But there the night is close, and there Darkness is cold and strange and bare; And the secret deeps are whisperless; And rhythm is all deliciousness; And joy is in the throbbing tide, Whose intricate fingers beat and glide In felt bewildering harmonies Of trembling touch; and music is The exquisite knocking of the blood. Space is no more, under the mud; His bliss is older than the sun. Silent and straight the waters run. The lights, the cries, the willows dim, And the dark tide are one with him. Thoughts on the Shape of the Human Body How can we find? how can we rest? how can We, being gods, win joy, or peace, being man? We, the gaunt zanies of a witless Fate, Who love the unloving and lover hate, Forget the moment ere the moment slips, Kiss with blind lips that seek beyond the lips, Who want, and know not what we want, and cry With crooked mouths for Heaven, and throw it by. Love's for completeness! No perfection grows 'Twixt leg, and arm, elbow, and ear, and nose, And joint, and socket; but unsatisfied Sprawling desires, shapeless, perverse, denied. Finger with finger wreathes; we love, and gape, Fantastic shape to mazed fantastic shape, Straggling, irregular, perplexed, embossed, Grotesquely twined, extravagantly lost By crescive paths and strange protuberant ways From sanity and from wholeness and from grace. How can love triumph, how can solace be, Where fever turns toward fever, knee toward knee? Could we but fill to harmony, and dwell Simple as our thought and as perfectible, Rise disentangled from humanity Strange whole and new into simplicity, Grow to a radiant round love, and bear Unfluctuant passion for some perfect sphere, Love moon to moon unquestioning, and be Like the star Lunisequa, steadfastly Following the round clear orb of her delight, Patiently ever, through the eternal night! Flight Voices out of the shade that cried, And long noon in the hot calm places, And children's play by the wayside, And country eyes, and quiet faces -- All these were round my steady paces. Those that I could have loved went by me; Cool gardened homes slept in the sun; I heard the whisper of water nigh me, Saw hands that beckoned, shone, were gone In the green and gold. And I went on. For if my echoing footfall slept, Soon a far whispering there'd be Of a little lonely wind that crept From tree to tree, and distantly Followed me, followed me. . . . But the blue vaporous end of day Brought peace, and pursuit baffled quite, Where between pine-woods dipped the way. I turned, slipped in and out of sight. I trod as quiet as the night. The pine-boles kept perpetual hush; And in the boughs wind never swirled. I found a flowering lowly bush, And bowed, slid in, and sighed and curled, Hidden at rest from all the world.