Peace

Man cannot be a sophist to his heart,He must look nakedly on his intent,Expose it of all shreds of argument,And strip it like a slave-girl in the mart.What though with speckled truths and masked confessionsHe still deceives awhile the outer sense?At barely half his honesty’s expenseStill earns the world’s excuse for the world’s transgressions?

His conscience cannot play the marshland elf,Confusing that poor midnight wanderer,His soul, with floundering lights and errant gleams.O what damnation man would deal himselfIf meeting her beyond his uttermost dreamsHe still could face his soul and lie to her.

O spare me from the hand of niggard loveThat grasps at interest on what it lends,And sets cold counsel as a guard aboveThe hoard it calculates before it spends.Such misers of the riches of the heartBear their untested treasure to the grave,And miss the whole, striving to save the part,By the bare measure they have striven to save.

Is it for pride in saying at the end:See, Life! I spent not all that thou hast given--Lo, this and this and this I did not spend!I stinted earth of bliss to add to heaven.Alas, poor fools! life only gave ye thisBecause earth has such need of heavenly bliss.Once, Love, be prodigal, nor look hereafter,

Not though experience unrolls the yearsAnd bids thee count the cost of golden laughterIn the dull coinage of leaden tears.O perjured wisdom! half-truth hedged with lies!That makes a common stake of joy and pain,When tears are man’s most mortal certaintiesAnd every instant’s joy his heavenly gain.

Ah, mystery that sowed our breath and being,What harvest wilt thou get of untilled powers?Why didst thou give us sight if not for seeing?Why if we dare not hear make hearing ours?Or why in life’s name this high passion of loveBut in life’s name its passionate height to prove?

Wilt thou put seals on love because men sayLove is a thing that certain time will steal?As well, since night is certain after day,Might men their eyelids to the noontide seal.Nay! even though that worn-out tale were truth,And love, dear love, were time’s assurèd dower,What profit canst thou get of cheated youthBy paying usury before his hour?

I will not hear the sorry tune of time,That bitter quencher of young blessedness.Not to have proved young rapture is the crime,Unproven it will be quenched no less, no less.And thou wilt to the earth at last, time’s scorn,Relinquishing a crown thou hast not worn.

When all is said, we can but turn our eyesIn helplessness on the miraculous heartAnd secretly dream opportunitiesThat shall its untried force in motion start;But life that launched and left us lets us drift,Our mightiest dreams still lean on circumstance,The essence of pain and joy is in our giftBut not its seasons of significance.

We cannot by the strength of our desiresCompel our destinies; we only feelThat in our souls imperishable firesAre hungry for the anvil and the steel.But if life brings no metal to the flameWhat shall we fashion of it in life’s name?

Certain among us walk in lonelinessAlong the pale unprofitable days,Hazarding many an unanswered guessAt what vague purpose wastes us on our ways.We know that we are potent to create,We say, I could be such or such or such,And lo, indifferent death swings back the gateAnd life has never put us to the touch.

So women with the aching will to bearStill to the barren grave must barren go,And men that might again like Titans dareAngelic secrets, die and nothing know.Alas! why were we born to woe and blissIf life had no more need of us than this?

When I see two delay their wings at heavenTo scan the creeping audience of the earth,I think the angelic hosts of life must evenBreak into tears of fire or furious mirth,That ever spirits nearly perfectedShould count the cost of knowing themselves sublime,Setting the measurable years in dreadAgainst their single flash of measureless time.

So issues strange to nature are debated,Woven in nets and beaten into bars,While nature’s issue stands unconsummatedUpon the very boundary of the stars;And souls whose unity had been divineSundered shrink back from God’s to man’s design.

Alas, that ever life’s sleek counterfeit,Convention, should usurp life’s very throne,Setting about the bitter and the sweetObservances the soul disdains to own.It muffles up with bland expedient tongueThe wise examination of the mind,Bribing the old and threatening the youngAnd offering easy conduct to the blind.

A handbook of few rules for many cases,One answer to more sums than it can prove,With prizes for apt scholars in its paces,A veil for knowledge and a ring for love;And this smooth text for any questioning heart--Know not, and be less than, the thing thou art.

Love needs not two the render it complete,O certainly love needs not even one!Sweet singing wants no listener to be sweet,And unseen light’s still proper to the sun.When sunlight falls upon unpeopled valleysNo presence can increase or dim its fall,When nightingales sing in deserted alleysNo ear can make the night more musical.

If solitary into the light and songI come, I know I have my treasure whole,Yea, and still have it whole, although a throngRuns after me down paths whereby I stole,Yea, and still have it whole, though only oneShould follow me--or none, beloved, or none.

