| I Those hours when happy hours were my estate, — Entailed, as proper, for the next in line, Yet mine the harvest, and the title mine — Those acres, fertile, and the furrows straight, From which the lark would rise — all of my late Enchantments, still, in brilliant colours, shine, But striped with black, the tulip, lawn and vine, Like gardens looked at through an iron gate. Yet not as one who never sojourned there I view the lovely segment of a past I lived with all my senses, well aware That this was perfect, and it would not last: I smell the flower, though vacuum-still the air; I feel its texture, though the gate is fast. II Not, to me, less lavish — though my dreams have been splendid — Than dreams, have been the hours of the actual day: Never, awaking, did I awake to say: "Nothing could be like that," when a dream was ended. Colours, in dream; ecstasy, in dream extended Beyond the edge of sleep — these, in their way, Approach, come even close, yet pause, yet stay, In the high presence of request by its answer attended. Music, and painting, poetry, love, and grief, Had they been more intense, I could not have been born, — Yet, not, I think, through stout endurance lacked; Rather, because the budding and the falling leaf Were one, and wonderful, — not to be torn Apart: I ask of dream: seem like the fact. III Tranquility at length when autumn comes, Will lie upon the spirit like that haze Touching far islands on fine autumn days With tenderest blue, like bloom on purple plums; Harvest will ring, but not as summer hums, With noisy enterprise — to broaden, raise, Proceed, proclaim, establish: autumn stays The marching year one moment; stills the drums. Then sits the insistent cricket in the grass; But on the gravel crawls the chilly bee; And all is over that could come to pass Last year; excepting this: the mind is free One moment, to compute, refute, amass, Catalogue, question, contemplate, and see. IV And is indeed truth beauty? — at the cost Of all else that we cared for, can this be? — To see the coarse triumphant, and to see Honour and pity ridiculed, and tossed Upon a poked-at fire; all courage lost Save what is whelped and fattened by decree To move among the unsuspecting free And trap the thoughtful, with their thoughts engrossed? Drag yet that stream for Beauty, if you will; And find her, if you can; finding her drowned Will not dismay your ethics, — you will still To one and all insist she has been found . . . And haggard men will smile your praise, until, Some day, they stumble on her burial-mound. V To hold secure the province of Pure Art, — What if the crude and weighty task were mine? — For him who runs, cutting the pen less fine Than formerly, and in the indignant heart Dipping it straight? (to issue thence a dart, And shine no more except as weapons shine) The deeply-loved, the laboured, polished line Eschew for ever? — this to be my part? Attacked that Temple is which must not fall — Under whose ancient shade Calliope, Thalia, Euterpe, the nine Muses all Went once about their happy business free: Could I but write the Writing on the Wall! — What matter, if one poet cease to be. VI And if I die, because that part of me Which part alone of me had chance to live, Chose to be honour's threshing floor, a sieve Where right through wrong might make its way, and be; If from all taint of indignation, free Must be my art, and thereby fugitive From all that threatens it — why — let me give To moles my dubious immortality. For, should I cancel by one passionate screed All that in chaste reflection I have writ, So that again not ever in bright need A man shall want my verse and reach for it, I and my verses will be dead indeed, — That which we died to champion, hurt no whit. VII It is the fashion now to wave aside As tedious, obvious, vacuous, trivial, trite, All things which do not tickle, tease, excite To some subversion, or in verbiage hide Intent, or mock, or with hot sauce provide A dish to prick the thickened appetite; Straightforwardness is wrong, evasion right; It is correct, de rigueur, to deride. What funny wits these modern wags expose, For all their versatility: Voltaire, Who wore to bed a night-cap, and would close, In fear of drafts, all windows, could declare In antique stuffiness, a phrase that blows Still through men's smoky minds, and clears the air. |
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