Classic Poem

THE forge is dark
The better to show
The birth of the spark
And the Iron's glow.
The forge is dark
That the smith may know
When to strike the blow
On the luminous arc
As he shapes the shoe.
The bellows blows on the dampened slack,
The coal now glows in the heart of the black.
The smith no longer his arm need raise
To the chain of the bellows that makes the blaze.
I see him search where the blue flames are
In the heart of the fire to find the bar,
With winking grooves from elbow to wrist
As he tightens the tongs in his bawdy fist,
As he hands the bar to his fidgety son
Who holds it well on the anvil down
Till he raises the hammer that stands on its head
And he brings it down with a sound like lead,
For fire has muffled the iron's clamour,
While his son beats time with a smaller hammer,
And the anvil rings like a pair of bells
In time to the beat that the spark expels,
And I am delighted such sounds are made,
For these are the technical sounds of trade
Whose glad notes rang in the heavens above
When a blacksmith slept with the Queen of Love.

The horse is looking without reproof
For the leathery lap that has hugged his hoof:
The patient horse that has cast a shoe;
The horse is looking; and I look too
Through the open door to the cindered pool
That a streamlet leaves for the wheels to cool.
I meditate in the forge light dim
On the will of God in the moving limb,
And I realize that the lift and fall
Of the sledge depends on the Mover of All.

O lend me your sledge for a minute or two
O smith, I have something profound to do!
I swing it up in the half-lit dark,
And down it comes in a straightening arc
On the anvil now where there's nothing to glow.
What matter? No matter! A blow is a blow!
I swing it up in my bulging fists
To prove that the outside world exists;
That the world exists and is more than naught —
As the pale folk hold — but a form of thought.
You think me mad? But it does me good,
A blow is a measure of hardihood.
I lift the sledge, and I strike again
Bang! for the world inside the brain;
And if there's another of which you have heard
Give me the sledge and I'll strike for a third.

I have frightened the horse, though I meant it not:
(Which proves that he is not a form of thought).
I shall frighten myself if I ramble on
With philosophy where there is room for none.
I was going to say that the blacksmith's blow —
If I were the Master of Those who Know —
Would give me a thesis to demonstrate
That Man may fashion but not create.
He melts the mountains. He turns their lode
Against themselves like a Titan god.

He challenges Time by recording thought,
Time stands; but yet he makes nothing from naught,
He bends Form back to the shapes it wore
Before the dawn of the days of yore;
He bends Form back to the primal state;
He changes all, but he can't create;
And tamper he cannot with the ways of Fate.
Between ourselves it is just as well,
If Man ruled Fate he would make Life hell.

What have I done?
What shall I do?

No wonder Pegasus cast a shoe
When I succumbed to the English curse
Of mixing philosophy up with verse.
I can imagine a poet teaching;
But who can imagine a poet preaching?
Soon I shall hear the blacksmith scoff:
" The ground is sticky, they can't take off!"
When I press with my thighs and begin to urge
The heavenly horse from the earthly forge.

I know right well that a song should be
Airy and light as the leaf of a tree,
Light as a leaf that lies on the wind,
Or a bird that sings as he sits on the linde,
And shakes the spray when he dives for flight
With bright drops sprinkling the morning light;
For song that is lovely is light and aloof,
As the sparks that fly up from the well-shod hoof.