IMAGES
IV.
Laugh, thou immortal Lesbian !
Thy verse runs down the runic ages.
Where shalt thou be when sun and star,
My sun, my star, the vault that span,
Rush in their rude, impassive rages
Down to some centre guessed afar
By mindless Law? Their death-embrace
A simple accident of space?
Vv.
Where is thy fame, when million leagues
OF flaming gas absorb the roll
Of many a system ruinous hurled
With infinite pains and dire fatigues
To build another stupid soul
For fools to call another world ?
Where then thy fame, O soul sublime?
Where then thy victory over Time?
VI.
Wilt thou seek deeper than the fact?
Take refuge in a city of mind?
Build thee an house, and call it heaven?
Rush on! there foams the cataract,
Blind steersman leader of the blind,
Sole devil herald of the seven
Thy garnished halls should house, O Christ,
Thou being dead, thou sacrificed
VII.
Not for atonement, not for bliss ;
Truly for nothing : so it was.
Nay, friends, think well!
the dream !
Seek not some mystery in the kiss,
Some virtue in the chrysopras,
Some nymph or undine in the stream.
Things as we know them should be enough
To glut our misery and our love.
Renounce
VIII.
Why must despair to madness drive
The myriad fools that fear to die?
God’s but a fervid phantom drawn
Out of the hasty-ordered hive
Of thoughts that battle agony
In the melancholy hours of dawn.
When vital force at lowest ebbs
Anzemic nerves weave frailest webs.
OF LIFE
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IX.
So, be content! Should science cleave
The veil of things and show us peace
Well :—but by wild imagining
Think not a golden robe to weave !
Such moulder. By fantastic case
Ye come not well to anything,
Work and be sober: dotage thinks
By worth of words to slay the Sphinx.
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X.
Things as they are—of these take hold,
Their heart of wonder throb to thine!
All things are matter and force and
sense,
No two alone. All’s one: the gold
Of truth is no reward divine
Of faith, but wage of evidence.
The clod, the God, the spar, the star
Mete in thy measure, as they are!
XI.
So lifts the agony of the world
From this mine head, that bowed awhile
Before the terror suddenly shown.
The nameless fear for self, far hurled
By death to dissolution vile,
Fades as the royal truth is known:
Though change and sorrow range and roll
There is no self—there is no soul!
XII.
As man, a primate risen high
Above his fellows, work thou well
As man, an incident minute
And dim in time’s eternity,
Work well! As man, no toy for hell
And heaven to wrangle for, be mute !
Let empty speculation stir
The idle fool, the craven cur!
XIII.
Myself being idle for an hour
I dare one thing to speculate:
Namely, that life hath cusps yet higher
On this our curve : a prize, a power
Lies in our grasp: unthinking Fate
Shall build a brain to nestle nigher
Unto the ultimate Truth: I burn
To live that later lives may learn.