For their Eastward march to the shrine Of the footsore far-eyed Faith, Was banner so brave, so fair, So quick with celestial sign Of victorious rays over death? For a conquest of coward despair;— Division of soul from wits, And these made rulers;—full sure, More starlike never did shine To illumine the sinister field Where our life’s old night-bird flits. I knew it: with her, my own, Had hailed it pure of the pure; Our beacon yearly: but strange When it strikes to within is the known; Richer than newness revealed. There was needed darkness like mine. Its beauty to vividness blown Drew the life in me forward, chased, From aloft on a pinnacle’s range, That hindward spidery line, The length of the ways I had paced, A footfarer out of the dawn, To Youth’s wild forest, where sprang, For the morning of May long gone, The forest’s white virgin; she Seen yonder; and sheltered me, sang; She in me, I in her; what songs The fawn-eared wood-hollows revive To pour forth their tune-footed throngs; Inspire to the dreaming of good Illimitable to come: She, the white wild cherry, a tree, Earth-rooted, tangibly wood, Yet a presence throbbing alive; Nor she in our language dumb: A spirit born of a tree; Because earth-rooted alive: Huntress of things worth pursuit Of souls; in our naming, dreams. And each unto other was lute, By fits quick as breezy gleams. My quiver of aims and desires Had colour that she would have owned; And if by humaner fires Hued later, these held her enthroned: My crescent of Earth; my blood At the silvery early stir; Hour of the thrill of the bud About to burst, and by her Directed, attuned, englobed: My Goddess, the chaste, not chill; Choir over choir white-robed; White-bosomed fold within fold: For so could I dream, breast-bare, In my time of blooming; dream still Through the maze, the mesh, and the wreck, Despite, since manhood was bold, The yoke of the flesh on my neck. She beckoned, I gazed, unaware How a shaft of the blossoming tree Was shot from the yew-wood’s core. I stood to the touch of a key Turned in a fast-shut door. They rounded my garden, content, The small fry, clutching their fee, Their fruit of the wreath and the pole; And, chatter, hop, skip, they were sent, In a buzz of young company glee, Their natural music, swift shoal To the next easy shedders of pence. Why not? for they had me in tune With the hungers of my kind. Do readings of earth draw thence, Then a concord deeper than cries Of the Whither whose echo is Whence, To jar unanswered, shall rise As a fountain-jet in the mind Bowed dark o’er the falling and strewn. * * *