Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare. Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace, And lay them prone upon the earth and cease To ponder on themselves, the while they stare At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release From dusty bondage into luminous air. O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day, When first the shaft into his vision shone Of light anatomized! Euclid alone Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they Who, though once only and then but far away, Have heard her massive sandal set on stone. PART FIVE SONNETS FROM AN UNGRAFTED TREE V-I SO SHE CAME BACK So SHE came back into his house again And watched beside his bed until he died, Loving him not at all. The winter rain Splashed in the painted butter-tub outside, Where once her red geraniums had stood, Where still their rotted stalks were to be seen; The thin log snapped; and she went out for wood, Bareheaded, running the few steps between The house and shed; there, from the sodden eaves Blown back and forth on ragged ends of twine, Saw the dejected creeping-jinny vine, (And one, big-aproned, blithe, with stiff blue sleeves Rolled to the shoulder that warm day in spring, Who planted seeds, musing ahead to their far blossoming). V-II THE LAST WHITE SAWDUST The last white sawdust on the floor was grown Gray as the first, so long had he been ill; The axe was nodding in the block; fresh-blown And foreign came the rain across the sill, But on the roof so steadily it drummed She could not think a time it might not be-- In hazy summer, when the hot air hummed With mowing, and locusts rising raspingly, When that small bird with iridescent wings And long incredible sudden silver tongue Had just flashed (and yet may be not!) among The dwarf nasturtiums--when no sagging springs Of shower were in the whole bright sky, somehow Upon this roof the rain would drum as it was drumming now. V-III SHE FILLED HER ARMS WITH WOOD She filled her arms with wood, and set her chin Forward, to hold the highest stick in place, No less afraid than she had always been Of spiders up her arms and on her face, But too impatient for a careful search Or a less heavy loading, from the heap Selecting hastily small sticks of birch, For their curled bark, that instantly will leap Into a blaze, nor thinking to return Some day, distracted, as of old, to find Smooth, heavy, round, green logs with a wet, gray rind Only, and knotty chunks that will not burn, (That day when dust is on the wood-box floor, And some old catalogue, and a brown, shriveled apple core). V-IV THE WHITE BARK WRITHED