Dear laws, come to my breast!
Take all my frame, and make your close arms meet
Around me; and so ruled, so warmed, so pressed,
I breathe, aware; I feel my wild heart beat.
Dear laws, be wings to me!
The feather merely floats. O, be it heard
Through weight of life—the skylark’s gravity—
That I am not a feather, but a bird.
THE QUESTION
IL POETA MI DISSE, “CHE PENSI?”
Virgil stayed Dante with a wayside word;
But long, and low, and loud and urgently
The poets of my passion have I heard
Summoning me.
It is their closest whisper and their call.
Their greatness to this lowliness hath spoken,
Their voices rest upon that interval,
Their sign, their token.
Man at his little prayer tells Heaven his thought,
To man entrusts his thought—“Friend, this is mine.”
The immortal poets within my breast have sought,
Saying, “What is thine?”
“THE RETURN TO NATURE”
_Histories of Modern Poetry_
(I) PROMETHEUS
It was the south: mid-everything,
Mid-land, mid-summer, noon.
And deep within a limpid spring
The mirrored sun of June.
Splendour in freshness! Ah, who stole
This sun, this fire, from heaven?
He holds it shining in his soul,
Prometheus the forgiven.
(II) THETIS
In her bright title poets dare
What the wild eye of fancy sees—
Similitude—the clear, the fair
Light mystery of images.
Round the blue sea I love the best
The argent foam played, slender, fleet;
I saw—past Wordsworth and the rest—
Her natural, Greek, and silver feet.
TO SILENCE
“SPACE, THE BOUND OF A SOLID”: SILENCE, THEN, THE FORM OF A MELODY
Not, Silence, for thine idleness I raise
My silence-bounded singing in thy praise,
But for thy moulding of my Mozart’s tune,
Thy hold upon the bird that sings the moon,
Thy magisterial ways.
Man’s lovely definite melody-shapes are thine,
Outlined, controlled, compressed, complete, divine.
Also thy fine intrusions do I trace,
Thy afterthoughts, thy wandering, thy grace,
Within the poet’s line.
Thy secret is the song that is to be.
Music had never stature but for thee,
Sculptor! Strong as the sculptor Space whose hand
Urged the Discobolus and bade him stand.
· · · · ·
Man, on his way to Silence, stops to hear and see.