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| IN the middle of August when the southwest wind | |
| Blows after sunset through the leisuring air, | |
| And on the sky nightly the mythic hind | |
| Leads down the sullen dog star to his lair, | |
| After the feverous vigil of July, | 5 |
| When the loud pageant of the year’s high noon | |
| Passed up the ways of time to sing and part, | |
| Grief also wandered by | |
| From out the lovers and the leaves of June, | |
| And by the wizard spices of his hair | 10 |
| I knew his heart was very Love’s own heart. | |
| Deep within dreams he led me out of doors | |
| As from the upper vault the night outpours, | |
| And when I saw that to him all the skies | |
| Yearned as a sea asleep yearns to its shores, | 15 |
| He took a little clay and touched my eyes. | |
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| What saw I then, what heard? | |
| Multitudes, multitudes, under the moon they stirred! | |
| The weaker brothers of our earthly breed; | |
| Watchmen of whom our safety takes no heed; | 20 |
| Swift helpers of the wind that sowed the seed | |
| Before the first field was or any fruit; | |
| Warriors against the bivouac of the weed; | |
| Earth’s earliest ploughmen for the tender root, | |
| All came about my head and at my feet | 25 |
| A thousand, thousand sweet, | |
| With starry eyes not even raised to plead; | |
| Bewildered, driven, hiding, fluttering, mute! | |
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| And I beheld and saw them one by one | |
| Pass and become as nothing in the night. | 30 |
| Clothed on with red they were who once were white; | |
| Drooping, who once led armies to the sun, | |
| Of whom the lowly grass now topped the flight: | |
| In scarlet faint, who once were brave in brown; | |
| Climbers and builders of the silent town, | 35 |
| Creepers and burrowers all in crimson dye, | |
| Winged mysteries of song that from the sky | |
| Once dashed long music down. | |
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| O who would take away music from the earth? | |
| Have we so much? Or love upon the hearth? | 40 |
| No more—they faded; | |
| The great trees bending between birth and birth | |
| Sighed for them, and the night wind’s hoarse rebuff | |
| Shouted the shame of which I was persuaded. | |
| Shall Nature’s only pausing be by men invaded? | 45 |
| Or shall we lay grief’s fagots on her shoulders bare? | |
| Has she not borne enough? | |
| Soon will the mirroring woodland pools begin to con her, | |
| And her sad immemorial passion come upon her; | |
| Lo, would you add despair unto despair? | 50 |
| Shall not the Spring be answer to her prayer? | |
| Must her uncomforted heavens overhead, | |
| Weeping, took down on tears and still behold | |
| Only wings broken or a fledgling dead, | |
| Or underfoot the meadows that wore gold | 55 |
| Die, and the leaves go mourning to the mould | |
| Beneath poor dead and desperate feet | |
| Of folk who in next summer’s meadows shall not meet? | |
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| Who has not seen in the high gulf of light | |
| What, lower, was a bird, but now | 60 |
| Is moored and altered quite | |
| Into an island of unshaded joy? | |
| To whom the mate below upon the bough | |
| Shouts once and brings him from his high employ. | |
| Yet speeding he forgot not of the cloud | 65 |
| Where he from glory sprang and burned aloud, | |
| But took a little of the day, | |
| A little of the colored sky, | |
| And of the joy that would not stay | |
| He wove a song that cannot die. | 70 |
| Then, then—the unfathomable shame; | |
| The one last wrong arose from out the flame, | |
| The ravening hate that hated not was hurled | |
| Bidding the radiant love once more beware, | |
| Bringing one more loneliness on the world, | 75 |
| And one more blindness in the unseen air. | |
| Nor may the smooth regret, the pitying oath | |
| Shed on such utter bitter any leaven. | |
| Only the pleading flowers that knew them both | |
| Hold all their bloody petals up to heaven. | 80 |
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| Winds of the fall that all year to and fro | |
| Somewhere upon the earth go wandering, | |
| You saw, you moaned, you know: | |
| Withhold not then unto all time to tell | |
| Lest unborn others of us sec this thing. | 85 |
| Bring our sleek, comfortable reason low: | |
| Recount how souls grown tremulous as a bell | |
| Came forth each other and the day to greet | |
| In morning air all Indian-Summer sweet, | |
| And crept upstream, through wood or field or brake, | 90 |
| Most tremblingly to take | |
| What crumbs that from the Master’s table fell. | |
| Cry with what thronging thunders they were met, | |
| And hide not how the least leaf was made wet. | |
| Cry till no watcher says that all is well | 95 |
| With raucous discord through the leaning spheres. | |
| But tell | |
| With tears, with tears | |
| How the last man is harmed even as they | |
| Who on these dawns are fire, at dusk are clay. | 100 |
| Record the dumb and wise, | |
| No less than those who lived in singing guise, | |
| Whose choric hearts lit each wild green arcade. | |
