Spirits in Bondage | Page 9

will not fear
To walk the woodlands sere
Into this autumn day
Far, far away.
Part II Hesitation
XXII. L'Apprenti Sorcier
Suddenly there came to me
The music of a mighty sea
That on a bare and iron shore

Thundered with a deeper roar
Than all the tides that leap and run
With us below the
real sun:
Because the place was far away,
Above, beyond our homely day,

Neighbouring close the frozen clime
Where out of all the woods of time,
Amid the
frightful seraphim
The fierce, cold eyes of Godhead gleam,
Revolving hate and
misery
And wars and famines yet to be.
And in my dreams I stood alone
Upon a
shelf of weedy stone,
And saw before my shrinking eyes
The dark, enormous
breakers rise,
And hover and fall with deafening thunder
Of thwarted foam that
echoed under
The ledge, through many a cavern drear,
With hollow sounds of wintry
fear.
And through the waters waste and grey,
Thick-strown for many a league away,

Out of the toiling sea arose
Many a face and form of those
Thin, elemental people
dear
Who live beyond our heavy sphere.
And all at once from far and near,
They all
held out their arms to me,
Crying in their melody,
"Leap in! Leap in and take thy fill

Of all the cosmic good and ill,
Be as the Living ones that know
Enormous joy,
enormous woe,
Pain beyond thought and fiery bliss:
For all thy study hunted this,

On wings of magic to arise,
And wash from off thy filmed eyes
The cloud of cold
mortality,
To find the real life and be

As are the children of the deep!
Be bold and
dare the glorious leap,
Or to thy shame, go, slink again
Back to the narrow ways of
men."
So all these mocked me as I stood
Striving to wake because I feared the flood.
XXIII. Alexandrines
There is a house that most of all on earth I hate.
Though I have passed through many
sorrows and have been
In bloody fields, sad seas, and countries desolate,
Yet most I
fear that empty house where the grasses green
Grow in the silent court the gaping flags
between,
And down the moss-grown paths and terrace no man treads
Where the old,
old weeds rise deep on the waste garden beds. Like eyes of one long dead the empty
windows stare
And I fear to cross the garden, I fear to linger there,
For in that house I
know a little, silent room
Where Someone's always waiting, waiting in the gloom
To
draw me with an evil eye, and hold me fastYet
thither doom will drive me and He will
win at last.
XXIV. In Praise of Solid People

Thank God that there are solid folk
Who water flowers and roll the lawn,
And sit an
sew and talk and smoke,
And snore all through the summer dawn.
Who pass untroubled nights and days
Full-fed and sleepily content,
Rejoicing in each
other's praise,
Respectable and innocent.
Who feel the things that all men feel,
And think in well-worn grooves of thought,

Whose honest spirits never reel
Before man's mystery, overwrought.
Yet not unfaithful nor unkind,
with work-day virtues surely staid,
Theirs is the sane
and humble mind,
And dull affections undismayed.
O happy people! I have seen
No verse yet written in your praise,
And, truth to tell, the
time has been
I would have scorned your easy ways.
But now thro' weariness and strife
I learn your worthiness indeed,
The world is better
for such life
As stout suburban people lead.
Too often have I sat alone
When the wet night falls heavily,
And fretting winds
around me moan,
And homeless longing vexes me
For lore that I shall never know,
And visions none can hope to see,
Till brooding
works upon me so
A childish fear steals over me.
I look around the empty room,
The clock still ticking in its place,
And all else silent
as the tomb,
Till suddenly, I think, a face
Grows from the darkness just beside.
I turn, and lo! it fades away,
And soon another
phantom tide
Of shifting dreams begins to play,
And dusky galleys past me sail,
Full freighted on a faerie sea;
I hear the silken
merchants hail
Across the ringing waves to me
-Then suddenly, again, the room,
Familiar books about me piled,
And I alone amid
the gloom,
By one more mocking dream beguiled.
And still no neared to the Light,
And still no further from myself,
Alone and lost in
clinging night
-(The clock's still ticking on the shelf).
Then do I envy solid folk
Who sit of evenings by the fire,
After their work and doze
and smoke,
And are not fretted by desire.
Part III The Escape
XXV. Song of the Pilgrims

O Dwellers at the back of the North Wind,
What have we done to you? How have we
sinned
Wandering the Earth from Orkney unto Ind?
With many deaths our fellowship is thinned,
Our flesh is withered in the parching wind,

Wandering the earth from Orkney unto Ind.
We have no rest. We cannot turn again
Back to the world and all her fruitless pain,

Having once sought the land where ye remain.
Some say ye are not. But, ah God! we know
That somewhere, somewhere past the
Northern snow
Waiting for us the red-rose gardens blow:
-The red-rose and the white-rose gardens