THE ASCENT
HERE, where of old they sowed the mustard-seed,
A-branch like candelabra lit with flowers,
Above the slim young wheat-spears towers the weed
Burning the sunshine through these ardent hours;
And I, late pent in a small chintz-hung room
With all the bicker of a little town
About my window, I have burst my tomb
And stand assumed to the imperial down.
From the warm-breathing vale as from a prison,
From last year's plashy oak-leaves to the austere
Summits of chalky plough-land, I have risen
And sloughed my skin of sloth and heavened me here.
Past gardens laden with lilac and slow streams
Where the black-flowering rush renews its ranks
Where willow-drills lave in a mist of dreams
Their whispering leaflets, past the roadside banks
All white with daisies as green tide with surf,
(No star-bedizened belt of white Orion's
Holds lovelier constellations than this turf)
Past little closes set with dandelions
(And set so full that yellow ousts the green
And brags of victory shouting to the sun)
I urged me till beneath the sky's hot sheen
These heights of stony solitude were won.
Here on the crack'd white clods I stand elated
Whose iron verge scarce crumbles at my heels
So hath the effulgent ether indurated
The slot of horse-hoofs and the track of wheels;
And now, and now, the spirit no longer spent
In ease that overtops itself, takes grace,
Cleansed by the sweat of that divine ascent,
Exulting in the harsh unshaded place.
For here where God hath been so hard to shackle
The martyred earth He hath His first acclaim,
Still the parched flowers burn round His tabernacle,
The unwatered hills are vocal with His Name.