Part 5

Upheaved its stubborn girth, and raised unriven, Against the whirl-blast and the levin, Defiant arms to Heaven.

When doom puffed out the stars, we might have said, It would decline its heavy head, And see the world to bed.

For this firm yew did from the vassal leas, And rain and air, its tributaries, Its revenues increase,

And levy impost on the golden sun, Take the blind years as they might run, And no fate seek or shun.

But now our yew is strook, is fallen—yea Hacked like dull wood of every day To this and that, men say.

Never!—To Hades’ shadowy shipyards gone, Dim barge of Dis, down Acheron It drops, or Lethe wan.

Stirred by its fall—poor destined bark of Dis!— Along my soul a bruit there is Of echoing images,

Reverberations of mortality: Spelt backward from its death, to me Its life reads saddenedly.

Its breast was hollowed as the tooth of eld; And boys, their creeping unbeheld, A laughing moment dwelled.

Yet they, within its very heart so crept, Reached not the heart that courage kept With winds and years beswept.

And in its boughs did close and kindly nest The birds, as they within its breast, By all its leaves caressed.

But bird nor child might touch by any art Each other’s or the tree’s hid heart, A whole God’s breadth apart;

The breadth of God, he breadth of death and life! Even so, even so, in undreamed strife With pulseless Law, the wife,—

The sweetest wife on sweetest marriage-day,— Their souls at grapple in mid-way, Sweet to her sweet may say:

“I take you to my inmost heart, my true!” Ah, fool! but there is one heart you Shall never take him to!

The hold that falls not when the town is got, The heart’s heart, whose immurèd plot Hath keys yourself keep not!

Its ports you cannot burst—you are withstood— For him that to your listening blood Sends precepts as he would.

Its gates are deaf to Love, high summoner; Yea, Love’s great warrant runs not there: You are your prisoner.

Yourself are with yourself the sole consortress In that unleaguerable fortress; It knows you not for portress

Its keys are at the cincture hung of God; Its gates are trepidant to His nod; By Him its floors are trod.

And if His feet shall rock those floors in wrath, Or blest aspersion sleek His path, Is only choice it hath.

Yea, in that ultimate heart’s occult abode To lie as in an oubliette of God, Or as a bower untrod,

Built by a secret Lover for His Spouse;— Sole choice is this your life allows, Sad tree, whose perishing boughs So few birds house!

DREAM-TRYST.

THE breaths of kissing night and day Were mingled in the eastern Heaven: Throbbing with unheard melody Shook Lyra all its star-chord seven: When dusk shrunk cold, and light trod shy, And dawn’s grey eyes were troubled grey; And souls went palely up the sky, And mine to Lucidé.

There was no change in her sweet eyes Since last I saw those sweet eyes shine; There was no change in her deep heart Since last that deep heart knocked at mine. Her eyes were clear, her eyes were Hope’s, Wherein did ever come and go The sparkle of the fountain-drops From her sweet soul below.

The chambers in the house of dreams Are fed with so divine an air, That Time’s hoar wings grow young therein, And they who walk there are most fair. I joyed for me, I joyed for her, Who with the Past meet girt about: Where our last kiss still warms the air, Nor can her eyes go out.

A CORYMBUS FOR AUTUMN.