From my spirit's gray defeat,
From my pulse's flagging beat,
From my hopes that turned to sand
Sifting through my close-clenched hand,
From my own fault's slavery,
If I can sing, I still am free.
For with my singing I can make
A refuge for my spirit's sake,
A house of shining words, to be
My fragile immortality.
I made you many and many a song,
Yet never one told all you are--
It was as though a net of words
Were flung to catch a star;
It was as though I curved my hand
And dipped sea-water eagerly,
Only to find it lost the blue
Dark splendor of the sea.
You draw my heart about you, as a cloak,
And your words steal over it like a reluctant color:
A color of pain that fears to die.
My heart ripples with your slight turning
But sometimes moves when you are still,
Beckoning to longings that have not reached your mouth.
The lilies sag with rain-drops:
Their petals hold fire that does not break out.
(As though it slept between vapor-silk
It could not burn).
And a young breeze stumbles upon the lilies
And strokes them with his spinning hands....
The lilies and the young breeze are not unlike
Your silence and the rush of soft words breaking it.
I WAS a boy when I heard three red words
a thousand Frenchmen died in the streets
for: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity — I asked
why men die for words.
I was older; men with mustaches, sideburns,
lilacs, told me the high golden words are :
Mother, Home, and Heaven — other older men with
face decorations said : God, Duty, Immortality
— they sang these threes slow from deep lungs.
Years ticked off their say-so on the great clocks
of doom and damnation, soup and nuts : meteors flashed
their say-so: and out of great Russia came three
dusky syllables workmen took guns and went out to die
for: Bread, Peace, Land.
And I met a marine of the U. S. A., a leatherneck with
Speak, sir, and be wise.
Speak choosing your words, sir,
like an old woman over a bushel
of apples.
Let me be monosyllabic to-day, O Lord.
Yesterday I loosed a snarl of words on a fool,
on a child.
To-day, let me be monosyllabic ... a crony of old men
who wash sunlight in their fingers and
enjoy slow-pacing clocks.
I THOUGHT there was no pleasure in the world
Because of my fears.
Then I remembered life and all the words in my language.
And I had courage even to despise form.
I thought, " I have skill to make words dance.
To clap hands and to shake feet,
But I will put myself, and everything I see, upon the page.
Why should I reject words because of their genealogy?
Or things, because of their association?
Why should I scorn a bus rather than a ship? "
Brighter than fireflies upon the Uji River
Are your words in the dark. Beloved.
Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods, and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?
O! know sweet love I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.
Prophecy and inspiration.
'Twas by an order from the Lord
The ancient prophets spoke his word;
His Spirit did their tongues inspire,
And warmed their hearts with heav'nly fire.
The works and wonders which they wrought
Confirmed the messages they brought;
The prophet's pen succeeds his breath,
To save the holy words from death.
Great God, mine eyes with pleasure look
On the dear volume of thy book;
There my Redeemer's face I see,
And read his name who died for me.
Let the false raptures of the mind
Be lost, and vanish in the wind;
Here I can fix my hope secure;
By homely gift and hindered Words
The human heart is told
Of Nothing --
"Nothing" is the force
That renovates the World --