_ELYSIUM_
I HAVE found a place of loneliness
Lonelier than Lyonesse
Lovelier than Paradise;
Full of sweet stillness
That no noise can transgress
Never a lamp distress.
The full moon sank in state.
I saw her stand and wait
For her watchers to shut the gate.
Then I found myself in a wonderland
All of shadow and of bland
Silence hard to understand.
I waited therefore; then I knew
The presence of the flowers that grew
Noiseless, their wonder noiseless blew.
And flashing kingfishers that flew
In sightless beauty, and the few
Shadows the passing wild-beast threw.
And Eve approaching over the ground
Unheard and subtle, never a sound
To let me know that I was found.
Invisible the hands of Eve
Upon me travelling to reeve
Me from the matrix, to relieve
Me from the rest! Ah terribly
Between the body of life and me
Her hands slid in and set me free.
Ah, with a fearful, strange detection
She found the source of my subjection
To the All, and severed the connection.
Delivered helpless and amazed
From the womb of the All, I am waiting, dazed
For memory to be erased.
Then I shall know the Elysium
That lies outside the monstrous womb
Of time from out of which I come.
_MANIFESTO_
I
A WOMAN has given me strength and affluence.
Admitted!
All the rocking wheat of Canada, ripening now,
has not so much of strength as the body of one
woman
sweet in ear, nor so much to give
though it feed nations.
Hunger is the very Satan.
The fear of hunger is Moloch, Belial, the horrible
God.
It is a fearful thing to be dominated by the fear of
hunger.
Not bread alone, not the belly nor the thirsty
throat.
I have never yet been smitten through the belly,
with the lack of bread,
no, nor even milk and honey.
The fear of the want of these things seems to be
quite left out of me.
For so much, I thank the good generations of man-
kind.