I long for truth, and yet I cannot stay from that My better self disowns, For a man’s attention Brings such satisfaction To the craving in my bones.
And that enquiring man John Synge comes next, That dying chose the living world for text And never could have rested in the tomb But that, long travelling, he had come Towards nightfall upon certain set apart In a most desolate stony place...
Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, Mournful that no new wonder may betide, Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam, And Usna’s children died.
There is no release In a bodkin or disease, Nor can there be a work so great As that which cleans man’s dirty slate.
Let the new faces play what tricks they will In the old rooms; night can outbalance day, Our shadows rove the garden gravel still, The living seem more shadowy than they.
Death and life were not Till man made up the whole, Made lock, stock and barrel Out of his bitter soul.
And if joy were not on the earth, There were an end of change and birth, And Earth and Heaven and Hell would die, And in some gloomy barrow lie Folded like a frozen fly...
If Michael, leader of God’s host When Heaven and Hell are met, Looked down on you from Heaven’s door-post He would his deeds forget.
And God would bid His warfare cease, Saying all things were well; And softly make a rosy peace, A peace of Heaven with Hell.
Being young you have not known The fool’s triumph, nor yet Love lost as soon as won, Nor the best labourer dead And all the sheaves to bind.
Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span; Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man; Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain.
Bodies of holy men and women exude Miraculous oil, odour of violet. But under heavy loads of trampled clay Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood; Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet.
I summon to the winding ancient stair; Set all your mind upon the steep ascent.
How can they know Truth flourishes where the student’s lamp has shone, And there alone, that have no solitude? So the crowd come they care not what may come. They have loud music, hope every day renewed And heartier loves; that lamp is from the tomb.
Nor seek, for this is also sooth, To hunger fiercely after truth, Lest all thy toiling only breeds New dreams, new dreams; there is no truth Saving in thine own heart.
For what but eye and ear silence the mind With the minute particulars of mankind?
Where the world ends The mind is made unchanging, for it finds Miracle, ecstasy, the impossible hope, The flagstone under all, the fire of fires, The roots of the world.
What if I bade you leave The cavern of the mind? There’s better exercise In the sunlight and wind.
A living man is blind and drinks his drop. What matter if the ditches are impure? What matter if I live it all once more?
Give to these children, new from the world, Rest far from men. Is anything better, anything better? Tell us it then...