In evening’s limpid air, What time the dew’s soothings Unto the earth downpour, Invisibly and unheard— For tender shoe-gear wear The soothing dews, like all that’s kind-gentle—: Bethinkst thou then, bethinkst thou, burning heart, How once thou thirstedest For heaven’s kindly teardrops and dew’s down-droppings, All singed and weary thirstedest, What time on yellow grass-pathways Wicked, occidental sunny glances Through sombre trees about thee sported, Blindingly sunny glow-glances, gladly-hurting? “Of TRUTH the wooer? Thou?”—so taunted they— “Nay! Merely poet! A brute insidious, plundering, grovelling, That aye must lie, That wittingly, wilfully, aye must lie: For booty lusting, Motley masked, Self-hidden, shrouded, Himself his booty— HE—of truth the wooer? Nay! Mere fool! Mere poet! Just motley speaking, From mask of fool confusedly shouting, Circumambling on fabricated word-bridges, On motley rainbow-arches, ‘Twixt the spurious heavenly, And spurious earthly, Round us roving, round us soaring,— MERE FOOL! MERE POET! HE—of truth the wooer? Not still, stiff, smooth and cold, Become an image, A godlike statue, Set up in front of temples, As a God’s own door-guard: Nay! hostile to all such truthfulness-statues, In every desert homelier than at temples, With cattish wantonness, Through every window leaping Quickly into chances, Every wild forest a-sniffing, Greedily-longingly, sniffing, That thou, in wild forests, ’Mong the motley-speckled fierce creatures, Shouldest rove, sinful-sound and fine-coloured, With longing lips smacking, Blessedly mocking, blessedly hellish, blessedly bloodthirsty, Robbing, skulking, lying—roving:— Or unto eagles like which fixedly, Long adown the precipice look, Adown THEIR precipice:— Oh, how they whirl down now, Thereunder, therein, To ever deeper profoundness whirling!— Then, Sudden, With aim aright, With quivering flight, On LAMBKINS pouncing, Headlong down, sore-hungry, For lambkins longing, Fierce ’gainst all lamb-spirits, Furious-fierce ’gainst all that look Sheeplike, or lambeyed, or crisp-woolly, —Grey, with lambsheep kindliness! Even thus, Eaglelike, pantherlike, Are the poet’s desires, Are THINE OWN desires ‘neath a thousand guises, Thou fool! Thou poet! Thou who all mankind viewedst— So God, as sheep—: The God TO REND within mankind, As the sheep in mankind, And in rending LAUGHING— THAT, THAT is thine own blessedness! Of a panther and eagle—blessedness! Of a poet and fool—the blessedness!—