| AND while they talked and talked, and while they sat | |
| Changing their base minds into baser coin; | |
| And telling—they! how truth and beauty join, | |
| And how a certain this was good, but that | |
| Was baser than the viper or the toad, | 5 |
| Or the blind beggar glaring down the road. | |
| |
| I turned from them in fury, and I ran | |
| To where the moon shone out upon the height, | |
| Down the long reaches of a summer night, | |
| Stretching slim fingers, and the starry clan | 10 |
| Grew thicker than the flowers that we see | |
| Clustered in quiet fields of greenery. | |
| |
| Around me was the night-time sane and cold, | |
| The clouds that knew no care and no restraint | |
| Swung through the silences, or drifted faint | 15 |
| To pale horizons, wreathing fold on fold, | |
| The moon’s sharp edge, each rolling cloud a sea, | |
| A foam of silver shining gloriously. | |
| |
| The quietudes that sunder star from star, | |
| The hazy distances of loneliness, | 20 |
| Where never eagle’s wing or timid press | |
| Of lark or wren could venture, and the far | |
| Profundities untravelled and unstirred | |
| By any act of man or thought or word. | |
| |
| These held me with amazement and delight: | 25 |
| I yearned up through the spaces of the sky, | |
| Beyond the rolling clouds, beyond the high | |
| And delicate white moon, and up the height, | |
| And past the rocking stars, and out to where | |
| The ether failed in spaces sharp and bare. | 30 |
| |
| The breath that is the very breath of life | |
| Throbbed close to me: I heard the pulses beat, | |
| That lift the universes into heat: | |
| The slow withdrawal, and the deeper strife | |
| Of His wide respiration, like a sea | 35 |
| It ebbed and flooded through immensity. | |
| |
| His breath alone in wave on mighty wave! | |
| O moon and stars swell to a raptured song! | |
| Ye mountains toss the harmony along! | |
| O little men with little souls to save | 40 |
| Swing up glad chantings, ring the skies above, | |
| With boundless gratitude for boundless love! | |
| |
| Probing the ocean to its steepest drop; | |
| Rejoicing in the viper and the toad, | |
| And the blind beggar glaring down the road; | 45 |
| And they who talk and talk and never stop | |
| Equally quickening; with a care to bend | |
| The gnat’s slant wing into a swifter end. | |
| |
| Searching the quarries of all life, the deep | |
| Low crannies and shy places of the world, | 50 |
| To warm the smallest insect that is curled | |
| In a deep root, or on the sun to heap | |
| Fiercer combustion, spending love on all | |
| In equal share, the mighty and the small. | |
| |
| The silence clung about me like a gift, | 55 |
| The tender night-time folded me around | |
| Protectingly, and in a peace profound | |
| The clouds drooped slowly backward drift on drift | |
| Into the darkness, and the moon was gone, | |
| And soon the stars had vanished every one. | 60 |
| |
| But on the sky, a handsbreadth in the west, | |
| A faint cold brightness crept and soared and spread, | |
| Until the rustling heavens overhead, | |
| And the grey trees and grass were manifest: | |
| Then through the chill a golden spear was hurled, | 65 |
| And the big sun tossed laughter on the world. | |
