56
ORACLES
Though the earth be disparted and rended,
Thus only the great peaks change
That their image is moulded and blended
Into all that a fancy may range ;
And the silence my song could refigure
To the note of a bird did I will,
Of glory or rigour, of passion or vigour—
The change were to ill!
For silence is better than singing
Though a Shelley wove songs in the sky,
And hovering is sweeter than winging;
To live is less good than to die.
The secret of secrets is hidden
Not in lives nor in loves, but in wills
That are free and unchidden, that wander
unbidden
To home in the hills.
A strength that is more than the summer
Is firm in that silence and rest,
Though stiller the rocks be and dumber
That the soul of its slumber oppressed.
For stronger control is than urging,
And mightier the heart of the sea
Than her waves deep-merging and striving
and surging
That deem they are free.
In spirit I stand on the mountain,
My soul into God’s withdrawn,
And look to the East like a fountain
That shoots up the spray of the dawn.
And the life of the mountain swims through
me
(So the song of a thrush in me thrills)
And the dawn speaks to me, of old for it
knew ne
The soul of the hills.
I stand on the mountain in wonder
As the splendour springs up in the East,
As the cloud banks are rended asunder,
And the wings of the Night are released.
As in travail a maiden demented,
Afraid of the deed she hath done,
By no man lamented, springs up the sweet-
scented
Pale flower of the sun.
So change not the heights and the hollows ;
The hollows are one with the heights
In that pallid grave dawn of Apollo’s
Confusion of shadows and lights.
Unreal save to sense that can sense her
That maiden of sunrise refills
The air’s grey censer with perfumes intenser
The higher the hills.
So, vague as a ghost swift faded,
Steals dawn, and so sunset may see
How her long long locks deep-braided
Fall down to her breast and her knee.
So night and so sunrise discover
No light and no darkness to heed.
Night is above her, and brings her no lover ;
And day, but no deed.
Such a sense is up and within me,
A tongue as of mystical fire !
Love, beauty, and holiness win me
‘To the end of the great desire,
Where I cease from the thirst and the labour,
As the land that no ploughman tills
Lest the robber his neighbour unloosen the
sabre
From holds in the hills.
From love of my life and its burden
Set free in the silence remote,
Grows a sorrow divine for my guerdon,
A peace in my struggling note.
Compassion for earth far extended
Beneath me, the swords and the rods,
My Spirit hath bended, bowed me and
blended
My self into God’s.
But God—what divinity rises
To me in the mountainous place?
What sun beyond suns, and surprises
Mine eyes at the dawn of His face?
No God in this silence existing,
No heaven and no earth of Him skills,
Save the blizzards unresting, whirling and
twisting
Adrift on the hills,