University of Virginia Library

TIME SPIRITS

I do not chide them that they fly the wood,
Hill, river, lake, remote and endless shore,
Nor pluck jewels of words out of the light,
But seek their song under those cliffs of stone
And stone-grey air that reels dizzy with mist.
They think if they but watch their world they will
Be master of it, their speech recall to-day
Unto to-morrow. They do not know that time
Forgets its hours, its days, its years and all
But that which has some touch of the timeless on it.
We do not care to know of Plato's town
By what light arts, what trick of life, men made
The colour of their days. But we remember
One who by airy labours found a way
From earth to heaven, and looked upon a sea,
Shoreless, of beauty, and told of it in words
Dipt in its shining. I have no blame that they
Forget the aristocracy of speech, and use
Slang of the town, and have no age in their thought,
And think as children might do if their world
Were newly born, and god or sage had never
Dropt star or lantern into our abyss:
Or look on frailty, seeing the skimming dancers
With lightness of feet lighten the leaden heart,
Jetting gay fire into the fireless mind.
They might look upon transience all day long
Yet be in company of the gods, could they
But know the Master of the Ceremony,
Cry with Aratus, “Full of Zeus the city:
Full of Zeus the harbour; and full of Zeus
Are all the ways of men,” the vision that makes
All lights be torches in the mystery,
All speech be part of the soliloquy,
Or endless canticle, all holy, sung
By Him who is poet both of heaven and earth.