There is this cave
In the air behind my body
That nobody is going to touch:
A cloister, a silence
Closing around a blossom of fire.
When I stand upright in the wind,
My bones turn to dark emeralds.

See Selborne spreads her boldest beauties round
The varied valley, and the mountain ground,
Wildly majestic! what is all the pride
Of flats, with loads of ornament supply'd?
Unpleasing, tasteless, impotent expense,
Compar'd with nature's rude magnificence.
Arise, my stranger, to these wild scenes haste
The unfinish'd farm awaits your forming taste:
Plan the pavilion, airy, light and true;
Thro' the high arch call in the lengthening view;
Expand the forest sloping up the hill;
Swell to a lake the scant, penurious rill;

The low-voiced girls that go
   In gardens of the Lord,
Like flowers of the field they grow
   In sisterly accord.

Their whispering feet are white
   Along the leafy ways;
They go in whirls of light
   Too beautiful for praise.

And in their band forsooth
   Is one to set me free --
The one that touched my youth --
   The one God gave to me.

She kindles the desire
   Whereby the gods survive --

Threading a darksome passage all alone,
The taper's flame, by envious current blown,
Crouched low, and eddied round, as in affright,
So challenged by the vast and hostile night,
Then down I held the taper; -- swift and fain
Up climbed the lovely flower of light again!

Thou Kindler of the spark of life divine,
Be henceforth the Inverted Torch a sign
That, though the flame beloved thou dost depress,
Thou wilt not speed it into nothingness;
But out of nether gloom wilt reinspire,
And homeward lift the keen empyreal fire!

Mother of Light, and the Gods! Mother of Music, awake!
Silence and speech are at odds; Heaven and Hell are at
stake.
By the Rose and the Cross I conjure; I constrain by the
Snake and the Sword;
I am he that is sworn to endure -Bring us the word of the
Lord!

By the brood of the Bysses of Brightening, whose God was
my sire;
By the Lord of the Flame and Lightning, the King of
the Spirits of Fire;
By the Lord of the Waves and the Waters, the King of the
Hosts of the Sea,
The fairest of all of whose daughters was mother to me;

I.

Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature: beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.


II.

Since you did depart
Out of my reach, my darling,
Into the hidden,
I see each shadow start
With recognition, and I
Am wonder-ridden.

I am dazed with the farewell,
But I scarcely feel your loss.
You left me a gift
Of tongues, so the shadows tell
Me things, and silences toss
Me their drift.

You sent me a cloven fire
Out of death, and it burns in the draught
Of the breathing hosts,
Kindles the darkening pyre
For the sorrowful, till strange brands waft
Like candid ghosts.

Hark where the bells toll, chiming, dull and steady,
The clock's slow hand hath reached the appointed time.
Well, be it so--prepare, my soul is ready,
Companions of the grave--the rest for crime!
Now take, O world! my last farewell--receiving
My parting kisses--in these tears they dwell!
Sweet are thy poisons while we taste believing,
Now we are quits--heart-poisoner, fare-thee-well!

Farewell, ye suns that once to joy invited,
Changed for the mould beneath the funeral shade;
Farewell, farewell, thou rosy time delighted,

The wrathful winter, 'proaching on apace,
With blustering blasts had all ybar'd the treen,
And old Saturnus, with his frosty face,
With chilling cold had pierc'd the tender green;
The mantles rent, wherein enwrapped been
The gladsome groves that now lay overthrown,
The tapets torn, and every bloom down blown.

The soil, that erst so seemly was to seen,
Was all despoiled of her beauty's hue;
And soote fresh flowers, wherewith the summer's queen
Had clad the earth, now Boreas' blasts down blew;
And small fowls flocking, in their song did rue

He needs must leave the trapping and the chase,
For mating game his arrows ne'er despoil,
And from the hunter's heaven turn his face,
To wring some promise from the dormant soil.

He needs must leave the lodge that wintered him,
The enervating fires, the blanket bed--
The women's dulcet voices, for the grim
Realities of labouring for bread.

So goes he forth beneath the planter's moon
With sack of seed that pledges large increase,
His simple pagan faith knows night and noon,