I HEARD a voice in dream
Say ‘We are Words,
A flock of painted birds
We seem; but of all things
We are the wings;
And each thing has for name
One kindling flame,
So wild in pulse, so eager, swift and high,
None can tell where
In scarlet flock we fly
Calling our calls along the liquid air.’
Again: ‘Not yet, our age:
We are the buds upon the singing tree,
And meanings are within us, cooped and furled,
A season shall let free.
We keep our ghost hid in a scented cage:
But now who knows
How the branch shall be when the thorn blows?
Such unborn Words are we.’
I heard again:
‘Fishers of joy and pain
Grey words are we,
Who sift
Man's dream and drift;
Whose net
Under the moon is set
To drag the tidal secret of the world
Up from the shadowy sea;
And only find
Shadows, ourselves, drowned symbols of the mind;
We are the wine, the bread,
And burial of the dead.’
‘O Words, white garden closed,
O silvered nets at sea,
Dead time, and time to be,—
One of the whirring host
Of birds that wing between
My word has been.’
And thereupon,
Silent, I saw a hand
Draw some thin signs upon a wall of stone,
Like fans of light
Cast on a cold and rushy lake at night
When a black gliding dab-chick wanders small
To swim beneath the moon.
Liquid the ripple ran,
Quiet, and delicate and magical;
And now 'twas lost,
And now frond-fixed as in a kind of frost—
Like coral antler on a scaly reef;
And now took life within it, like a leaf
By the slow sun unscrolling and enlarged,
Vein from thin vein in perfect tracery.
And soon
Came other shapes, expectant, without sense,
Yet charged with an expectancy,
As if to serve
Some inner scope and blind magnificence.
For still the image held a changing curve
And, poised in no one state,
It passed between
Issues and Incarnations,
Now through a woman's body, now a shell's,
Doubtful, perplexed, and indeterminate
As it might be some fading map of spells
Conned by old Merlin in his twilight green,
Yet darkly planned
Like that one shape Christ marked upon the sand.
Whereon I mused, and worshipped with the eye,
And my tongue made reply, ‘O liar, tongue,
O cheating voice that sung,
Can sea or land
Summit or speck of sand
Be comprehended in a sound of air?
Can hate speak, or despair,
When everything that 's perfectest among
Things perfect and things tender is too frail
To bear the leaden shackle of a name?
Words, words, naught you avail
Who are a trick to save
The crook, the don, the critic, and the knave:
And frame
Out of a wind a shame
Whereby the soul is dense
And even love is muddied with pretence.’…
But weaving still upon that shadowy plinth
Shape from lit shape the active image grew
Swift, intricate, and new.
Bright, travelling motes that swam awheel
Could nought reveal
But their own motion bland and infinite.
Nothing was here to name: only to feel
How from that labyrinth
A sharpening light
Stole on the altered mind, and gave it Sight.
God pondering stood
In His mute world; saw it was good;
He, for our innocency,
Cold from a finger drew the crystal seal
And signed His sovran jewel on the Eye.
Say ‘We are Words,
A flock of painted birds
We seem; but of all things
We are the wings;
And each thing has for name
One kindling flame,
So wild in pulse, so eager, swift and high,
None can tell where
In scarlet flock we fly
Calling our calls along the liquid air.’
Again: ‘Not yet, our age:
We are the buds upon the singing tree,
And meanings are within us, cooped and furled,
A season shall let free.
We keep our ghost hid in a scented cage:
But now who knows
How the branch shall be when the thorn blows?
Such unborn Words are we.’
I heard again:
‘Fishers of joy and pain
Grey words are we,
Who sift
Man's dream and drift;
Whose net
Under the moon is set
To drag the tidal secret of the world
Up from the shadowy sea;
And only find
Shadows, ourselves, drowned symbols of the mind;
We are the wine, the bread,
And burial of the dead.’
‘O Words, white garden closed,
O silvered nets at sea,
Dead time, and time to be,—
One of the whirring host
Of birds that wing between
My word has been.’
And thereupon,
Silent, I saw a hand
Draw some thin signs upon a wall of stone,
Like fans of light
Cast on a cold and rushy lake at night
When a black gliding dab-chick wanders small
To swim beneath the moon.
Liquid the ripple ran,
Quiet, and delicate and magical;
And now 'twas lost,
And now frond-fixed as in a kind of frost—
Like coral antler on a scaly reef;
And now took life within it, like a leaf
By the slow sun unscrolling and enlarged,
Vein from thin vein in perfect tracery.
And soon
Came other shapes, expectant, without sense,
Yet charged with an expectancy,
As if to serve
Some inner scope and blind magnificence.
For still the image held a changing curve
And, poised in no one state,
It passed between
Issues and Incarnations,
Now through a woman's body, now a shell's,
Doubtful, perplexed, and indeterminate
As it might be some fading map of spells
Conned by old Merlin in his twilight green,
Yet darkly planned
Like that one shape Christ marked upon the sand.
Whereon I mused, and worshipped with the eye,
And my tongue made reply, ‘O liar, tongue,
O cheating voice that sung,
Can sea or land
Summit or speck of sand
Be comprehended in a sound of air?
Can hate speak, or despair,
When everything that 's perfectest among
Things perfect and things tender is too frail
To bear the leaden shackle of a name?
Words, words, naught you avail
Who are a trick to save
The crook, the don, the critic, and the knave:
And frame
Out of a wind a shame
Whereby the soul is dense
And even love is muddied with pretence.’…
But weaving still upon that shadowy plinth
Shape from lit shape the active image grew
Swift, intricate, and new.
Bright, travelling motes that swam awheel
Could nought reveal
But their own motion bland and infinite.
Nothing was here to name: only to feel
How from that labyrinth
A sharpening light
Stole on the altered mind, and gave it Sight.
God pondering stood
In His mute world; saw it was good;
He, for our innocency,
Cold from a finger drew the crystal seal
And signed His sovran jewel on the Eye.