Evidence of Things Not Seen

From whence cometh song?
 [ ... ]

Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune -- I myself am good fortune;
 ... 

 ... 

O where are you going? said reader to rider,
That valley is fatal when furnaces burn,
Yonders the midden whose odors will madden,
That gap is the grave where the tall return.
O do you imagine, said fearer to farer,
That dusk will delay on your path to the pass,
Your diligent looking discover the lacking,
Your footsteps feel from granite to grass?
O what was that bird, said horror to hearer,
Did you see that shape in the twisted tree?
Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly,
The spot on your skin is a shocking disease.
Out of this house said rider to reader,
Yours never will said farer to fearer,
Theyre looking for you said hearer to horror,
As he left them there, as he left them there.

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began; 
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old, 
   Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as [they]1 turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I [seemed]2 to lose
With my lost saints, -- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! -- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

     Escape me?
     Never -
     Beloved!
While I am I, and you are you,
  So long as the world contains us both,
  Me the loving and you the loth,
While the one eludes, must the other pursue.
My life is a fault at last, I fear -
  It seems too much like a fate, indeed!
  Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed -
But what if I fail of my purpose here?

It is but to keep the nerves at strain,
  To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall,
And baffled, get up to begin again, -
  So the chase takes up one's life, that's all.
While, look but once from your farthest bound,
  At me so deep in the dust and dark,
No sooner the old hope drops to ground
  Than a new one, straight to the selfsame mark,
     I shape me -
     Ever
     Removed!

As I listened from a beach-chair in the shade
To all the noises that my garden made,
It seemed to me only proper that words
Should be withheld from vegetables and birds.
A robin with no Christian name ran through
The Robin-Anthem which was all it knew,
And rustling flowers for some third party waited
To say which pairs, if any, should get mated.
None of them was capable of lying,
There was not one which knew that it was dying!
Or could have with a rhythm or a rhyme
Assumed responsibility for time.
Let them leave language to their lonely betters
Who count some days and long for certain letters;
We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep:
Words are for those with promises to keep.

His beauty sparkles, his big eyes blaze
 [ ... ]

See now the beauty with the glove
 [ ... ]

One fitting glimpse caught through an interstice
Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room, 
around the stove, late of a winter night -- 
And I unremark'd seated in a corner;	 
Of a youth who loves me, and whom I love, 
silently approaching, and seating himself near, 
that he may hold me by the hand;
A long while, amid the noises of coming and going -- 
of drinking and oath and smutty jest,
There we two, content, happy in being together, 
speaking little, perhaps not a word.

I am he that aches with amorous love;
Does the earth gravitate? Does not all matter, aching, attract all matter?
So the Body of me, to all I meet, or know.

 ... 
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
 ... 

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime
Though this might take me a little time.

Wake my soul, and with the sun
Thy daily stage of duty run;
Shake off dull sloth, and joyful rise
To pay this morning sacrifice.
Redeem thy misspent moments past
And live this day as if the last;
Improve thy talent with due care;
For the great day thyself prepare.
Let all thy converse be sincere,
Thy conscience as the noon-day clear;
Think how all-seeing God thy ways
And all thy secret thoughts surveys.
Wake, and lift up thyself, my heart,
And with the angels bear thy part,
Who all night long unwearied sing
High praises to the eternal king.
Amen.

. . . I saw a mass of matter of a dull gloomy color . . .
and was informed that this mass was human beings
in as great misery as they could be, and live,
and that I was mixed in with them,
and henceforth I might not consider myself 
as a distinct or separate being.

O the rapes, fires, murders, and rivers of blood 
that lie at the doors of professed Christians! 
If this be godly, what's devilish? 
If this be Christian, what's paganism? 
What's anti-Christian but to make God a party to their wickedness?
Time past is none of thine? 
'Tis not what thou wast but what thou art. 
God will be daily looked into. 
Did'st thou eat yesterday? That feedeth thee not today.
They that love beyond the World, cannot be separated by it. 
Death cannot kill what never dies. 
Nor can spirits ever be divided 
that love and live in the same Divine Principle; 
the Root and Record of their Friendship.
This is the Comfort of Friends, 
that though they may be said to Die, 
yet their Friendship and Society are, in the best Sense, 
ever present, because Immortal.

I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?

Forth went the candid man
And spoke freely to the wind --
When he looked about him he was in a far
strange country.
Forth went the candid man
and spoke freely to the stars--
Yellow light tore sight from his eyes.
"My good fool," said a learned bystander,
"Your operations are mad."
"You are too candid," cried the candid man.
And when his stick left the head of the
learned bystander
It was two sticks.

Let us kill off youth
For the sake of truth.
We who are old know what truth is
Truth is a bundle of vicious lies
Tied together and sterilized
A war-makers bait for unwise youth
To kill off each other
For the sake of
Truth.

