| IN a cool curving world he lies | |
| And ripples with dark ecstasies. | |
| The kind luxurious lapse and steal | |
| Shapes all his universe to feel | |
| And know and be; the clinging stream | 5 |
| Closes his memory, glooms his dream, | |
| Who lips the roots o’ the shore, and glides | |
| Superb on unreturning tides. | |
| Those silent waters weave for him | |
| A fluctuant mutable world and dim, | 10 |
| Where wavering masses bulge and gape | |
| Mysterious, and shape to shape | |
| Dies momently through whorl and hollow, | |
| And form and line and solid follow | |
| Solid and line and form to dream | 15 |
| Fantastic down the eternal stream; | |
| An obscure world, a shifting world, | |
| Bulbous, or pulled to thin, or curled, | |
| Or serpentine, or driving arrows, | |
| Or serene slidings, or March narrows. | 20 |
| There slipping wave and shore are one, | |
| And weed and mud. No ray of sun, | |
| But glow to glow fades down the deep | |
| (As dream to unknown dream in sleep); | |
| Shaken translucency illumes | 25 |
| The hyaline of drifting glooms; | |
| The strange soft-handed depth subdues | |
| Drowned colour there, but black to hues, | |
| As death to living, decomposes— | |
| Red darkness of the heart of roses, | 30 |
| Blue brilliant from dead starless skies, | |
| And gold that lies behind the eyes, | |
| The unknown unnameable sightless white | |
| That is the essential flame of night, | |
| Lustreless purple, hooded green, | 35 |
| The myriad hues that lie between | |
| Darkness and darkness!… | |
| |
| And all’s one. | |
| Gentle, embracing, quiet, dun, | |
| The world he rests in, world he knows, | 40 |
| Perpetual curving. Only—grows | |
| An eddy in that ordered falling, | |
| A knowledge from the gloom, a calling | |
| Weed in the wave, gleam in the mud— | |
| The dark fire leaps along his blood; | 45 |
| Dateless and deathless, blind and still, | |
| The intricate impulse works its will; | |
| His woven world drops back; and he, | |
| Sans providence, sans memory, | |
| Unconscious and directly driven, | 50 |
| Fades to some dank sufficient heaven. | |
| |
| O world of lips, O world of laughter, | |
| Where hope is fleet and thought flies after, | |
| Of lights in the clear night, of cries | |
| That drift along the wave and rise | 55 |
| Thin to the glittering stars above, | |
| You know the hands, the eyes of love! | |
| The strife of limbs, the sightless clinging, | |
| The infinite distance, and the singing | |
| Blown by the wind, a flame of sound, | 60 |
| The gleam, the flowers, and vast around | |
| The horizon, and the heights above— | |
| You know the sigh, the song of love! | |
| |
| But there the night is close, and there | |
| Darkness is cold and strange and bare; | 65 |
| And the seered deeps are whisperless; | |
| And rhythm is all deliciousness; | |
| And joy is in the throbbing tide, | |
| Whose intricate fingers beat and glide | |
| In felt bewildering harmonies | 70 |
| Of trembling touch; and music is | |
| The exquisite knocking of the blood. | |
| Space is no more, under the mud; | |
| His bliss is older than the sun. | |
| Silent and straight the waters run. | 75 |
| The lights, the cries, the willows dim, | |
| And the dark tide are one with him. | |
