Do you ever go into your room and find familiar things unfamiliar.
Muslin curtains thinned by moonlight,
Open window, candle, mirror, expectant chairs,
Long smooth waiting bed—do they not bear another aspect
As if you had divined them doing their duty,
As if to be inanimate clearly involved a process,
As if they were surprised at their creeping task of going back to earth, rising in plants, quickening into beings.
That is the great work of those patient things.
That is why they look so intent.
So with all your preoccupation in dressing for to-day
Your object is the same as that of these humble ones.
Only you have reached a paradise where you can hasten your way.
But these others are yet in purgatory.
V
AT LEAST ...
On that day of wild joyous wind
I filled my being with warm hurrying air.
The pouring sun was in my heart like water in a well.
I ran in the pulsing tonic currents.
And all the time, melodious in my mind,
There beat and strove the measure of a tune.
Then for a breath I understood: Glory without and flame within,
They passioned to belong to each other.
I—I was the interruption.
From that time I gave my body to be a harp:
Wind of the world without, breath of the soul within,
I will try to let you interflow.
August Presences, at least, at least may I not hinder you.
VI
ROSES
Only once have I been sure that a rose answered me.
Always the reticence of roses was the aloofness of the peak
A rose would never admit me, speak to me,
Listen to me, reply to me, do other than suffer me.
But one day after our barbarous fashion I lifted a rose to my face.
Suddenly, thrillingly, the rose replied. It, too, touched at me.
We had something to exchange.
What am I to do that this shall be true of every flower,
Every animal, every stone, every manufactured article,
Every created object—yes, even every person of the world?
VII
SPRING EVENING
I heard her at the telephone.
“Do come early,” she was saying, “while the light lasts.
The dog-wood is in blossom, the mountains are wonderful.
It is,” she said, “too heavenly. Do come, while the light lasts....”
Outside on the veranda I could see the light,
I could see the dog-wood in bloom and a mountain
And more!
What else there was I am trying to tell:
Not colour for I am no artist. Not glamour for I am not in love;
Not any more magic than I am accustomed to;
Not presence I think—though perhaps after all it was presence.
But something else was there, exquisite, insistent.
When she came back I looked up to see if it met her.
But she only said: “It is too heavenly.
I hope they will come while the light lasts.”
I knew that she did not see what I saw.
But what did I see....
VIII
SECOND SIGHT
Can the world have been created for you and me to do all that fills our days:
Care of a house, lawn, shop, billion dollar business?
These are not enough for us.
Can the world have been created for the nations to do all that fills their days:
Trading, peacefully penetrating, warring,
Or when the mood changes, motoring down one another’s roads, decorating one another, bowing at one another’s courts?
These are not enough for the nations.