 | Poems with Fables in Prose |  |
162
II
For with a movement strange the whole tree moves,
That hath its roots down in the kingdoms pale
Of Hela, and whose boughs do overspread
The highest heaven. We ripen, we are shed—
But lo! a pattern in its vapoury
Spirals unwreathing, spirals without end
Shaped into glimmering lights, a scatter'd veil,
Corollas luminous, green nebulæ
Whirled up in figured dance, each soul in station
(This fan-like rise of petals seems of souls)
Ascending, throbbing—systoles—diastoles—
By generations! Old Pythagoras
These may have numbered in his secret glass—
These, carrying up the spirals of creation;
These, that alone change forces into loves!
That hath its roots down in the kingdoms pale
Of Hela, and whose boughs do overspread
The highest heaven. We ripen, we are shed—
But lo! a pattern in its vapoury
Spirals unwreathing, spirals without end
Shaped into glimmering lights, a scatter'd veil,
Corollas luminous, green nebulæ
Whirled up in figured dance, each soul in station
(This fan-like rise of petals seems of souls)
Ascending, throbbing—systoles—diastoles—
By generations! Old Pythagoras
These may have numbered in his secret glass—
These, carrying up the spirals of creation;
These, that alone change forces into loves!
These glowing cores, the chaliced families,
What suns draw from a source deeper than these—
Nebulæ, wreathing upwards from their fount,
Majestic in their dreams and in their traces?
They throw off paler confraternities,
The temple-guilds, religions of the races,
Formed but to echo their august vibration—
Image forth perpetually their solemn rise!
Floating up warm from narrow native ground
Even in the very need of each man's toil
And the very pang that bids defend his soil,
They become aware of other chalices,
Until with sense of all the rest inwound
They break, towards one will, within their bound,
And feel themselves as one, nation by nation,
Enlarging so the spirals of creation:—
What suns draw from a source deeper than these—
Nebulæ, wreathing upwards from their fount,
Majestic in their dreams and in their traces?
They throw off paler confraternities,
The temple-guilds, religions of the races,
Formed but to echo their august vibration—
Image forth perpetually their solemn rise!
Floating up warm from narrow native ground
Even in the very need of each man's toil
163
They become aware of other chalices,
Until with sense of all the rest inwound
They break, towards one will, within their bound,
And feel themselves as one, nation by nation,
Enlarging so the spirals of creation:—
But neither in men themselves, nor what they change
Or make, do lie the centres of the strange
Movement, wherewith the whole tree moves
Spacing men's mind to measured harmony.
Its centres lie in little glowing cores,
Them that alone change forces into loves.
Or make, do lie the centres of the strange
Movement, wherewith the whole tree moves
Spacing men's mind to measured harmony.
Its centres lie in little glowing cores,
Them that alone change forces into loves.
| Poems with Fables in Prose | |