Ah! not ours: yet ours the moulding of a future near or far;
Ours to set a sun in heaven,—hurl in space a red-eyed star.—
For I’m told, beyond my curtain there revolveth day and night,
And among the stars there standeth one that winketh red with fight;
And you say the glow that lights upon my cheek is from the sun
Guiding lightning-footed planets as they in their orbits run;
And I’ve heard that all have sprung from atoms crowding God’s abyss,—
Mars, the evil-eyed and warlike; Sol, the pivot-point of bliss.
VII.
Yes, a weakness, sprung from weakness, weaker waxes, and a strength
On from strength to strength goes marching, grasping God’s right hand at length;
For the mickle at the shoulder means the muckle at the hand,
And the hair’s breadth on the compass means the ship upon the land.
VIII.
Aye, wife; now I know the reason why you sighed so since we wed:
You have seen the world hang on you. Don’t you mind, dear, what you read
Out of Cowper?—where he speaks of how the arrow on the wing
Falls at last far out of line though small the error at the string.
IX.
There he’s: take him! You can rhyme of chubby cheeks, and laughy eyes
That have housed far down within them little patches of the skies;
You can paint your glowing pictures, that a tear may wash away
When a future Vandal stumbles through your dream some after day.
Mine are coloured from th’ eternal, set by Love in Fancy’s mould,
Knowing nought of life’s mutations, Summer’s heat or Winter’s cold.
X.
So you’ve only come this morning, courier dove with pinions white?
What’s the news from God, what message from the hidden heart of Night?
