In a cool curving world he lies
And ripples with dark ecstasies.
The kind luxurious lapse and steal
Shapes all his universe to feel
And know and be; the clinging stream
Closes his memory, glooms his dream,
Who lips the roots o' the shore, and glides
Superb on unreturning tides.
Those silent waters weave for him
A fluctuant mutable world and dim,
Where wavering masses bulge and gape
Mysterious, and shape to shape
Dies momently through whorl and hollow,
And form and line and solid follow
Solid and line and form to dream
Fantastic down the eternal stream;
An obscure world, a shifting world,
Bulbous, or pulled to thin, or curled,
Or serpentine, or driving arrows,
Or serene slidings, or March narrows.
There slipping wave and shore are one,
And weed and mud.  No ray of sun,
But glow to glow fades down the deep
(As dream to unknown dream in sleep);
Shaken translucency illumes
The hyaline of drifting glooms;
The strange soft-handed depth subdues
Drowned colour there, but black to hues,
As death to living, decomposes --
Red darkness of the heart of roses,
Blue brilliant from dead starless skies,
And gold that lies behind the eyes,
The unknown unnameable sightless white
That is the essential flame of night,
Lustreless purple, hooded green,
The myriad hues that lie between
Darkness and darkness! . . .

                              And all's one.
Gentle, embracing, quiet, dun,
The world he rests in, world he knows,
Perpetual curving.  Only -- grows
An eddy in that ordered falling,
A knowledge from the gloom, a calling
Weed in the wave, gleam in the mud --
The dark fire leaps along his blood;
Dateless and deathless, blind and still,
The intricate impulse works its will;
His woven world drops back; and he,
Sans providence, sans memory,
Unconscious and directly driven,
Fades to some dank sufficient heaven.

O world of lips, O world of laughter,
Where hope is fleet and thought flies after,
Of lights in the clear night, of cries
That drift along the wave and rise
Thin to the glittering stars above,
You know the hands, the eyes of love!
The strife of limbs, the sightless clinging,
The infinite distance, and the singing
Blown by the wind, a flame of sound,
The gleam, the flowers, and vast around
The horizon, and the heights above --
You know the sigh, the song of love!

But there the night is close, and there
Darkness is cold and strange and bare;
And the secret deeps are whisperless;
And rhythm is all deliciousness;
And joy is in the throbbing tide,
Whose intricate fingers beat and glide
In felt bewildering harmonies
Of trembling touch; and music is
The exquisite knocking of the blood.
Space is no more, under the mud;
His bliss is older than the sun.
Silent and straight the waters run.
The lights, the cries, the willows dim,
And the dark tide are one with him.

Thoughts on the Shape of the Human Body

How can we find? how can we rest? how can
We, being gods, win joy, or peace, being man?
We, the gaunt zanies of a witless Fate,
Who love the unloving and lover hate,
Forget the moment ere the moment slips,
Kiss with blind lips that seek beyond the lips,
Who want, and know not what we want, and cry
With crooked mouths for Heaven, and throw it by.
Love's for completeness!  No perfection grows
'Twixt leg, and arm, elbow, and ear, and nose,
And joint, and socket; but unsatisfied
Sprawling desires, shapeless, perverse, denied.
Finger with finger wreathes; we love, and gape,
Fantastic shape to mazed fantastic shape,
Straggling, irregular, perplexed, embossed,
Grotesquely twined, extravagantly lost
By crescive paths and strange protuberant ways
From sanity and from wholeness and from grace.
How can love triumph, how can solace be,
Where fever turns toward fever, knee toward knee?
Could we but fill to harmony, and dwell
Simple as our thought and as perfectible,
Rise disentangled from humanity
Strange whole and new into simplicity,
Grow to a radiant round love, and bear
Unfluctuant passion for some perfect sphere,
Love moon to moon unquestioning, and be
Like the star Lunisequa, steadfastly
Following the round clear orb of her delight,
Patiently ever, through the eternal night!

Flight

Voices out of the shade that cried,
 And long noon in the hot calm places,
And children's play by the wayside,
 And country eyes, and quiet faces --
 All these were round my steady paces.

Those that I could have loved went by me;
 Cool gardened homes slept in the sun;
I heard the whisper of water nigh me,
 Saw hands that beckoned, shone, were gone
 In the green and gold.  And I went on.

For if my echoing footfall slept,
 Soon a far whispering there'd be
Of a little lonely wind that crept
 From tree to tree, and distantly
 Followed me, followed me. . . .

But the blue vaporous end of day
 Brought peace, and pursuit baffled quite,
Where between pine-woods dipped the way.
 I turned, slipped in and out of sight.
 I trod as quiet as the night.

The pine-boles kept perpetual hush;
 And in the boughs wind never swirled.
I found a flowering lowly bush,
 And bowed, slid in, and sighed and curled,
 Hidden at rest from all the world.

Safe!  I was safe, and glad, I knew!
 Yet -- with cold heart and cold wet brows
I lay.  And the dark fell. . . .  There grew
 Meward a sound of shaken boughs;
 And ceased, above my intricate house;

And silence, silence, silence found me. . . .
 I felt the unfaltering movement creep
Among the leaves.  They shed around me
 Calm clouds of scent, that I did weep;
 And stroked my face.  I fell asleep.

The Hill

Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill,
 Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.
 You said, "Through glory and ecstasy we pass;
Wind, sun, and earth remain, the birds sing still,
When we are old, are old. . . ."  "And when we die
 All's over that is ours; and life burns on
Through other lovers, other lips," said I,
-- "Heart of my heart, our heaven is now, is won!"

"We are Earth's best, that learnt her lesson here.
 Life is our cry.  We have kept the faith!" we said;
 "We shall go down with unreluctant tread
Rose-crowned into the darkness!" . . .  Proud we were,
And laughed, that had such brave true things to say.
-- And then you suddenly cried, and turned away.

The One Before the Last

I dreamt I was in love again
 With the One Before the Last,
And smiled to greet the pleasant pain
 Of that innocent young past.

But I jumped to feel how sharp had been
 The pain when it did live,
How the faded dreams of Nineteen-ten
 Were Hell in Nineteen-five.

The boy's woe was as keen and clear,
 The boy's love just as true,
And the One Before the Last, my dear,
 Hurt quite as much as you.