| |
| FAREWELL to such a world! Too long I press | |
| The crowded pavement with unwilling feet. | |
| Pity makes pride, and hate breeds hatefulness, | |
| And both are poisons. In the forest sweet | |
| The shade, the peace! Immensity, that seems | 5 |
| To drown the human life of doubts and dreams. | |
| |
| Far off the massive portals of the wood, | |
| Buttressed with shadow, misty-blue, serene, | |
| Waited my coming. Speedily I stood | |
| Where the dun wall rose roofed in plumy green. | 10 |
| Dare one go in?—Glance backward! Dusk as night | |
| Each column, fringed with sprays of amber light. | |
| |
| Let me, along this fallen bole, at rest, | |
| Turn to the cool, dim roof my glowing face. | |
| Delicious dark on weary eyelids prest! | 15 |
| Enormous solitude of silent space, | |
| But for a low and thunderous ocean sound, | |
| Too far to hear, felt thrilling through the ground. | |
| |
| No stir nor call the sacred hush profanes; | |
| Save when from some bare tree-top, far on high, | 20 |
| Fierce disputations of the clamorous cranes | |
| Fall muffled, as from out the upper sky. | |
| So still, one dreads to wake the dreaming air, | |
| Breaks a twig softly, moves the foot with care. | |
| |
| The hollow dome is green with empty shade, | 25 |
| Struck through with slanted shafts of afternoon; | |
| Aloft, a little rift of blue is made, | |
| Where slips a ghost that last night was the moon. | |
| Beside its pearl a sea-cloud stays its wing, | |
| Beneath, a tilted hawk is balancing. | 30 |
| |
| The heart feels not in every time and mood | |
| What is around it. Dull as any stone | |
| I lay; then, like a darkening dream, the wood | |
| Grew Karnac’s temple, where I breathed alone | |
| In the awed air strange incense, and uprose | 35 |
| Dim, monstrous columns in their dread repose. | |
| |
| The mind not always sees; but if there shine | |
| A bit of fern-lace bending over moss, | |
| A silky glint that rides a spider-line, | |
| On a trefoil two shadow spears that cross, | 40 |
| Three grasses that toss up their nodding heads, | |
| With spring and curve like clustered fountain-threads, | |
| |
| Suddenly, through side windows of the eye, | |
| Deep solitudes, where never souls have met; | |
| Vast spaces, forest corridors that lie | 45 |
| In a mysterious world, unpeopled yet. | |
| Because the outward eye was elsewhere caught, | |
| The awfulness and wonder come unsought. | |
| |
| If death be but resolving back again | |
| Into the world’s deep soul, this is a kind | 50 |
| Of quiet, happy death, untouched by pain | |
| Or sharp reluctance. For I feel my mind | |
| Is interfused with all I hear and see; | |
| As much a part of All as cloud or tree. | |
| |
| Listen! A deep and solemn wind on high; | 55 |
| The shafts of shining dust shift to and fro; | |
| The columned trees sway imperceptibly, | |
| And creak as mighty masts when trade-winds blow. | |
| The cloudy sails are set; the earth ship swings | |
| Along the sea of space to grander things. | 60 |
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