Near is he to great Nature in the thought Each changing Season intimately saith, That nought save apparition knows the death; To the God-lighted mind of man ’tis nought. She counts not loss a word of any weight; It may befal his passions and his greeds To lose their treasures, like the vein that bleeds, But life gone breathless will she reinstate. Close on the heart of Earth his bosom beats, When he the mandate lodged in it obeys, Alive to breast a future wrapped in haze, Strike camp, and onward, like the wind’s cloud-fleets. Unresting she, unresting he, from change To change, as rain of cloud, as fruit of rain; She feels her blood-tree throbbing in her grain, Yet skyward branched, with loftier mark and range. No miracle the sprout of wheat from clod, She knows, nor growth of man in grisly brute; But he, the flower at head and soil at root, Is miracle, guides he the brute to God. And that way seems he bound; that way the road, With his dark-lantern mind, unled, alone, Wearifully through forest-tracts unsown, He travels, urged by some internal goad. Dares he behold the thing he is, what thing He would become is in his mind its child; Astir, demanding birth to light and wing; For battle prompt, by pleasure unbeguiled. So moves he forth in faith, if he has made His mind God’s temple, dedicate to truth. Earth’s nourishing delights, no more gainsaid, He tastes, as doth the bridegroom rich in youth. Then knows he Love, that beckons and controls; The star of sky upon his footway cast; Then match in him who holds his tempters fast, The body’s love and mind’s, whereof the soul’s. Then Earth her man for woman finds at last, To speed the pair unto her goal of goals. Or is’t the widowed’s dream of her new mate? Seen has she virulent days of heat in flood; The sly Persuader snaky in his blood; With her the barren Huntress alternate; His rough refractory off on kicking heels To rear; the man dragged rearward, shamed, amazed; And as a torrent stream where cattle grazed, His tumbled world. What, then, the faith she feels? May not his aspect, like her own so fair Reflexively, the central force belie, And he, the once wild ocean storming sky, Be rebel at the core? What hope is there? ’Tis that in each recovery he preserves, Between his upper and his nether wit, Sense of his march ahead, more brightly lit; He less the shaken thing of lusts and nerves; With such a grasp upon his brute as tells Of wisdom from that vile relapsing spun. A Sun goes down in wasted fire, a Sun Resplendent springs, to faith refreshed compels. THE HUELESS LOVE UNTO that love must we through fire attain, Which those two held as breath of common air; The hands of whom were given in bond elsewhere; Whom Honour was untroubled to restrain.