Washing out harms and griefs from memory, Giving a hint of that which changes not. Rich are the sea-gods: - who gives gifts but they? They grope the sea for pearls, but more than pearls: They pluck Force thence, and give it to the wise. For every wave is wealth to Dædalus, Wealth to the cunning artist who can work This matchless strength. Where shall he find, O waves! A load your Atlas shoulders cannot lift? I with my hammer pounding evermore Men to all shores that front the hoary main. I too have arts and sorceries; Illusion dwells forever with the wave. I know what spells are laid. Leave me to deal For, though he scoop my water in his palm, SONG OF NATURE MINE are the night and morning, The pits of air, the gulf of space, The sportive sun, the gibbous moon, The innumerable days. I hide in the solar glory, I am dumb in the pealing song, I rest on the pitch of the torrent, No numbers have counted my tallies, I sit by the shining Fount of Life And ever by delicate powers Gathering along the centuries From race on race the rarest flowers, My wreath shall nothing miss. And many a thousand summers My gardens ripened well, And light from meliorating stars With firmer glory fell.' I wrote the past in characters The building in the coral sea, And thefts from satellites and rings And broken stars I drew, And out of spent and aged things What time the gods kept carnival, Time and Thought were my surveyors, They laid their courses well, They boiled the sea, and piled the layers Of granite, marl and shell. But he, the man-child glorious, Where tarries he the while? The rainbow shines his harbinger, The sunset gleams his smile. My boreal lights leap upward, Forthright my planets roll, And still the man-child is not born, The summit of the whole. Must time and tide forever run? Will never my winds go sleep in the west? Will never my wheels which whirl the sun And satellites have rest? Too much of donning and doffing, I tire of globes and races, What without him is summer's pomp, Or winter's frozen shade? I travail in pain for him, My creatures travail and wait; Twice I have moulded an image, One in a Judæan manger, And one by Avon stream, One over against the mouths of Nile, And one in the Academe. I moulded kings and saviors, And bards o'er kings to rule; But fell the starry influence short, Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more, And mix the bowl again; Seethe, Fate! the ancient elements, Heat, cold, wet, dry, and peace, and pain. Let war and trade and creeds and song The sunburnt world a man shall breed No ray is dimmed, no atom worn, Gives back the bending heavens in dew.' |