Sorting and re-arranging worlds of Matter Keenly and wisely. Thus you brought our earth Through stages, and from purpose back to purpose, From fire to fog, to dust, to birth Through beast to man, who led himself to brain-- Then you invoked him back to dust again. By leave of you he places stone on stone; He scatters seed: you are at once the prop Among the long roots of his fragile crop. You manufacture for him, and insure House, harvest, implement and furniture, And hold them all secure. IV The hill ... The trees ... From underneath I feel You pull me with your hand: Through my firm feet up to my heart You hold me,--You are in the land, Reposing underneath the hill. You keep my balance and my growth. I lift a foot, but where I go You follow: you, the ever-strong, Control the smallest thing I do. I have some little human power To turn your purpose to my end, For which I thank you every hour. I stand at worship, while you send Thrills up my body to my heart, And I am all in love to know How by your strength you keep me part Of earth, which cannot let me go; How everything I see around, Whether it can or cannot move, Is granted liberty of ground, And freedom to enjoy your love; Though you are silent always, and, alone To You yourself, your power remains unknown. GOLDFISH Harold Monro They are the angels of that watery world, With so much knowledge that they just aspire To move themselves on golden fins, Or fill their paradise with fire By darting suddenly from end to end. Glowing a thousand centuries behind In pools half-recollected of the mind, Their large eyes stare and stare, but do not see Beyond those curtains of Eternity. When twilight flows into the room And air becomes like water, you can feel Their movements growing larger in the gloom, And you are led Backward to where they live beyond the dead. But in the morning, when the seven rays Of London sunlight one by one incline, They glide to meet them, and their gulping lips Suck the light in, so they are caught and played Like salmon on a heavenly fishing line. * * * * Ghosts on a twilight floor, Moving about behind their watery door, Breathing and yet not breathing day and night, They give the house some gleam of faint delight. DOG You little friend, your nose is ready; you sniff, Asking for that expected walk, (Your nostrils full of the happy rabbit-whiff) And almost talk. And so the moment becomes a moving force; Coats glide down from their pegs in the humble dark; The sticks grow live to the stride of their vagrant course. You scamper the stairs, Your body informed with the scent and the track and the mark Of stoats and weasels, moles and badgers and hares. We are going OUT. You know the pitch of the word, Probing the tone of thought as it comes through fog And reaches by devious means (half-smelt, half-heard) The four-legged brain of a walk-ecstatic dog.