Poems (Sackville)/The Poet

by Margaret Sackville

For works with similar titles, see The Poet.

THE POET

In pallid streams his life oozed out—
 In the wild watching of his eyes
Sweet visions ever seemed to rout
 A host of fevered phantasies—
 Or struggle 'neath a vague surprise.

Upon his lips a silence lay
 Which strove to speak and ever strove
To tear some blinding veil away—
 A slavish fetter to remove,
 Or some yet hidden force to prove.

Beneath the faint far sky at night
 When a cold harvesting of stars
The moon reaps and the dim moonlight
 Pours down 'twixt cloudy prison bars
 He moved as one whom no grief mars.

And with wide rapture lost all sense
 Of self within the night's cool breath,
Grew portion of all things immense,
 Tides infinite of life and death,
 And those great words the ocean saith.

Or with the shadows of a wood,
 Or some deserted, treeless plain,
Mingled the throbbings of his blood,
 Loosing all human thought and pain,
 And things that grow and things that wane—

In knowledge of the clouds that flit—
 Pale birds of Heaven, across the sky—
Time's slow hands weaving bit by bit
 A manifold embroidery
 Of all things born to live and die.

So was he fashioned that his thought
 Suffered when something would annul
Those words his brain divinely wrought—
 And left him, for the beautiful,
 Merely dark shades confused and dull.

And all his suffering rose and drew
 Pale phantoms on his anguished mind,
Which overcast and overthrew
 His soul—as poisonous serpents wind
 Their victims, so his thoughts would blind.

Nor could he rest, nor weep, nor pray—
 Only a company of mimes
Fantastical—in strange array—
 His lips would summon forth at times,
 Dim hosts of feebly-fashioned rhymes.

Yet once his soul with splendid fire
 Broke every bond and fettering cord—
Beyond the reach of all desire
 Sprang, as from out its sheath, a sword,
 And clove the Heavens with a word.

No conscious music filled his soul—
 Nor trembled on his lips—he grew
Beyond the reach of all control—
 A hollow vase, from which men drew
 God's wine, and nothing further knew.

Or as a flame which burns its way
 Elate, through fields of scorching grass,
Nor knows its power to sere and slay,
 Nor where its molten footsteps pass;
 Even thus his burning spirit was.

Where teemed a gulf of nights and days
 Chaotic, he from the blank sod
Called from those shapeless, voiceless ways
 Divinely as a fashioning god
 Another world where Beauty trod.

Such was his recompense, but when
 He gazed astonished at the thing
Wrought with pure fire of heart and brain
 A surging tumult seemed to sting
 His blood, and round his being cling.

Not yet could he participate
 In sweet accomplished work—his will
Stood with drawn weapon at the gate
 Of his own Paradise, that still
 The unfulfilled he might fulfil.

Nor, the abyss of chaos spanned,
 Could he for any period rest—
Awaiting his creative hand
 The thought of Heavens unpossess'd
 Roused all the passion in his breast.

With yearning heart and eyes afire—
 With tears and splendid speech imbued,
Scarce conscious of his own desire,
 He endless world on world pursued
 Of ever-growing magnitude.