1
Now come within, and hearken to my ringing:
I am the Anvil: on my steely bed
True dreams are gendered; I have other singing
Than lyric air in lilted number led.
My deeds are hopes split on the glitterless dark,
My music is an iron starry shout,
My suns are born to briefness like a spark:
So was man's measure wrought and beaten out.
Loud in my cave with grinding echoes rife,
Lean, disaccording, counter-crossed, and jarred,
I mint the carol of created life,
Chiming amiss with every cadence marred.
If then, than these, more grateful tunes you crave,
Choose to be deaf: your music's in the grave.
2
What wintry disks are hung, obscure and bare,
On midnight's metal pointed keen with fire?
What signs withdrawn inlay this mask of air,
Secret within its fold? A burning wire
Rims the dark moon. Now the vault pricks. Now chill
And featureless in hollows like dead wind
Pass the black planets wheeling without will:
Earth hears their orbit, but themselves are blind.
So to my brain are unlit thoughts returning
Down icy tracts adrift from any star;
They have no light, in their own darkness burning;
Yet most I see, most know them, that they are.
Hard glints on hard, and blackest brightest gleams:
So wakes the world on anvil in my dreams.
3
How hard things are to beauty filed with cost!
A foil is thrust to prick our sense awake:
Eyes in the forest, forms of fiery frost,
Mountains of stone, and stony things men make.
Yet not the gifts that cloudy Vulcan gave,
Who taught great gods to hammer and to grind,
Can dint some hearts too smooth and bright to grave,
Some thoughts too stubborn for the shaping mind.
The Lame God wrought with golden rivets clear,
But while men fashion, see, the forge is black;
And when fine toil fair-finished might appear,
Night's narrow coffin folds us without crack.
With such a sudden stroke our tale is told,
And things full made lie on the Anvil, cold.
Now come within, and hearken to my ringing:
I am the Anvil: on my steely bed
True dreams are gendered; I have other singing
Than lyric air in lilted number led.
My deeds are hopes split on the glitterless dark,
My music is an iron starry shout,
My suns are born to briefness like a spark:
So was man's measure wrought and beaten out.
Loud in my cave with grinding echoes rife,
Lean, disaccording, counter-crossed, and jarred,
I mint the carol of created life,
Chiming amiss with every cadence marred.
If then, than these, more grateful tunes you crave,
Choose to be deaf: your music's in the grave.
2
What wintry disks are hung, obscure and bare,
On midnight's metal pointed keen with fire?
What signs withdrawn inlay this mask of air,
Secret within its fold? A burning wire
Rims the dark moon. Now the vault pricks. Now chill
And featureless in hollows like dead wind
Pass the black planets wheeling without will:
Earth hears their orbit, but themselves are blind.
So to my brain are unlit thoughts returning
Down icy tracts adrift from any star;
They have no light, in their own darkness burning;
Yet most I see, most know them, that they are.
Hard glints on hard, and blackest brightest gleams:
So wakes the world on anvil in my dreams.
3
How hard things are to beauty filed with cost!
A foil is thrust to prick our sense awake:
Eyes in the forest, forms of fiery frost,
Mountains of stone, and stony things men make.
Yet not the gifts that cloudy Vulcan gave,
Who taught great gods to hammer and to grind,
Can dint some hearts too smooth and bright to grave,
Some thoughts too stubborn for the shaping mind.
The Lame God wrought with golden rivets clear,
But while men fashion, see, the forge is black;
And when fine toil fair-finished might appear,
Night's narrow coffin folds us without crack.
With such a sudden stroke our tale is told,
And things full made lie on the Anvil, cold.