The happy find Equality of beauty everywhere To feed on. All of shade and sheen is theirs, All the strange fashions and the fair wise ways Of lives beneath man's own. He breathes delight Whose soul is fresh, whose feet are wet with dew And the melted mist of morning, when at watch Sunk deep in fern he marks the stealthy roe, Silent as sleep or shadow, cross the glade, Or dart athwart his view as August stars Shoot and are out--while gracefully pace on The wild-eyed harts to their traditional tree To clear the velvet from their budded horns. There is no want, both God and life are kind; It is enough to hear, it is enough To see; the pale wide barley-field they love, And its weird beauty, and the pale wide moon That lowering seems to lurk between the sheaves. So in the rustic hamlet at high noon The white owl sailing drowsed and deaf with sleep To hide her head in turrets browned of moss That is the rust of time. Ay so the pinks And mountain grass marked on a sharp sea-cliff While far below the northern diver feeds; She having ended settling while she sits, As vessels water-logged that sink at sea And quietly into the deep go down. It is enough to wake, it is enough To sleep:--With God and time he leaves the rest. But on a day death on the doorstep sits Waiting, or like a veilèd woman walks Dogging his footsteps, or athwart his path The splendid passion-flower love unfolds Buds full of sorrow, not ordained to know Appeasement through the answer of a sigh, The kiss of pity with denial given, The crown and blossom of accomplishment. Or haply comes the snake with subtlety, And tempts him with an apple to know all. So,--Shut the gate; the story tells itself Over and over; Eden must be lost If after it be won. He stands at fault, Not knowing at all how this should be--he feels The great bare barrenness o' the outside world. He thinks on Time and what it has to say; He thinks on God, but God has changed His hand, Sitting afar. And as the moon draws on To cover the day-king in his eclipse, And thin the last fine sickle of light, till all Be gone, so fares it with his darkened soul. The dark, but not Orion sparkling there With his best stars; the dark, but not yet Eve. And now the wellsprings of sweet natural joy Lie, as the Genie sealed of Solomon, Fast prisoned in his heart; he hath not learned The spell whereby to loose and set them forth, And all the glad delights that boyhood loved Smell at Oblivion's poppy, and lie still. Ah! they must sleep--"The mill can grind no more With water that hath passed." Let it run on. For he hath caught a whisper in the night; This old inheritance in darkness given, The world, is widened, warmed, it is alive, Comes to his beating heart and bids it wake, Opens the door to youth, and bids it forth, Exultant for expansion and release, And bent to satisfy the mighty wish, Comfort and satisfy the mighty wish, Life of his life, the soul's immortal child That is to him as Eve.