Classic Poem

Through hours woven of light and shade,
Where dawns, leaping a curve of hill,
Are gold too soon, and noons are made
To flash like waters of a rill;
Where dusk is blue upon the ground
And dark is arrowy with light,
Live, pretending you have found
Enough of day and night.

You may arise with the first slow
Shadow that moves the morning, go
Out to the hills, seeking the things
That may move near like indefinite wings
And seem, yet not seem, part of the mist
That is, yet is not, amethyst,
And is, yet is not, water-green,
But is a color felt, not seen.

Then loosen from your eyes the dawn,
Turn, and in your going tell
Nothing of ways that you have gone
To seek what seemed a moving bell
Muffled in distance. Where the day
Is shaped of splendor and all things sway
In a rhythm of light and sounds are long
With echo made of laughter and song,
You may seek once again the thing
You seek. Look well into the ring
Of arrogant glitter called the sun.
It may be something lightly spun—
A yellow web across black space,
Meaningless save to serve the hour
And be a pleasure on your face.
Or like a rocket it may shower
Wild color in your rounded eye,
Strewing a blindness through your head;
Yet let your turning manner cry
Of nothing save your tread.

After the dawn and after the noon,
Always there is the dusk, the moon.
Always the old ways new with dew,
Calling, calling, calling you:
Always the thing you seek so near
It is a part of what you hear
In the hushing grass, in the night hawk's note—
So near it is coolness on your throat
And curves of flame rounding your taut
Blue veins. Almost it seems that you,
The seeker, are the something sought,
Yourself the bell that called you through
The dawn, the noon, the dusk, the dew.
Almost it seems the tiger beat
Of your own pulses is the all,
The only answer is the call.

Night may become the mask of day,
A place of nothing, save a way
Where you must go pitting the light
Of self against the drench of night.
There you may find all things and none,
Yet let your turning step give sound
To nothing but the casual tone
Of feet upon the ground.
After the dusk, the blackened west,
Always there is the pillowed rest;
Always a hollow for your head
And for your body a clinging shape
Of quiet. Now your sleeping tread,
Poised, may be its own escape.
Now where the dark is drowsed with gold
And all the swarming gloom a curtained fold
Hanging between you and your quarrel of thought,
You may be filled with what you sought.