48
A DRAMA OF EXILE.
With a disconsolate, blank majesty
Set in their wondrous faces!—with no look,
And yet an aspect—a significance
Of individual life and passionate ends,
Which overcomes us gazing.
O bleak sound!
O shadow of sound, O phantasm of thin sound!
How it comes, wheeling as the pale moth wheels,
Wheeling and wheeling in continuous wail,
Around the cyclic zodiac; and gains force,
And gathers, settling coldly like a moth,
On the wan faces of these images
We see before us; whereby modified,
It draws a straight line of articulate song
From out that spiral faintness of lament—
And, by one voice, expresses many griefs.
First Spirit.
I am the Spirit of the harmless earth;
God spake me softly out among the stars,
As softly as a blessing of much worth,—
And then, His smile did follow unawares,
That all things, fashioned, so , for use and duty,
Might shine anointed with His chrism of beauty—
Yet I wail!
I drave on with the worlds exultingly,
Obliquely down the Godlight's gradual fall—
Individual aspect and complexity
Of giratory orb and interval,
Lost in the fluent motion of delight
Toward the high ends of Being, beyond sight—
Yet I wail!
Second Spirit.
I am the Spirit of the harmless beasts,
Of flying things, and creeping things, and swimming;
Of all the lives, erst set at silent feasts,
That found the love-kiss on the goblet brimming,
And tasted, in each drop within the measure,
The sweetest pleasure of their Lord's good pleasure—
Set in their wondrous faces!—with no look,
And yet an aspect—a significance
Of individual life and passionate ends,
Which overcomes us gazing.
O bleak sound!
O shadow of sound, O phantasm of thin sound!
How it comes, wheeling as the pale moth wheels,
Wheeling and wheeling in continuous wail,
Around the cyclic zodiac; and gains force,
And gathers, settling coldly like a moth,
On the wan faces of these images
We see before us; whereby modified,
It draws a straight line of articulate song
From out that spiral faintness of lament—
And, by one voice, expresses many griefs.
First Spirit.
I am the Spirit of the harmless earth;
God spake me softly out among the stars,
As softly as a blessing of much worth,—
And then, His smile did follow unawares,
That all things, fashioned, so , for use and duty,
Might shine anointed with His chrism of beauty—
Yet I wail!
I drave on with the worlds exultingly,
Obliquely down the Godlight's gradual fall—
Individual aspect and complexity
Of giratory orb and interval,
Lost in the fluent motion of delight
Toward the high ends of Being, beyond sight—
Yet I wail!
Second Spirit.
I am the Spirit of the harmless beasts,
Of flying things, and creeping things, and swimming;
Of all the lives, erst set at silent feasts,
That found the love-kiss on the goblet brimming,
And tasted, in each drop within the measure,
The sweetest pleasure of their Lord's good pleasure—
