Each Life Converges to some Centre --
Expressed -- or still --
Exists in every Human Nature
A Goal --
Embodied scarcely to itself -- it may be --
Too fair
For Credibility's presumption
To mar --
Adored with caution -- as a Brittle Heaven --
To reach
Were hopeless, as the Rainbow's Raiment
To touch --
Yet persevered toward -- sure -- for the Distance --
How high --
Unto the Saint's slow diligence --
The Sky --
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of Victory
As he defeated -- dying --
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!
UNLESS it was that day I never knew
Ambition. After a night of frost, before
The March sun brightened and the South-west blew,
Jackdaws began to shout and float and soar
Already, and one was racing straight and high
Alone, shouting like a black warrior
Challenges and menaces to the wide sky.
With loud long laughter then a woodpecker
Ridiculed the sadness of the owl's last cry.
And through the valley where all the folk astir
Made only plumes of pearly smoke to tower
Over dark trees and white meadows happier
Than was Elysium in that happy hour,
A train that roared along raised after it
And carried with it a motionless white bower
Of purest cloud, from end to end close-knit,