| I | |
| Complacencies of the peignoir, and late | |
| Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair, | |
| And the green freedom of a cockatoo | |
| Upon a rug mingle to dissipate | |
| The holy hush of ancient sacrifice. | 5 |
| She dreams a little, and she feels the dark | |
| Encroachment of that old catastrophe, | |
| As a calm darkens among water-lights. | |
| The pungent oranges and bright, green wings | |
| Seem things in some procession of the dead, | 10 |
| Winding across wide water, without sound. | |
| The day is like wide water, without sound, | |
| Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet | |
| Over the seas, to silent Palestine, | |
| Dominion of the blood and sepulchre. | 15 |
| |
| II | |
| Why should she give her bounty to the dead? | |
| What is divinity if it can come | |
| Only in silent shadows and in dreams? | |
| Shall she not find in comforts of the sun, | |
| In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else | 20 |
| In any balm or beauty of the earth, | |
| Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven? | |
| Divinity must live within herself: | |
| Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow; | |
| Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued | 25 |
| Elations when the forest blooms; gusty | |
| Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights; | |
| All pleasures and all pains, remembering | |
| The bough of summer and the winter branch. | |
| These are the measures destined for her soul. | 30 |
| |
| III | |
| Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth. | |
| No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave | |
| Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind. | |
| He moved among us, as a muttering king, | |
| Magnificent, would move among his hinds, | 35 |
| Until our blood, commingling, virginal, | |
| With heaven, brought such requital to desire | |
| The very hinds discerned it, in a star. | |
| Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be | |
| The blood of paradise? And shall the earth | 40 |
| Seem all of paradise that we shall know? | |
| The sky will be much friendlier then than now, | |
| A part of labor and a part of pain, | |
| And next in glory to enduring love, | |
| Not this dividing and indifferent blue. | 45 |
| |
| IV | |
| She says, "I am content when wakened birds, | |
| Before they fly, test the reality | |
| Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings; | |
| But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields | |
| Return no more, where, then, is paradise?" | 50 |
| There is not any haunt of prophesy, | |
| Nor any old chimera of the grave, | |
| Neither the golden underground, nor isle | |
| Melodious, where spirits gat them home, | |
| Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm | 55 |
| Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured | |
| As April's green endures; or will endure | |
| Like her remembrance of awakened birds, | |
| Or her desire for June and evening, tipped | |
| By the consummation of the swallow's wings. | 60 |
| |
| V | |
| She says, "But in contentment I still feel | |
| The need of some imperishable bliss." | |
| Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, | |
| Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams | |
| And our desires. Although she strews the leaves | 65 |
| Of sure obliteration on our paths, | |
| The path sick sorrow took, the many paths | |
| Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love | |
| Whispered a little out of tenderness, | |
| She makes the willow shiver in the sun | 70 |
| For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze | |
| Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet. | |
| She causes boys to pile new plums and pears | |
| On disregarded plate. The maidens taste | |
| And stray impassioned in the littering leaves. | 75 |
| |
| VI | |
| Is there no change of death in paradise? | |
| Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs | |
| Hang always heavy in that perfect sky, | |
| Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth, | |
| With rivers like our own that seek for seas | 80 |
| They never find, the same receding shores | |
| That never touch with inarticulate pang? | |
| Why set the pear upon those river banks | |
| Or spice the shores with odors of the plum? | |
| Alas, that they should wear our colors there, | 85 |
| The silken weavings of our afternoons, | |
| And pick the strings of our insipid lutes! | |
| Death is the mother of beauty, mystical, | |
| Within whose burning bosom we devise | |
| Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly. | 90 |
| |
| VII | |
| Supple and turbulent, a ring of men | |
| Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn | |
| Their boisterous devotion to the sun, | |
| Not as a god, but as a god might be, | |
| Naked among them, like a savage source. | 95 |
| Their chant shall be a chant of paradise, | |
| Out of their blood, returning to the sky; | |
| And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice, | |
| The windy lake wherein their lord delights, | |
| The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills, | 100 |
| That choir among themselves long afterward. | |
| They shall know well the heavenly fellowship | |
| Of men that perish and of summer morn. | |
| And whence they came and whither they shall go | |
| The dew upon their feet shall manifest. | 105 |
| |
| VIII | |
| She hears, upon that water without sound, | |
| A voice that cries, "The tomb in Palestine | |
| Is not the porch of spirits lingering. | |
| It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay." | |
| We live in an old chaos of the sun, | 110 |
| Or old dependency of day and night, | |
| Or island solitude, unsponsored, free, | |
| Of that wide water, inescapable. | |
| Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail | |
| Whistle about us their spontaneous cries; | 115 |
| Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness; | |
| And, in the isolation of the sky, | |
| At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make | |
| Ambiguous undulations as they sink, | |
| Downward to darkness, on extended wings. | 120 |