Not as it speaks—an eagle message—drawn
In starry vastness from night’s labyrinths:
Not uttering itself from forth the dawn
In egret hues: nor from the cloud-built plinths
Of sunset’s splendor, speaking burningly
Unto the spirit; nor from flow’rs the bee
Makes mouths of musk of, cymes of hyacinths,—
But from the things that type humility.
From things despised.—Ev’n from the crawfish there,
Hollowing its house of ooze—a wet, vague sound
Of sleepy slime; or from the mole, whose lair,
Blind-tunneled, corridors the earth around—
Beauty may draw her truths, as draws its wings
The butterfly from the dull worm that clings,
Cocoon and chrysalis; and from the ground
Address the soul through even senseless things.
The soul, that oft hath heard the trees’ huge roots
Fumble the darkness, clutching at the soil;
The bird-like beaks of the imprisoned shoots
Peck through the bark and into leaves uncoil;
Hath heard the buried seed split through its pod,
Groping its blind way up to light and God;
The fungus, laboring with gnome-like toil,
Heave slow its white orb through the encircling sod.
The winds and waters, stars and streams and flowers,
The very stones have tongues: and moss and fern
And even lichens speak. This world of ours
Is eloquent with things that bid us learn
To pierce appearances, and so to mark,
Within the rock and underneath the bark,
Heard through some inward sense, the dreams that turn
Outward to light and beauty from the dark.
XV
Then it came to pass as I gazed on space
That I met with Mystery, face to face.
Within her eyes my wondering soul beheld
The eons past, the eons yet to come
At cosmic labor; and the stars,—that swelled,
Flaming or nebulous, from the darkness dumb,
In their appointed places, world and sun,
I saw were truths made visible, whose sum
Proclaimed one truth, the Word of Him, the One.
And it came to pass as I went my ways
That I met with Beauty, face to face.
Within her eyes my worshiping spirit saw
The moments busy with the dreams whence spring
Earth’s lovelinesses: and all things that awe
Man’s soul with their perfection—everything
That buds and bourgeons, blossoming above—
I saw were letters of enduring law,
Whose chapters make the beautiful book of Love.
THE MAN HUNT
The woods stretch deep to the mountain side,
And the brush is wild where a man may hide.
They have brought the bloodhounds up again
To the roadside rock where they found the slain.