god

I have been given my charge to keep--
Well have I kept the same!
Playing with strife for the most of my life,
But this is a different game.
I'll not fight against swords unseen,
Or spears that I cannot view--
Hand him the keys of the place on your knees--
'Tis the Dreamer whose dreams come true!

Ask him his terms and accept them at once.
Quick, ere we anger him, go!
Never before have I flinched from the guns,
But this is a different show.
I'll not fight with the Herald of God

"There's no sense in going further --
it's the edge of cultivation,"
So they said, and I believed it --
broke my land and sowed my crop --
Built my barns and strung my fences
in the little border station
Tucked away below the foothills
where the trails run out and stop.

Till a voice, as bad as Conscience,
rang interminable changes
In one everlasting Whisper
day and night repeated -- so:
"Something hidden. Go and find it.
Go and look behind the Ranges --
Something lost behind the Ranges.

Once more, then, we meet
In the circles of yore;
Let our song be as sweet
In its wreaths as before,
Who claims the first place
In the tribute of song?
The God to whose grace
All our pleasures belong.
Though Ceres may spread
All her gifts on the shrine,
Though the glass may be red
With the blush of the vine,
What boots--if the while
Fall no spark on the hearth;
If the heart do not smile
With the instinct of mirth?--
From the clouds, from God's breast
Must our happiness fall,

Three summers since I chose a maid,
Too young maybe-but more's to do
At harvest-time that a bide and woo.
When us was wed she turned afraid
Of love and me and all things human;
Like the shut of winter's day
Her smile went out, and `twadn't a woman-
More like a little frightened fay.
One night, in the Fall, she runned away.

"Out 'mong the sheep, her be," they said,
Should properly have been abed;
But sureenough she wadn't there
Lying awake with her wide brown stare.

'TWAS in the month of December, and in the year l883,
That a monster whale came to Dundee,
Resolved for a few days to sport and play,
And devour the small fishes in the silvery Tay.

So the monster whale did sport and play
Among the innocent little fishes in the beautiful Tay,
Until he was seen by some men one day,
And they resolved to catch him without delay.

When it came to be known a whale was seen in the Tay,
Some men began to talk and to say,
We must try and catch this monster of a whale,

The starshells float above, the bayonets glisten;
We bear our fallen friend without a sound;
Below the waiting legions lie and listen
To us, who march upon their burial-ground.

Wound in the flag of England, here we lay him;
The guns will flash and thunder o’er the grave;
What other winding sheet should now array him,
What other music should salute the brave?

As goes the Sun-god in his chariot glorious,
When all his golden banners are unfurled,

[This is the hymn to Eleanor, daughter of Mab and a golden drone, sung by the Locust choir when the fairy child marries her God, the yellow rose]


This is a song to the white-armed one
Cold in the breast as the frost-wrapped Spring,
Whose feet are slow on the hills of life,
Whose round mouth rules by whispering.

This is a song to the white-armed one
Whose breast shall burn as a Summer field,
Whose wings shall rise to the doors of gold,
Whose poppy lips to the God shall yield.

COME hither, Evan Cameron!
Come, stand beside my knee:
I hear the river roaring down
Towards the wintry sea.
There ’s shouting on the mountain-side,
There ’s war within the blast;
Old faces look upon me,
Old forms go trooping past:
I hear the pibroch wailing
Amidst the din of fight,
And my dim spirit wakes again
Upon the verge of night.

’T was I that led the Highland host
Through wild Lochaber’s snows,
What time the plaided clans came down

Is it not by his high superfluousness we know
Our God? For to be equal a need
Is natural, animal, mineral: but to fling
Rainbows over the rain
And beauty above the moon, and secret rainbows
On the domes of deep sea-shells,
And make the necessary embrace of breeding
Beautiful also as fire,
Not even the weeds to multiply without blossom
Nor the birds without music:
There is the great humaneness at the heart of things,
The extravagant kindness, the fountain
Humanity can understand, and would flow likewise

Here, at the end of the world,
the flowers bleed
as if they were hearts,
the hearts ooze a darkness
like india ink,
& poets dip their pens in
& they write.

"Here, at the end of the world,"
they write,
not knowing what it means.
"Here, where the sky nurses on black milk,
where the smokestack feed the sky,
where the trees tremble in terror
& people come to resemble them. . . . "

Here, at the end of the world,
the poets are bleeding.
Writing & bleeding