Poems with Fables in Prose By Frederic Herbert Trench |
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 | Poems with Fables in Prose |  |
XVIII
We are not last, we are not highest,
Upon the topless scale of being.
Closing above our heads,
Like you, the many-fountain'd forest,
With crests beyond our seeing,
(That may be real, and yet may never be)
Arise, with lighted chalices,
The things in truth most dear to us—
Forms of the half-seen sacred Families
Bearing, and yet unborn—
Seeking, and ever seeking, the perfect flower!
And within their cells translucent
As in a second womb
Our whole lives rise and pass;
Each petal in its station,
Each body in its sheath.
For above, around, beneath
The narrow and clear-lighted ring
Of each work-day intelligence,
There hangs in deep penumbra
Whence only beauty speaketh,
The Will that upward seeketh,
Tossing the pattern of our streaming wills
Up hotly from our childhood's plains and hills
In ever-widening spiral sweep
That yet its steady core doth keep.
Upon the topless scale of being.
Closing above our heads,
Like you, the many-fountain'd forest,
With crests beyond our seeing,
192
Arise, with lighted chalices,
The things in truth most dear to us—
Forms of the half-seen sacred Families
Bearing, and yet unborn—
Seeking, and ever seeking, the perfect flower!
And within their cells translucent
As in a second womb
Our whole lives rise and pass;
Each petal in its station,
Each body in its sheath.
For above, around, beneath
The narrow and clear-lighted ring
Of each work-day intelligence,
There hangs in deep penumbra
Whence only beauty speaketh,
The Will that upward seeketh,
Tossing the pattern of our streaming wills
Up hotly from our childhood's plains and hills
In ever-widening spiral sweep
That yet its steady core doth keep.
It is the race creates our soul
By touches many-fingered.
It is our land that makes the soul to sing,
In beauty like the forest's murmuring.
As prisoners speak from cell to cell
By beatings on the wall,
So speaks to us out of her shrine,
This sea-beat France, this Gaul,
As a god might speak unto a vine
Travelling across his temple wall,—
By impulse from the divine,
Upheaved through the familiar ground—
Throbbings of our own heart-beats, our own nation.
By touches many-fingered.
It is our land that makes the soul to sing,
In beauty like the forest's murmuring.
As prisoners speak from cell to cell
By beatings on the wall,
So speaks to us out of her shrine,
This sea-beat France, this Gaul,
As a god might speak unto a vine
193
By impulse from the divine,
Upheaved through the familiar ground—
Throbbings of our own heart-beats, our own nation.
And Beauty is that language of the race,
O beauty is the tongue,
In which—be it lived or sung—
With utter selflessness of mood,
Into the daring instant's time and place
The small immediate life is flung
With the careless gesture of infinitude.
O beauty is the tongue,
In which—be it lived or sung—
With utter selflessness of mood,
Into the daring instant's time and place
The small immediate life is flung
With the careless gesture of infinitude.
Thus is upheaved the Nation,
Like you, the many-fountain'd forest,
Closing above our heads—
Content that, while we sink, it spreads
Abroad on the sunn'd wave of Time
Wider its flowering incandescences;
A many-voiced, a many-thirsted thing—
As full of eyes as heaven hath stars—a thing
Ascending to the future like a song
Moulded of fineless will and meditation.
Like you, the many-fountain'd forest,
Closing above our heads—
Content that, while we sink, it spreads
Abroad on the sunn'd wave of Time
Wider its flowering incandescences;
A many-voiced, a many-thirsted thing—
As full of eyes as heaven hath stars—a thing
Ascending to the future like a song
Moulded of fineless will and meditation.
| Poems with Fables in Prose | |