Mandragora/The Saturnian

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Published in Mandragora (1917)

572363The SaturnianJohn Cowper Powys

THE SATURNIAN


AH, I must follow it high and low,
   Tho' it leave me cold to your human touch!
Some starry sorcery made me so;
   And from my birth have I been such.
 
What is it I follow so secret-lone?
   Over the hills and along the sea?
Beauty with every seed is sown,
   For you, for them, for me?

Not so, by the gods! Do I not hear
   In the night a tender-muffled crying,
Rising, falling, sinking, dying?
   Oh, I must follow it thro' the world!

Not so, by the gods! When the dawn-wind stirs,
   Rustling over the river-reeds,
Trembling over the wet pastures,
   Shall I not follow it, whither it leads?

Oh, wild and sad, oh, wild and sweet,
   Is the lonely horn that I always hear,
Blown from the place where all streams meet,
   Where all horizons disappear!

The long sea-tides bring home to port,
   Their ships by many a moonlit wharf,

But an ebbing twilight carries my thought
   Beyond every coast it would anchor off.

Like a reef-bell rocking and ringing low,
   Under a grey and rain-swept sky,
The beauty I follow doth come and go,
   And if I found it, I should die.

The wild-bird of my longing sings
   Always in the next hollow,
And always, always it spreads its wings,
   When I cross the hill to follow.

All! Once when the burning noon was poured
   On moss and stone and dreaming sod,
I saw the great blue flower that God
   Made for the Son of God.

And do you think I can go content,
   With the beauty we meet with everywhere,
When I have breathed that flower's scent
   And seen it melt into the air?

Oh, I must follow it high and low,
   Though it leave me cold to your human touch,
Some starry sorcery made me so;
   And from my birth have I been such.


This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.


The longest-living author of this work died in 1963, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 60 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

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