poetry
I dreamed there would be Spring no more,
That Nature’s ancient power was lost:
The streets were black with smoke and frost,
They chattered trifles at the door:
I wandered from the noisy town,
I found a wood with thorny boughs:
I took the thorns to bind my brows,
I wore them like a civic crown:
I met with scoffs, I met with scorns
From youth and babe and hoary hairs:
They called me in the public squares
The fool that wears a crown of thorns:
They called me fool, they called me child:
I found an angel of the night;
The voice was low, the look was bright;
He looked upon my crown and smiled:
He reached the glory of a hand,
That seemed to touch it into leaf:
The voice was not the voice of grief,
The words were hard to understand.
88
Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet,
Rings Eden through the budded quicks,
O tell me where the senses mix,
O tell me where the passions meet,
Whence radiate: fierce extremes employ
Thy spirits in the darkening leaf,
And in the midmost heart of grief
Thy passion clasps a secret joy:
And I-my harp would prelude woe-
I cannot all command the strings;
The glory of the sum of things
Will flash along the chords and go.
124 [excerpt]
I found Him not in world or sun,
Or eagle’s wing, or insect’s eye;
Nor through the questions men may try,
The petty cobwebs we have spun:
If e’er when faith had fallen asleep,
I heard a voice “believe no more”
And heard an ever-breaking shore
That tumbled in the Godless deep;
A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason’s colder part,
And like a man in wrath the heart
Stood up and answered “I have felt.”
That Nature’s ancient power was lost:
The streets were black with smoke and frost,
They chattered trifles at the door:
I wandered from the noisy town,
I found a wood with thorny boughs:
I took the thorns to bind my brows,
I wore them like a civic crown:
I met with scoffs, I met with scorns
From youth and babe and hoary hairs:
They called me in the public squares
The fool that wears a crown of thorns:
They called me fool, they called me child:
I found an angel of the night;
The voice was low, the look was bright;
He looked upon my crown and smiled:
He reached the glory of a hand,
That seemed to touch it into leaf:
The voice was not the voice of grief,
The words were hard to understand.
88
Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet,
Rings Eden through the budded quicks,
O tell me where the senses mix,
O tell me where the passions meet,
Whence radiate: fierce extremes employ
Thy spirits in the darkening leaf,
And in the midmost heart of grief
Thy passion clasps a secret joy:
And I-my harp would prelude woe-
I cannot all command the strings;
The glory of the sum of things
Will flash along the chords and go.
124 [excerpt]
I found Him not in world or sun,
Or eagle’s wing, or insect’s eye;
Nor through the questions men may try,
The petty cobwebs we have spun:
If e’er when faith had fallen asleep,
I heard a voice “believe no more”
And heard an ever-breaking shore
That tumbled in the Godless deep;
A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason’s colder part,
And like a man in wrath the heart
Stood up and answered “I have felt.”