A learned man came to me once.
He said, "I know the way--come."
And I was overjoyed at this.
Together we hastened.
Soon, too soon, were we
Where my eyes were useless,
And I knew not the ways of my feet.
I clung to the hand of my friend:
But at last he cried, "I am lost."

Dear, though the night is gone
Its dream still haunts today,
That brought us to a room
Cavernous, lofty as
A railway terminus,
And crowded in that room
Were beds, and we in one
In a far corner lay.
Our whisper woke no clocks,
We kissed and I was glad
At everything you did,
Indifferent to those
Who sat with hostile eyes
In pairs on every bed,
Arms round each others necks,
Inert and vaguely sad.
O but what worm of guilt
Or what malignant doubt
Am I the victim of,
That you then, unabashed,
Did what I never wished,
Confessed another love;
And I, submissive, felt
Unwanted and went out.

Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.

All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.

Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman so
Sweetly she grew.

Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast.
I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest.

Peace, Peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet,
All my life's buried here,
Heap earth upon it.

"Is my team ploughing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?"

Ay, the horses trample,
The harness jingles now;
No change though you lie under
The land you used to plough.

"Is football playing
Along the river-shore,
With lads to chase the leather,
Now I stand up no more?"

Ay, the ball is flying,
The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands up, the keeper
Stands up to keep the goal. 

"Is my girl happy,
That I thought hard to leave,
And has she tired of weeping
As she lies down at eve?"

Ay, she lies down lightly,
She lies not down to weep:
Your girl is well contented.
Be still, my lad, and sleep.

"Is my friend hearty,
Now I am thin and pine,
And has he found to sleep in
A better bed than mine?"

Yes, lad, I lie easy,
I lie as lads would choose;
I cheer a dead man's sweetheart,
Never ask me whose.

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
"Love has no ending.

"I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Afica meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain 
And the salmon sing in the street.

"I'll love you till the ocean 
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

 ... 

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
"O let not Time deceive you
You cannot conquer Time.

 ... 

"In headaches and in worry 
Vaguely life leaks away,
And time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

 ... 

"O plunge your hands in water
Plunge them up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed."

"The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

 ... 

"O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbor
With your crooked heart."

It was late, late in the evening
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.

The sick wife stayed in the car
 [ ... ]

Now is the dreadful midnight you
 [ ... ]

All praise to thee, my God, this night
For the blessings of the light:
Keep me, O keep me, King of kings,
Beneath thine own almighty wings.
Forgive me, Lord, for thy dear Son,
The ill that I have done;
That with the world, myself, and thee,
I, ere I sleep, at peace must be.
May my soul on thee repose
And with sleep mine eyelids close;
Sleep shall me more vigorous make
To serve my God when I awake.
Amen.

For the first time I thought of my own death
 [ ... ]

On an echoing road, trotting in unison, 
now out of step, now as one again,
are two horses saddled together,
guided by a single hand. 
The needle and the pen, the habit of work
and the sly urge to quit the habit, make friends with each other,
then separate, then reconcile again....
O my slow steeds, pull now together;
from here I can see the end of the road.

A terrible disaster befell me
 [ ... ]

As I came to the edge of the woods,
Thrush musichark!
Now it was dusk outside,
Inside it was dark.

Too dark in the woods for a bird
By sleight of wing
To better its perch for the night,
Though it could still sing.

The last of the light of the sun
That had died in the west
Still lived for one song more
In a thrushs breast.

Far in the pillared dark
Thrush music went
Almost like a call to come in
To the dark and lament.

But no, I was out for the stars:
I would not come in.
I meant not even if asked,
And I hadnt been.

I heard the old, old men say,
"Everything alters,
And one by one we drop away."
They had hands like claws, and their knees
Were twisted like the old thorn-trees
By the waters.
I heard the old, old men say,
"All that's beautiful drifts away,
Like the waters."

In fading light
Life dances, twists, and crazily rushes,
impudent and shrill, while
Night rises,

appeasing all, even hunger,
hiding all, even shame,
The Poet whispers to himself:
Finally!

while body and soul
long desperately for rest,
my heart seethes with deathly dreams.

Let me lie on my back
and enshroud myself in your curtains,
O nourishing darkness!

I've been having these
 [ ... ]

... even now the night jasmine is pouring
 [ ... ]

Faith lights us, even through the Grave,
being the Evidence of Things not seen.
And this is the Comfort of the Good,
that the Grave cannot hold them,
and that they live as soon as they die.
For Death is no more than a Turning
of us over from Time to Eternity.
Death then, being the Way and Condition of Life,
we cannot love to live, if we cannot bear to die.