Classic Poem

From what meek jewel seed
Did this tree spring?
How first beat its new life in bleak abode
Of virgin rock, strange metals for its food,
Toward its last hewn mould, the bitter rood?
First did it sprout, indeed,
A double wing.

Earth hung with its gross weight
Its loins unto:
The tender wings, with hope in every vein,
Beat feebly upward, saying: " Is this the pain
" The Sooth spake of; to lift to God again
" This blackness' dark estate
" Reformed anew?

" Mine 'tis, of fruit mine own,
" To work this deed:
" Earnest of promise absolute, these green
" Sweet wings; a million engines pulse therein.
" Yet can I leave not for a space, to lean
" Upon a fulcrum known,
" To know my need. "

With which, the seed upthrust
To God a scale;
Wondering at its fibre and tough growth;
Saying, the while it purposed: " For He knoweth
" My sore extremity, how I am loth
" To cleave unto the dust
" Which makes me hale "

Long while the scale increased
In height and girth;
Cast many branches forth and many wings;
Wherein and under, formed and fashioned things
Had great content and speech and twitterings:
Insect and fowl and beast
And sons of earth.

Stern, netherward did grope
Each resolute root
Of the tree, making question in the deep
Of spirits, where the mighty metals sleep,
How long ere from its base the rock should leap;
Saying: " Yet have I hope
" Of that my fruit! "

Sprang from its topmost bough
The hope at length,
Fearsome and fierce and passionate. The sire
Warmed his son's vitals with celestial fire,
Feeding him with sweet gum of strong desire,
Lest be not staunch enow
His godly strength.

Until the gardener came
With his white spouse,
Wounding the tree, and ravishing the son,
(Whence curses fallen and a world undone.)
For that rape, wrathfully a shining one
Drave them with fearful flame
Without their house.

Race upon savage race,
Rough brood on brood,
Defiled before it, whiles the tree scanned each;
Leaned leaf branch to grapple and beseech;
Till, on a certain day, requiring speech
Of the tree, at its base
The whole world stood:

" What hast thou given us
" Thou barren tree?
" Knowledge, " thou answerest? Thou hast set agape
" The door of Knowledge only. Thy limbs ape
" Some truth. We love thee not, nor love thy shape
" Imposture, thus and thus
" We fashion thee. "

Sorely then handled it
The gardener's sons.
Strangely they built it newly, having cleft
Its being all asunder; stem bereft
Of quivering limbs, save one to right and left,
Urging the selfsame wit
It gave them once.

" Lo! all my glories fall.
" Of these my woes,
" What know those wrathful men, save, in yon " place,
" Perhaps, yon athlete, stripped for my embrace?
" If longing cheat me not, writ in his face,
" He knows about it all,
" He knows, he knows.

" Sorrow! What sin they now,
" Those wrathful men?
" Passion! thou'rt come to me again too soon;
" Too hot thou givst me back the fiery boon
" I gave thee; love consumes me, that I swoon;
" Thou, on my topmost bough,
" My fruit again. "