Poems (Bibesco)/XV Sight

by Elizabeth Bibesco

XV SIGHT

Why should we limit beauty with our eye,
Bolted within the prison of our sight,
Catching a tiny fragment of the sky,
Calling each flare of unseen sunrise, night?

Why should the fading primrose at our feet
Toll the dim curfew of a dying spring;
Why should each loveliness we know defeat
The ardent beauty of an unknown thing?

Why can we not see roses in the snow,
The roses burning crimson in the white?
Why does our vision, sensible and slow,
Instead of leading, dully follow sight?

When in the tumbling riot of September
The forest fires of colour sweep each wood,
Our dim entangled eyesight can remember
No frozen beauty of a winter's mood.

"The world is too much with us." But which world?
The tiny, tidy suburb of our senses,
Where mysteries are carefully kept furled
Lest some strange guess should tug at our defences.

And up above the poor sun on his throne,
Who cannot know the solace of the night,
The smooth, soft dark denied to him alone,
Whose condemnation is continual light.

Were I to tell him of a star or moon
Why should he listen to such idle prattle?
He's the all-seeing monarch of the noon
And tales of darkness, envy's tittle-tattle.

Oh, my dear God, Thou who art unconfined
By all the frontiers Thou hast forced on me,
One boon I ask: since Thou hast made me blind,
Let me remember that I cannot see.