| |
From “Songs of the Dust”
THIS autumn afternoon | |
| My fancy need invent | |
| No untried sacrament. | |
| Man can still commune | |
| With Beauty as of old: | 5 |
| The tree, the wind’s lyre, | |
| The whirling dust, the fire— | |
| In these my faith is told. | |
| |
| Beauty warms us all; | |
| When horizons crimson burn, | 10 |
| We hold heaven’s cup in turn. | |
| The dry leaves gleaming fall, | |
| Crumbs of mystical bread; | |
| My dole of Beauty I break, | |
| Love to my lips I take, | 15 |
| And fear is quieted. | |
| |
| The symbols of old are made new: | |
| I watch the reeds and the rushes, | |
| The spruce trees dip their brushes | |
| In the mountain’s dusky blue; | 20 |
| The sky is deep like a pool; | |
| A fragrance the wind brings over | |
| Is warm like hidden clover, | |
| Though the wind itself is cool. | |
| |
| Across the air, between | 25 |
| The stems and the grey things, | |
| Sunlight a trellis flings. | |
| In quietude I lean: | |
| I hear the lifting zephyr | |
| Soft and shy and wild; | 30 |
| And I feel earth gentle and mild | |
| Like the eyes of a velvet heifer. | |
| |
| Love scatters and love disperses. | |
| Lightly the orchards dance | |
| In a lovely radiance. | 35 |
| Down sloping terraces | |
| They toss their mellow fruits. | |
| The rhythmic wind is sowing, | |
| Softly the floods are flowing | |
| Between the twisted roots. | 40 |
| |
| What Beauty need I own | |
| When the symbol satisfies? | |
| I follow services | |
| Of tree and cloud and stone. | |
| Color floods the world; | 45 |
| I am swayed by sympathy; | |
| Love is a litany | |
| In leaf and cloud unfurled. | |
| |
