we are nothing,To know that you have heard him will…
“Gawaine, Gawaine, what look ye for to see,
D’ye look to see the lady Vivian,Pursued by divers ominous vile demonsThat have another king more fierce than ours?Or think ye that if ye look far enoughAnd hard enough into the feathery westYe’ll have a glimmer of the Grail itself?And if ye look for neither Grail nor lady,What look ye for to see, Gawaine, Gawaine?”So…
Up the old hill to the old house again
Who should be waiting somewhere there amongOld things that least remembered most remain,He toiled on with a pleasure that was painTo think how soon asunder would be flungThe curtain half a century had hungBetween the two ambitions they had slain.They dredged an hour for words, and then were done.“Good-bye!… You have the same old weather-vane—Your…
‘Where are you going to-night, to-night, —
There’s never the sign of a star in sight,Nor a lamp that’s nearer than Tilbury Town.Why do you stare as a dead man might?Where are you pointing away from the light?And where are you going to-night, to-night, —Where are you going, John Evereldown?’‘Right through the forest, where none can see,There’s where I’m going, to Tilbury…
War shook the land where Levi dwelt,
That such a doom was ever wroughtAs his, to toil while others fought;To toil, to dream — and still to dream,With one day barren as another;To consummate, as it would seemThe dry despair of his old mother.Far off one afternoon beganThe sound of man destroying man;And Levi. sick with nameless rage,Condemned again his heritage,And sighed…
Foreguarded and unfevered and serene,
Back to fierce wisdom and the Orient,To the Dawn that is, that shall be, and has been:Previsioned of the madness and the mean,He stood where Asia, crowned with ravishment,The curtain of Love’s inner shrine had rent,And after had gone scarred by the Unseen.There at his touch there was a treasure chest,And in it was a…