Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917.

John Gray (1866–1934)

348. The Tree of Knowledge

FROM what meek jewel seed

Did this tree spring?

How first beat its new life in bleak abode

Of virgin rock, strange metals for its food,

Towards its last hewn mould, the bitter rood?

First did it sprout, indeed,

A double wing.

Earth hung with its gross weight

Its loins unto:

The tender wings, with hope in every vein,

Beat feebly upward, saying: ‘Is this the pain

The Sooth spake of; to lift to God again

This blackness’ dark estate

Reformed anew?

‘Mine ’tis, of fruit mine own,

To work this deed:

Earnest of promise absolute, these green

Sweet wings; a million engines pulse therein.

Yet can I leave not for a space, to lean

Upon a fulcrum known,

To know my need.’

With which, the seed upthrust

To God a scale;

Wondering at its fibre and tough growth;

Saying, the while it purposed: ‘For He knoweth

My sore extremity, how I am loth

To cleave unto the dust

Which makes me hale.’

Long while the scale increased

In height and girth;

Cast many branches forth and many wings;

Wherein and under, formed and fashioned things

Had great content and speech and twitterings:

Insect and fowl and beast

And sons of earth.

Stern, netherward did grope

Each resolute root

Of the tree, making question in the deep

Of spirits, where the mighty metals sleep,

How long ere from its base the rock should leap;

Saying: ‘Yet have I hope

Of that my fruit.’

Sprang from its topmost bough

The hope at length

Fearsome and fierce and passionate. The sire

Warmed his son’s vitals with celestial fire,

Feeding him with sweet gum of strong desire,

Lest be not stanch enow

His godly strength.

Until the gardener came

With his white spouse,

Wounding the tree, and ravishing the son,

(Whence curses fallen and a world undone.)

For that rape, wrathfully a shining one

Drave them with fearful flame

Without their house.

Race upon savage race,

Rough brood on brood,

Defiled before it, whiles the tree scanned each;

Leaned leaf and branch to grapple and beseech;

Till, on a certain day, requiring speech

Of the tree, at its base

The whole world stood:

‘What hast thou given us,

Thou barren tree?

“Knowledge,” thou answerest? Thou hast set agape

The door of Knowledge only. Thy limbs ape

Some truth. We love thee not, nor love thy shape.

Imposture, thus and thus

We fashion thee.’

Sorely then handled it

The gardener’s sons.

Strangely they built it newly, having cleft

Its being all asunder; stem bereft

Of quivering limbs, save one to right and left,

Urging the self-same wit

It gave them once.

Lo! all my glories fall.

Of these my woes,

What know those wrathful men, save, in yon place,

Perhaps, yon athlete, stripped for my embrace?

If longing cheat me not, writ in his face,

He knows about it all,

He knows, he knows.

‘Sorrow! What sin they now,

Those wrathful men?

Passion! thou’rt come to me again too soon:

Too hot thou givst me back the fiery boon

I gave thee; love consumes me, that I swoon;

Thou, on my topmost bough,

My fruit again.’