To A. C.
Not to the staring Day, For all the importunate questionings he pursues In his big, violent voice, Shall those mild things of bulk and multitude, The Trees--God's sentinels Over His gift of live, life-giving air, Yield of their huge, unutterable selves.
Midsummer-manifold, each one Voluminous, a labyrinth of life, They keep their greenest musings, and the dim dreams That haunt their leafier privacies, Dissembled, baffling the random gapeseed still With blank full-faces, or the innocent guile Of laughter flickering back from shine to shade, And disappearances of homing birds, And frolicsome freaks Of little boughs that frisk with little boughs.
But at the word Of the ancient, sacerdotal Night, Night of the many secrets, whose effect -
Transfiguring, hierophantic, dread -
Themselves alone may fully apprehend, They tremble and are changed.
In each, the uncouth individual soul Looms forth and glooms Essential, and, their bodily presences Touched with inordinate significance, Wearing the darkness like the livery Of some mysterious and tremendous guild, They brood--they menace--they appal;
Or the anguish of prophecy tears them, and they wring Wild hands of warning in the face Of some inevitable advance of the doom;
Or, each to the other bending, beckoning, signing As in some monstrous market-place, They pass the news, these Gossips of the Prime, In that old speech their forefathers Learned on the lawns of Eden, ere they heard The troubled voice of Eve Naming the wondering folk of Paradise.
Your sense is sealed, or you should hear them tell The tale of their dim life, with all Its compost of experience: how the Sun Spreads them their daily feast, Sumptuous, of light, firing them as with wine;
Of the old Moon's fitful solicitude And those mild messages the Stars Descend in silver silences and dews;
Or what the sweet-breathing West, Wanton with wading in the swirl of the wheat, Said, and their leafage laughed;
And how the wet-winged Angel of the Rain Came whispering . . . whispering; and the gifts of the Year -
The sting of the stirring sap Under the wizardry of the young-eyed Spring, Their summer amplitudes of pomp, Their rich autumnal melancholy, and the shrill, Embittered housewifery Of the lean Winter: all such things, And with them all the goodness of the Master, Whose right hand blesses with increase and life, Whose left hand honours with decay and death.
Thus under the constraint of Night These gross and simple creatures, Each in his scores of rings, which rings are years, A servant of the Will!
And God, the Craftsman, as He walks The floor of His workshop, hearkens, full of cheer In thus accomplishing The aims of His miraculous artistry.
