Dear fool, be true to me!
I know the poets speak thee fair, and I
Hail thee uncivilly.
O, but I call with a more urgent cry!
I do not prize thee less,
I need thee more, that thou dost love to teach—
Father of foolishness—
The imbecile dreams clear out of wisdom’s reach.
Come and release me; bring
My irresponsible mind; come in thy hours.
Draw from my soul the sting
Of wit that trembles, consciousness that cowers.
For if night comes without thee
She is more cruel than day. But thou, fulfil
Thy work, thy gifts about thee—
Liberty, liberty, from this weight of will.
My day-mind can endure
Upright, in hope, all it must undergo.
But O, afraid, unsure,
My night-mind waking lies too low, too low.
Dear fool, be true to me!
The night is thine, man yields it, it beseems
Thy ironic dignity.
Make me all night the innocent fool that dreams.
“THE MARRIAGE OF TRUE MINDS”
(IN THE BACH-GOUNOD “AVE MARIA”)
That seeking Prelude found its unforetold
Unguessed intention, trend;
Though needing no fulfilment, did enfold
This exquisite end.
Bach led his notes up through their delicate slope
Aspiring—so they sound,
And so they were—in some strange ignorant hope
Thus to be crowned.
What deep soft seas beneath this buoyant barque!
What winds to speed this bird!
What impulses to toss this heavenward lark!
Thought—then the word.
Lovely the tune, lovely the unconsciousness
Of him who promised it.
Lovely the years that joined in blessedness
The two, the fit.
Bach was Precursor. But no Baptist’s cry
Was his; he, who began
For one who was to end, did prophesy,
By Nature’s generous act, the lesser man.
IN HONOUR OF AMERICA (1917)
IN ANTITHESIS TO ROSSETTI’S “ON THE REFUSAL OF AID BETWEEN NATIONS”
Not that the earth is changing, O my God!
Not that her brave democracies take heart
To share, to rule her treasure, to impart
The wine to those who long the wine-press trod;
Not therefore trust we that beneath Thy nod,
Thy silent benediction, even now
In gratitude so many nations bow,
So many poor: not therefore, O my God!
But because living men for dying man
Go to a million deaths, to deal one blow;
And justice speaks one great compassionate tongue;
And nation unto nation calls “One clan
We succourers are, one tribe!” By this we know
Our earth holds confident, steadfast, being young.
“LORD, I OWE THEE A DEATH”
_Richard Hooker_
(IN TIME OF WAR)
Man pays that debt with new munificence,
Not piecemeal now, not slowly, by the old:
Not grudgingly, by the effaced thin pence,
But greatly and in gold.
REFLEXIONS
(I) IN IRELAND, 1920
A mirror faced a mirror: ire and hate
Opposite ire and hate; the multiplied,
The complex charge rejected, intricate,
From side to sullen side;
One plot, one crime, one treachery, nay, one name,
Assumed, denounced, in echoes of replies.
The doubt, exchanged, lit thousands of one flame
Within those mutual eyes.
REFLEXIONS
(II) IN “OTHELLO”
A mirror faced a mirror: in sweet pain
His dangers with her pity did she track,
Received her pity with his love again,
And these she wafted back.
That masculine passion in her little breast
She bandied with him; her compassion he
Bandied with her. What tender sport! No rest
Had love’s infinity.
REFLEXIONS
(III) IN TWO POETS
A mirror faced a mirror: O, thy word,
Thou lord of images, did lodge in me,
Locked to my heart, homing from home, a bird,
A carrier, bound for thee.
Thy migratory greatness, greater far
For that return, returns; now grow divine
By endlessness my visiting thoughts, that are
Those visiting thoughts of thine.
TO CONSCRIPTS
“COMPEL THEM TO COME IN”
_St. Luke’s Gospel_
You “made a virtue of necessity”
By divine sanction; you, the loth, the grey,
The random, gentle, unconvinced; O, be
The crowned!—you may, you may.
You, the compelled, be feasted! You, the caught,
Be freemen of the gates that word unlocks!
Accept your victory from that unsought,
That heavenly paradox.
THE VOICE OF A BIRD
“HE SHALL RISE UP AT THE VOICE OF A BIRD”
_Ecclesiastes_
Who then is “he”?
Dante, Keats, Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley; all
Rose in their greatness at the shrill decree,
The little rousing inarticulate call.
For they stood up
At the bird-voice, of lark, of nightingale,
Drank poems from that throat as from a cup.
Over the great world’s notes did these prevail.
And not alone
The signal poets woke. In listening man,
Woman, and child a poet stirs unknown,
Throughout the Mays of birds since Mays began.
He rose, he heard—
Our father, our St. Peter, in his tears—
The crowing, twice, of the prophetic bird,
The saddest cock-crow of our human years.