ODE ON A SILVER BIRCH
_in St James’ Park_
1
Muse, I will show thee, on a grassy mound
Moving with tufted shadows, albeit bare
Herself, for yet young April primes the air
And bloom snow-laden boughs, the tree I love.
London doth compass it with shores of sound
And thrills the buds when there’s no breath above
To shake its fountain beauty. Thus I came
Along the courtly mere of thicket isles,
And Spring entoil’d me in a hundred wiles,
Bringing the heart content without a name.
Broods, russet-plumed and emerald, steer’d on
With arrowy wake adown the placid tide
And in that gloomy pool there rode enskied,
Aloof, the stately languor of a swan.
But now the lake sets hither with a breeze
And crooks the peel’d bole of its planes.—Ah, there
Thou shall find audience—yon’s my shadowy love!—
O’er head a rose-grey pigeon beat his wings
About his ’lighted mate, and wooed the bough
And passion born of sight of mortal things
In warmth of living, moved and moves me now
As from the careless height that sways above
Floateth his voice, the soul of greening trees.
2
Approaching ’twixt the herald saplings pale
Whose light arrayment is a whirl of green
Of flamelets dropping for a virgin veil,
I come. Though Hades’ crocus-jets are stayed,
Soft! for a golden troop instead upsprung
Gossips apart in yon unfooted glade.
Broke we on earshot of that frolic tongue
Straightway would all be husht, they being afraid
To sing’t to simple ear of mutest maid.
3
But thou, still silver Spirit, unappall’d
Standest alone, and with thy senses dim
Feeling the first warmth fledge the unleaféd limb
Hearest not tread of mine, O Sun-enthrall’d!
What buried God conceived thee, and forestall’d
In the dull depth thy white and glistering graces—
That fume of netted drops and subtle laces
And listening statue-air, by men miscall’d?
Shower o’er the blue, and sister of blown surf!
Dream-daughter of the silences of turf!
Couldst thou but waken and recall the Mind
Lifts thee to image, then could I reveal
Wherefore thou seem’st remember’d and I feel
In thee mine own dream risen and divined!
4
Surely the hymn that charm’d thee from the grass
Fashion’d me also, and the selfsame lyre
Sounded accords that out of darkness pass
And in thy beauty and my song conspire?
The drum of streets, the fever of our homes,
Clangours and murk metallurgy of gnomes,
All are by thee unheard, who dost ignore
The wisdom of the wise, in dead pasts now
Dungeon’d as never to ascend; but thou
Whose being is for the light, and hath no care
To know itself nor root from whence it sprang,
Wouldst only murmur, in the heavenly air,
“_The sun, the sun!_” if but thy spirit sang!
5
O might I show thee by the lute’s devising
Man, from thy soft turf, flown with light, arising!
Him, too, doth hope, the boon without a pang,
Summon with thrilling finger forth to hang—
To cast a heaving soul to the wave of wind,
Sun-passion’d and earth-lodged. Ah, Tree serene
Dilating in the glow of the unseen,
We and our roofs and towers magnifical—
Our Fame’s heroic head against the sky—
Our loves—and all
That, with our briefness perfect, rise and die,—
Like thee must find
Beauty in a besieging of the dark;
Our glories on expectancy embark,
And the height of our ecstasy—
The touch of infinity—
Is blind.