BURNT BUSH
O feet of the Fire! why sped ye so swiftly?
O Beauty! O Blooming! Why fail’d ye so soon?
All the day long,
Now, cruel-ey’d, o’er the wide wound about me,
The raw devastation, the uncover’d Death,
Stands, scrutinising, the terrible Sunlight.
—I must confront it!
All the night long
Now, unmelodious, barren, unfragrant,
Unillumin’d of loving, unhallow’d of healing,
Weighs and presses the undesir’d Dark:
—I must endure it!
Now, never-fill’d
Through the dark and the day,
Behind my one voice lies the thinness of Silence,
Past my sole voice the long silence of Death:
—And I must hear!
Yea, through the void light, through the blackness,
I, Mangi the River,
I, the sole relic
’Mid a world that I know not, of worlds that were mine:
Whole, unwounded, yet how mutilated,
Unchanged, plying what changéd labour:
Through ways familiar unfriended go!
Only as now, when the Day and Night are not,
Now, in the mystical moment of Twilight,
Brethren beloved! thus may I meet you,
Once more,—enfold you,
Feel you, regain you,
Break free from Sorrow, and bathe in your being
Thus, for a moment, again....
Then—Ah! already
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