(F. V. B.)
Go forth and conquer with the wind for a sword,
O scorching might;
Go forth and blaze through the jungles of night,
Lead in the tameless stars with a cord;
Go forth, Lover of Right!
Make moons thy pebbles and suns thy coins,
And thy language light.
Fill highest space with thy depth and height;
Gather the nebulæ round thy loins;
Go forth and fight!
Go forth and conquer--return, return,
When the hawthorn's white.
Encompass the void; then turn and learn
The veins of the grass and the bee's delight;
Return, Lover of Right!
"I SHALL BE SPLENDIDLY AND TENSELY YOUNG"
I shall be splendidly and tensely young,
While yet my limbs are mine.
Each of them shall be strung
As a bowstring by an archer
With fingers strict and fine.
I shall be splendidly and tensely young,
My heart being whole, my brain
Keen as a hawk's flight flung
Against my victim seen securely
From my austere Inane.
But when my limbs no more are mine,
My feet to walk, my hands to hold,
I shall be most supremely young.
Then shall my flawless songs be sung,
My brow be sealed with a proud sign:
When I am deaf and blind and fleshless,
I shall be most supremely young,
When I am old.
"I"
I shall slough my self as a snake its skin,
My white spots of virtue, my black spots of sin.
I shall abandon my sex, my brain,
My scheming for pleasure, escaping from pain.
I shall dig roots deep down and be
A weed or a reed, a flower, a tree.
I shall lose body and miry feet,
Float with the clouds and sway with the wheat.
I am a fool and foolisher than
Anything else that is not a man.
For of all the things that I see or feel,
The I-that-is-I is far the least real.
And only when I shall learn at the last
That a stream-bed pebble is far more vast
In the scale of Mind and its secret schemes
Than all my passion and blunders and dreams;
Then only that I that shall not be I
Shall play due part beneath sun and sky,
Ranked below sparrow, just above sod,
I shall take my place in the Self of God.