What helps it man, that the noon be indeed intense, The night be indeed worth worship? Fear and pain Were lords and masters yet of the secret sense, Which now dares deem not that light is as darkness, fain Though dark dreams be to declare it, crying in vain. For whence, thou God of the light and the darkness, whence Dawns now this vision that bids not the sunbeams wane? What light, what shadow, diviner than dawn or night, Draws near, makes pause, and again--or I dream--draws near? More soft than shadow, more strong than the strong sun's light, More pure than moonbeams--yea, but the rays run sheer As fire from the sun through the dusk of the pinewood, clear And constant; yea, but the shadow itself is bright That the light clothes round with love that is one with fear. Above and behind it the noon and the woodland lie, Terrible, radiant with mystery, superb and subdued, Triumphant in silence; and hardly the sacred sky Seems free from the tyrannous weight of the dumb fierce mood Which rules as with fire and invasion of beams that brood The breathless rapture of earth till its hour pass by And leave her spirit released and her peace renewed. I sleep not: never in sleep has a man beholden This. From the shadow that trembles and yearns with light Suppressed and elate and reluctant--obscure and golden As water kindled with presage of dawn or night-- A form, a face, a wonder to sense and sight, Grows great as the moon through the month; and her eyes embolden Fear, till it change to desire, and desire to delight. I sleep not: sleep would die of a dream so strange; A dream so sweet would die as a rainbow dies, As a sunbow laughs and is lost on the waves that range And reck not of light that flickers or spray that flies. But the sun withdraws not, the woodland shrinks not or sighs, No sweet thing sickens with sense or with fear of change; Light wounds not, darkness blinds not, my steadfast eyes. Only the soul in my sense that receives the soul Whence now my spirit is kindled with breathless bliss Knows well if the light that wounds it with love makes whole, If hopes that carol be louder than fears that hiss, If truth be spoken of flowers and of waves that kiss, Of clouds and stars that contend for a sunbright goal. And yet may I dream that I dream not indeed of this? An earth-born dreamer, constrained by the bonds of birth, Held fast by the flesh, compelled by his veins that beat And kindle to rapture or wrath, to desire or to mirth, May hear not surely the fall of immortal feet, May feel not surely if heaven upon earth be sweet; And here is my sense fulfilled of the joys of earth, Light, silence, bloom, shade, murmur of leaves that meet.