A Reading Of Life, Other Poems Part 6

XXIX

Our conquest these: if haply we retain The reverence that ne'er will overrun Due boundaries of realms from Nature won, Nor let the poet's awe in rapture wane.

A GARDEN IDYL

WITH sagest craft Arachne worked Her web, and at a corner lurked, Awaiting what should plump her soon, To case it in the death-coc.o.o.n.

Sagaciously her home she chose For visits that would never close; Inside my chalet-porch her feast Plucked all the winds but chill North-east.

The finished structure, bar on bar, Had s.n.a.t.c.hed from light to form a star, And struck on sight, when quick with dews, Like music of the very Muse.

Great artists pa.s.s our single sense; We hear in seeing, strung to tense; Then haply marvel, groan mayhap, To think such beauty means a trap.

But Nature's genius, even man's At best, is practical in plans; Subservient to the needy thought, However rare the weapon wrought.

As long as Nature holds it good To urge her creatures' quest for food Will beauty stamp the just intent Of weapons upon service bent.

For beauty is a flower of roots Embedded lower than our boots; Out of the primal strata springs, And shows for crown of useful things

Arachne's dream of prey to size Aspired; so she could nigh despise The puny specks the breezes round Supplied, and let them shake unwound; a.s.sured of her fat fly to come; Perhaps a blue, the spider's plum; Who takes the fatal odds in fight, And gives repast an appet.i.te, By plunging, whizzing, till his wings Are webbed, and in the lists he swings, A shrouded lump, for her to see Her banquet in her victory.

This matron of the unnumbered threads, One day of dandelions' heads Distributing their gray perruques Up every gust, I watched with looks Discreet beside the chalet-door; And gracefully a light wind bore, Direct upon my webster's wall, A monster in the form of ball; The mildest captive ever snared, That neither struggled nor despaired, On half the net invading hung, And plain as in her mother tongue, While low the weaver cursed her lures, Remarked, "You have me; I am yours."

Thrice magnified, in phantom shape, Her dream of size she saw, agape.

Midway the vast round-raying beard A desiccated midge appeared; Whose body p.r.i.c.ked the name of meal, Whose hair had growth in earth's unreal; Provocative of dread and wrath, Contempt and horror, in one froth, Inextricable, insensible, His poison presence there would dwell, Declaring him her dream fulfilled, A catch to compliment the skilled; And she reduced to beaky skin, Disgraceful among kith and kin

Against her corner, humped and aged, Arachne wrinkled, past enraged, Beyond disgust or hope in guile.

Ridiculously volatile He seemed to her last spark of mind; And that in pallid ash declined Beneath the blow by knowledge dealt, Wherein throughout her frame she felt That he, the light wind's libertine, Without a scoff, without a grin, And mannered like the courtly few, Who merely danced when light winds blew, Impervious to beak and claws, Tradition's ruinous Whitebeard was; Of whom, as actors in old scenes, Had grannam weavers warned their weans, With word, that less than feather-weight, He smote the web like bolt of Fate.

This muted drama, hour by hour, I watched amid a world in flower, Ere yet Autumnal threads had laid Their gray-blue o'er the gra.s.s's blade, And still along the garden-run The blindworm stretched him, drunk of sun.

Arachne crouched unmoved; perchance Her visitor performed a dance; She puckered thinner; he the same As when on that light wind he came.

Next day was told what deeds of night Were done; the web had vanished quite; With it the strange opposing pair; And listless waved on vacant air, For her adieu to heart's content, A solitary filament.

FORESIGHT AND PATIENCE

SPRUNG of the father blood, the mother brain, Are they who point our pathway and sustain.

They rarely meet; one soars, one walks retired.

When they do meet, it is our earth inspired.

To see Life's formless offspring and subdue Desire of times unripe, we have these two, Whose union is right reason: join they hands, The world shall know itself and where it stands; What cowering angel and what upright beast Make man, behold, nor count the low the least, Nor less the stars have round it than its flowers.

When these two meet, a point of time is ours.

As in a land of waterfalls, that flow Smooth for the leap on their great voice below, Some eddies near the brink borne swift along, Will capture hearing with the liquid song, So, while the headlong world's imperious force Resounded under, heard I these discourse.

First words, where down my woodland walk she led, To her blind sister Patience, Foresight said:

--Your faith in me appals, to shake my own, When still I find you in this mire alone.

--The few steps taken at a funeral pace By men had slain me but for those you trace.

--Look I once back, a broken pinion I: Black as the rebel angels rained from sky!

--Needs must you drink of me while here you live, And make me rich in feeling I can give.

--A brave To-be is dawn upon my brow: Yet must I read my sister for the How.

My daisy better knows her G.o.d of beams Than doth an eagle that to mount him seems.

She hath the secret never fieriest reach Of wing shall master till men hear her teach.

--Liker the clod flaked by the driving plough, My semblance when I have you not as now.

The quiet creatures who escape mishap Bear likeness to pure growths of the green sap: A picture of the settled peace desired By cowards shunning strife or strivers tired.

I listen at their b.r.e.a.s.t.s: is there no jar Of wrestlings and of stranglings, dead they are, And such a picture as the piercing mind Ranks beneath vegetation. Not resigned Are my true pupils while the world is brute.

What edict of the stronger keeps me mute, Stronger impels the motion of my heart.

I am not Resignation's counterpart.

If that I teach, 'tis little the dry word, Content, but how to savour hope deferred.

We come of earth, and rich of earth may be; Soon carrion if very earth are we!

The coursing veins, the constant breath, the use Of sleep, declare that strife allows short truce; Unless we clasp decay, accept defeat, And pa.s.s despised; "a-cold for lack of heat,"

Like other corpses, but without death's plea.

--My sister calls for battle; is it she?

--Rather a world of pressing men in arms, Than stagnant, where the sensual piper charms Each drowsy malady and coiling vice With dreams of ease whereof the soul pays price!

No home is here for peace while evil breeds, While error governs, none; and must the seeds You sow, you that for long have reaped disdain, Lie barren at the doorway of the brain, Let stout contention drive deep furrows, blood Moisten, and make new channels of its flood!

--My sober little maid, when we meet first, Drinks of me ever with an eager thirst.

So can I not of her till circ.u.mstance Drugs cravings. Here we see how men advance A doubtful foot, but circle if much stirred, Like dead weeds on whipped waters. Shout the word Prompting their hungers, and they grandly march, As to band-music under Victory's arch.

Thus was it, and thus is it; save that then The beauty of frank animals had men.

--Observe them, and down rearward for a term, Gaze to the primal twistings of the worm.

Thence look this way, across the fields that show Men's early form of speech for Yes and No.

My sister a bruised infant's utterance had; And issuing stronger, to mankind 'twas mad.

I knew my home where I had choice to feel The toad beneath a harrow or a heel.

--Speak of this Age.

--When you it shall discern Bright as you are, to me the Age will turn.

--For neither of us has it any care; Its learning is through Science to despair.

--Despair lies down and grovels, grapples not With evil, casts the burden of its lot.

This Age climbs earth.

--To challenge heaven.