[Monochrome]
Shut fast again in Beauty's sheath
Where ancient forms renew,
The round world seems above, beneath,
One wash of faintest blue,
And air and tide so stilly sweet
In nameless union lie,
The little far-off fishing fleet
Goes drifting up the sky.
Secure of neither misted coast
Nor ocean undefined,
Our flagging sail is like the ghost
Of one that served mankind,
Who in the void, as we upon
This melancholy sea,
Finds labour and allegiance done,
And Self begin to be.
[Saint Francis Endeth his Sermon]
"And now, my clerks who go in fur or feather
Or brighter scales, I bless you all. Be true
To your true Lover and Avenger, whether
By land or sea ye die the death undue.
Then proffer man your pardon; and together
Track him to Heaven, and see his heart made new.
"From long ago one hope hath in me thriven,
Your hope, mysterious as the scented May:
Not to Himself your titles God hath given
In vain, nor only for our mortal day.
O doves! how from The Dove shall ye be driven?
O darling lambs! ye with The Lamb shall play."
[An Estray]
Well we know, not ever here is a footing for thy dream:
Thou art sick for horse and spear beside an Asian stream,
For the hearth-smoke in the wild, for the goatherd's stave,
For a beauty far exiled, a belief within its grave.
While another sky and ground orb thy strange remembering,
And no world of mortal bound is the master of thy wing,
Canst thou yet thy fate forgive, that the godhead in thy breast
Has this life at least to live as a force in rhythmic rest,
As a seed that bides the hour of obscureness and decay,
Being troth of flower to flower down the long dynastic day?
Child whom elder airs enfold, who hast greatness to maintain
Where heroic hap of old may return and shine again,
As too oft across thy heart flits the too familiar light,
How alarms of love upstart at the token quick and slight!
Lest captivity be o'er, lest thou glide away, and so
From our tents of Nevermore strike the trail of Long Ago.