“What! you had vision? mountains, comets, seas,
Wild storm, wild beauty, wild embattled flames,
You harnessed to your tongues with hackneyed ease.
Tamers of splendour! those familiar names
Troubled you not, less kingly, more remote
Than gain and ease, your god, your man-made grail.
Not nature’s giants, not cosmic menace smote
Your souls with awe, or thrust you down the scale.
No, nor the thoughts your thoughts could not embrace,
A God’s intention, void, sublime, or strange,
The birth or death of time, the bourn of space,
Nor unimaginable colours’ range,
Nor the continuous eastward roll of earth,
Half, in the energy of day aware;
Half, where the sweeping shadow curves its girth,
Within night’s darkened temple cowled in prayer.
No deep misgivings, no mysterious faith;
Your very god was passed from hand to hand;
You had no inkling of the nobler breath
Blown on the spark you could not understand.
VII
“The little spark within the heart of man.
How should you know the desperate clutch of fingers
That feel the moment slipping, feel the dear
Infrequent moment slipping as it lingers,
The flaming hour ironic in its fleetness,
The rush of vision swift beyond belief?
Near, as the dead to the incredulous living;
So dead, the heart is rigid with its grief.
What would you offer me as compensation
After your sloth had blanketed my fire?
Your deepest peace, satiety Lethean;
Your aim, diversion; and your spur, desire.
Tragic, or merry, be the body’s passion,
Ordained or gay; not, not the sordid mean!
Your soul’s a skinny waif, that was not driven
To sin, but sought small solaces unclean.
You struck no fire from flint; you neither knew
Fasting nor feasting; vigour, nor a kiss;
The silk pavilioned bed of Aphrodite,
Or woodland hardihood of Artemis.