CHALLENGE
You fools behind the panes who peer
At the strong black anger of the sky,
Come out and feel the storm swing by,
Aye, take its blow on your lips, and hear
The wind in the branches cry.
No. Leave us to the day’s device,
Draw to your blinds and take your ease,
Grow peak’d in the face and crook’d in the knees;
Your sinews could not pay the price
When the storm goes through the trees.
TRAVEL TALK
LADYWOOD, 1912. (TO E. DE S.)
To the high hills you took me, where desire,
Daughter of difficult life, forgets her lures,
And hope’s eternal tasks no longer tire,
And only peace endures.
Where anxious prayer becomes a worthless thing
Subdued by muted praise,
And asking nought of God and life we bring
The conflict of long days
Into a moment of immortal poise
Among the scars and proud unbuilded spires,
Where, seeking not the triumphs and the joys
So treasured in the world, we kindle fires
That shall not burn to ash, and are content
To read anew the eternal argument.
Nothing of man’s intolerance we know
Here, far from man, among the fortressed hills,
Nor of his querulous hopes.
To what may we attain? What matter, so
We feel the unwearied virtue that fulfils
These cloudy crests and rifts and heathered slopes
With life that is and seeks not to attain,
For ever spends nor ever asks again?
To the high hills you took me. And we saw
The everlasting ritual of sky
And earth and the waste places of the air,
And momently the change of changeless law
Was beautiful before us, and the cry
Of the great winds was as a distant prayer
From a massed people, and the choric sound
Of many waters moaning down the long
Veins of the hills was as an undersong;
And in that hour we moved on holy ground.