Forth from the dust and din

FORTH from the dust and din,The crush, the heat, the many-spotted glare,The odour and sense of life and lust aflare,The wrangle and jangle of unrests,Let us take horse, Dear Heart, take horse and win—As from swart August to the green lap of May—To quietness and the fresh and fragrant breastsOf the still, delicious night, not yet awareIn any of her innumerable nestsOf that first sudden plash of dawn,Clear, sapphirine, luminous, large,Which tells that soon the flowing springs of dayIn deep and ever deeper eddies drawnForward and up, in wider and wider way,Shall float the sands, and brim the shores,On this our lith of the World, as round it roarsAnd spins into the outlook of the Sun(The Lord’s first gift, the Lord’s especial charge),With light, with living light, from marge to margeUntil the course He set and staked be run.

Through street and square, through square and street,Each with his home-grown quality of darkAnd violated silence, loud and fleet,Waylaid by a merry ghost at every lamp,The hansom wheels and plunges. Hark, O, hark,Sweet, how the old mare’s bit and chainRing back a rough refrainUpon the marked and cheerful trampOf her four shoes! Here is the Park,And O, the languid midsummer wafts adust,The tired midsummer blooms!O, the mysterious distances, the gloomsRomantic, the augustAnd solemn shapes! At night this City of TreesTurns to a tryst of vague and strangeAnd monstrous Majesties,Let loose from some dim underworld to rangeThese terrene vistas till their twilight sets:When, dispossessed of wonderfulness, they standBeggared and common, plain to all the landFor stooks of leaves! And lo! the Wizard Hour,His silent, shining sorcery winged with power!Still, still the streets, between their carcanetsOf linking gold, are avenues of sleep.But see how gable ends and parapetsIn gradual beauty and significanceEmerge! And did you hearThat little twitter-and-cheep,Breaking inordinately loud and clearOn this still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere?’Tis a first nest at matins! And beholdA rakehell cat—how furtive and acold!A spent witch homing from some infamous dance—Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fadeThrough shadowy railings into a pit of shade!And now! a little wind and shy,The smell of ships (that earnest of romance),A sense of space and water, and therebyA lamplit bridge ouching the troubled sky,And look, O, look! a tangle of silver gleamsAnd dusky lights, our River and all his dreams,His dreams that never save in our deaths can die.

What miracle is happening in the air,Charging the very texture of the grayWith something luminous and rare?The night goes out like an ill-parcelled fire,And, as one lights a candle, it is day.The extinguisher, that perks it like a spireOn the little formal church, is not yet greenAcross the water: but the house-tops nigher,The corner-lines, the chimneys—look how clean,How new, how naked! See the batch of boats,Here at the stairs, washed in the fresh-sprung beam!And those are barges that were goblin floats,Black, hag-steered, fraught with devilry and dream!And in the piles the water frolics clear,The ripples into loose rings wander and flee,And we—we can behold that could but hearThe ancient River singing as he goes,New-mailed in morning, to the ancient Sea.The gas burns lank and jaded in its glass:The old Ruffian soon shall yawn himself awake,And light his pipe, and shoulder his tools, and takeHis hobnailed way to work!

Let us too pass—Pass ere the sun leaps and your shadow shows—Through these long, blindfold rowsOf casements staring blind to right and left,Each with his gaze turned inward on some pieceOf life in death’s own likeness—Life bereftOf living looks as by the Great Release—Pass to an exquisite night’s more exquisite close!

Reach upon reach of burial—so they feel,These colonies of dreams! And as we stealHomeward together, but for the buxom breeze,Fitfully frolicking to heelWith news of dawn-drenched woods and tumbling seas,We might—thus awed, thus lonely that we are—Be wandering some dispeopled star,Some world of memories and unbroken graves,So broods the abounding Silence near and far:Till even your footfall cravesForgiveness of the majesty it braves.