| Make men to see their eyes, | |
| Forced to suspect behind each reed or rose | 105 |
| The thorn of lurking foes. | |
| And O, before the daylight goes, | |
| After the deed against the skies, | |
| After the last belief and longing dies, | |
| Make men again to see their eyes | 110 |
| Whose piteous casements now all unafraid | |
| Peer out to that far verge where evermore, | |
| Beyond all woe for which a tear atones, | |
| The likeness of our own dishonor moans, | |
| A sea that has no bottom and no shore. | 115 |
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| What shall be done | |
| By you, shy folk who cease thus heart by heart? | |
| You for whose fate such fate forever hovers? | |
| O little lovers, | |
| If you would still have nests beneath the sun | 120 |
| Gather your broods about you and depart, | |
| Before the stony forward-pressing faces | |
| Into the lands bereft of any sound; | |
| The solemn and compassionate desert places. | |
| Give unto men no more the strong delight | 125 |
| To know that underneath the frozen ground | |
| Dwells the warm life and all the quick, pure lore. | |
| Take from our eyes the glory of great flight. | |
| Let us behold no more | |
| People untroubled by a Fate’s veiled eyes, | 130 |
| Leave us upon an earth of faith forlorn. | |
| No more wild tidings from the sweet far skies | |
| Of love’s long utmost heavenward endeavor. | |
| So shall the silence pour on us forever | |
| The streaming arrows of unutterable scorn. | 135 |
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| Nor shall the cry of famine be a shield | |
| The altar of a brutish mood to hide. | |
| Stains, stains, upon the lintels of our doors | |
| Wail to be justified. | |
| Shall there be mutterings at the seasons’ yield? | 140 |
| Has eye of man seen bared the granary floors? | |
| Are the fields wasted? Spilled the oil and wine? | |
| Is the fat seed under the clod decayed? | |
| Does ever the fig tree languish or the vine? | |
| Who has beheld the harvest promise fade? | 145 |
| Or any orchard heavy with fruit asway | |
| Withered away? | |
| No, not these things, but grosser things than these | |
| Are the dim parents of a guilt not dim; | |
| Ancestral urges out of old caves blowing, | 150 |
| When Fear watched at our coming and our going | |
| The horror of the chattering face of Whim. | |
| Hates, cruelties new fallen from the trees | |
| Whereto we clung with impulse sad for love, | |
| Shames we have had all time to rid us of, | 155 |
| Disgraces cold and sorrows long bewept, | |
| Recalled, revived, and kept, | |
| Unmeaning quarrels, blood-compelling lust, | |
| And snarling woes from our old home, the dust. | |
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| Yet even of these one saving shape may rise; | 160 |
| Fear may unveil our eyes. | |
| For know you not what curse of blight would fall | |
| Upon a land lorn of the sweet sky races | |
| Who day and night keep ward and seneschal | |
| Upon the treasury of the planted spaces? | 165 |
| Then would the locust have his fill, | |
| And the blind worm lay tithe, | |
| The unfed stones rot in the listless mill, | |
| The sound of grinding cease. | |
| No yearning gold would whisper to the scythe, | 170 |
| Hunger at last would prove us of one blood, | |
| The shores of dream be drowned in tides of need, | |
| Horribly would the whole earth be at peace. | |
| The burden of the grasshopper indeed | |
| Weigh down the green corn and the tender bud, | 175 |
| The plague of Egypt fall upon the wheat, | |
| And the shrill nit would batten in the heat. | |
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| But you, O poor of deeds and rich of breath, | |
| Whose eyes have made our eyes a hue abhorred, | |
| Red, eager aids of aid-unneeding Death, | 180 |
| Hunters before the Lord, | |
| If on the flinted marge about your souls | |
| In vain the heaving tide of mourning rolls, | |
| If from your trails unto the crimson goals | |
| The weeper and the weeping must depart, | 185 |
| If lust of blood come on you like a fiery dart | |
| And darken all the dark autumnal air, | |
| Then, then—be fair. | |
| Pluck a young ash tree or a sapling yew | |
| And at the root end fix an iron thorn, | 190 |
| Then forth with rocking laughter of the horn | |
| And passing, with no belling retinue, | |
| All timorous, lesser sippers of the dew, | |
| Seek out some burly guardian of the hills | |
| And set your urgent thew against his thew. | 195 |
| Then shall the hidden wisdoms and the wills | |
| Strive, and bear witness to the trees and clods | |
| How one has dumb lore of the rocks and swales | |
| And one has reason like unto the gods. | |
| Then shall the lagging righteousness ensue, | 200 |
| The powers at last be equal in the scales, | |
| And the man’s club and the beast’s claw be flails | |
| To winnow the unworthy of the two. | |
| Then on the earth, in the sky and the heavenly court | |
| That broods behind it, | 205 |
| Justice shall be awakened and aware, | |
| Then those who go forth greatly, seeking sport, | |
| Shall doubtless find it, | |
| And all things be fair. | |
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