Excerpt
SIGHT AND INSIGHT. 'Wisdom is easily seen by them that love her, and is foundby them that seek her.To think therefore upon her is perfect understanding.'WISDOM, vi. THE MISTRESS OF VISION. ISecret was the garden;Set i' the pathless aweWhere no star its breath can draw.Life, that is its warden,Sits behind the fosse of death. Mine eyes saw not,and I saw.IIIt was a mazeful wonder;Thrice three times it was enwalledWith an emerald—Seal-ed so asunder.All its birds in middle air hung a-dream, theirmusic thralled.IIIThe Lady of fair weeping,At the garden's core,Sang a song of sweet and soreAnd the after-sleeping;In the land of Luthany, and the tracts of Elenore.IVWith sweet-panged singing,Sang she through a dream-night's day;That the bowers might stay,Birds bate their winging,Nor the wall of emerald float in wreath-ed haze away.VThe lily kept its gleaming,In her tears (divine conservers!)Wash-ed with sad art;And the flowers of dreamingPal-ed not their fervours,For her blood flowed through their nervures;And the roses were most red, for she dipt them inher heart.VIThere was never moon,Save the white sufficing woman:Light most heavenly-human—Like the unseen form of sound,Sensed invisibly in tune,—With a sun-deriv-ed stoleDid inaureoleAll her lovely body round;Lovelily her lucid body with that light was inter-strewn.VIIThe sun which lit that garden wholly,Low and vibrant visible,Tempered glory woke;And it seem-ed solelyLike a silver thuribleSolemnly swung, slowly,Fuming clouds of golden fire, for a cloud of incense-smoke.VIIIBut woe's me, and woe's me,For the secrets of her eyes!In my visions fearfullyThey are ever shown to beAs fring-ed pools, whereof each liesPallid-dark beneath the skiesOf a night that isBut one blear necropolis.And her eyes a little tremble, in the wind of herown sighs.IXMany changes rise onTheir phantasmal mysteries.They grow to an horizonWhere earth and heaven meet;And like a wing that dies onThe vague twilight-verges,Many a sinking dream doth fleetLessening down their secrecies.And, as dusk with day converges,Their orbs are troublouslyOver-gloomed and over-glowed with hope and fearof things to be.XThere is a peak on Himalay,And on the peak undeluged snow,And on the snow not eagles stray;There if your strong feet could go,—Looking over tow'rd CathayFrom the never-deluged snow—Farthest ken might not surveyWhere the peoples underground dwell whomantique fables know.XIEast, ah, east of Himalay,Dwell the nations underground;Hiding from the shock of Day,For the sun's uprising-sound:Dare not issue from the groundAt the tumults of the Day,So fearfully the sun doth soundClanging up beyond Cathay;For the great earthquaking sunrise rolling upbeyond Cathay.XIILend me, O lend meThe terrors of that sound,That its music may attend me.Wrap my chant in thunders round;While I tell the ancient secrets in that Lady'ssinging found....