What is this anguish then that always standsMingled in love, if love be love’s sole end?O it is life still gasping his commandsAnd crying love therein to stand his friend.Life drives us all whether we love or no,We are life’s purpose, he much less is ours,And we like panting beasts in harness goWhile his fierce needs make torments of our powers.

Only when love across the heavy fieldsDivinely treads to labour with the clods,He breaks the goad that life is glad to yield,And lifts the yoke that bowed us to the sods:Upstanding, we behold a God revealed,And serve life’s purpose not like beasts but gods.

A few of us who faltered as we faredLove has returned for. Still he leads us on,But where we walk the furrows are preparedAnd sown and fruitful, and the sowers are gone.O love, O love, the way too easy lies!Life on the rough horizon yonder goes,And when I call he will not turn his eyes,But with my brothers sows, and reaps, and sows.

Life without love, O bitter, bitterest birth!Love without life still leaves us in our need.Ah, love, give up to me my patch of earth,My pinch of seed! Hast neither earth nor seed?Then whence these visions of thy presence born,These shining visions of flowers and fruit and corn?

I hear love answer: Since within the meshOf blood and flesh you labour for awhile,I, even I, must use you in the flesh,Leavening it of all the world calls vile.I am not nature’s force. O, she will forgeHer indomitable end without my aid,And men cry out on her with rising gorgeAs though they were of other forces made.

Not being her bond-slave, I alone can giveVisions that are unmingled with her earth,But since this present in her habit you liveI must meet nature to fulfil their birth.Only when you and I come clear of the clay,Beloved, I will fulfil them as I may.

Thy glance is lovelier than the glance of the moon,Thy breath more heavenly than the breath of may,When thou dost gaze my sight begins to swoon,When thou dost breathe my own breath swims away.O love, with strange clear light, with strange dim breath,Thou dost pervade me, till all strength, all sense,Dissolve, it may be as they will when deathLooses the soul from the body’s impotence.

The stones I tread no longer solid are,These narrow houses all are built of air,Nay, are they on this star, or on that starDistantly trembling? Am I here or there?Love, love, I know not what is near and far,I am with thee and thou art everywhere.

Now I have love again and life againBy either hand, and cannot join their palms;For me they never will be one but twain,And I from each accept the barest alms.Life’s dole I scatter publicly, love’s liesUnspent, unspent for ever in my heart--Poor heart, poor beggar of bleak charitiesFrom stores wherein it owns no proper part.

Each knows me for his almsman in distressAnd brings his mercies to my famished door,But love asks not who doth my body dress,Nor life who stoops to clothe a heart so poor.Why do ye always come in singleness?Meet in me once, and I will want no more.

Farewell, you children that I might have borne.Now must I put you from me year by year,Now year by year the root of life be tornOut of this womb to which you were so dear,Now year by year the milky springs be driedWithin the sealed-up fountains of my breast,Now year by year be to my arms deniedThe burden they would break with and be blessed.

Sometimes I felt your lips and hands so closeI almost could have plucked you from the dark,But now your very dream more distant growsAs my still aching body grows more stark.I shall not see you laugh or hear you weep,Kiss you awake, or cover up your sleep.

O lovely life, how you have worn me outWith asking naught and leaving me at large,Till my unmeasured strength begins to doubtIf it could answer now your lightest charge.I am as weary as a child to-nightAnd with my heavy lack of burdens bowed,And power and pride have ceased to stand upright,Wanting the cause to be powerful and proud.

Passion is spent, and nothing was it spent on,And grief run dry of having no wounds to cure,And discontent that was the staff I leant onIs stifled by its final panting breaths.I have only patience left: such patience, sure,Is not life’s child and mine, but mine and death’s.

My little dream, my momentary dream,My illimitable dream has slipt away.It came not like the morning, but the gleamIn morning’s van that is not night or day.But since my walls of ignorance are broken,Though on that desert knowledge builds no towers,I cannot say of life, he has not spoken,I cannot say of love, he has no powers.

I have seen apparitions. I have heardRumours within my soul’s profoundest cave.Movements remote and mighty have been stirredIn my ancestral blood, while from the graveAnd womb of time strange thunders did ariseThat shook the throne of thought with prophecies.

Shall we not laugh together, you and I,I being at last fulfilled, at last at restWithin the strength of your beloved breast,Shall we not laugh once at a day gone byWhen, wan as things that lie below the earth,Things choked and buried, sunless and unsought,This richest life was only lived in thought,Seed without fruit, unconsummated birth?

Love, in that time when you have called me yoursAnd have with kisses long outbreathed old fears,Love, let me not remember these! these hours,Save with one smile to drown their thousand tears.Then fold me in your bosom so deep awayThat memory cannot touch this loveless day.