|
|
|
|
| I |
|
|
|
|
| My Soul. I summon to the winding ancient stair; |
| Set all your mind upon the steep ascent, |
| Upon the
broken, crumbling battlement, |
| Upon the breathless starlit air, |
| Upon the star that marks the hidden pole; |
| Fix
every wandering thought upon |
| That quarter where all thought is done: |
| Who can distinguish darkness
from the soul? |
|
|
|
|
| My Self. The consecrated blade upon my knees |
| Is Sato’s ancient blade, still as it was, |
| Still
razor-keen, still like a looking-glass |
| Unspotted by the centuries; |
| That flowering, silken, old embroidery,
torn |
| From some court-lady’s dress and round |
| The wooden scabbard bound and wound, |
| Can, tattered,
still protect, faded adorn. |
|
|
|
|
| My Soul. Why should the imagination of a man |
| Long past his prime remember
things that are |
| Emblematical of love and war? |
| Think of ancestral night that can, |
| If but imagination scorn
the earth |
| And intellect its wandering |
| To this and that and t’other thing, |
| Deliver from the crime of death
and birth. |
|
|
|
|
| My Self. Montashigi, third of his family, fashioned it |
| Five hundred years ago, about it lie |
| Flowers
from I know not what embroidery— |
| Heart’s purple—and all these I set |
| For emblems of the day against
the tower |
| Emblematical of the night, |
| And claim as by a soldier’s right |
| A charter to commit the crime
once more. |
|
|
|
|
| My Soul. Such fullness in that quarter overflows |
| And falls into the basin of the mind |
| That
man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind, |
| For intellect no longer knows |
| Is from the Ought, or Knower
from the Known— |
| That is to say, ascends to Heaven; |
| Only the dead can be forgiven; |
| But when I think
of that my tongue’s a stone. |
|
|
|
|
| II |
|
|
|
|
| My Self. A living man is blind and drinks his drop. |
| What matter if the
ditches are impure? |
| What matter if I live it all once more? |
| Endure that toil of growing up; |
| The ignominy
of boyhood; the distress |
| Of boyhood changing into man; |
| The unfinished man and his pain |
| Brought face
to face with his own clumsiness; |
|
|
|
|
| The finished man among his enemies?— |
| How in the name of Heaven
can he escape |
| That defiling and disfigured shape |
| The mirror of malicious eyes |
| Casts upon his eyes until
at last |
| He thinks that shape must be his shape? |
| And what’s the good of an escape |
| If honour find him in
the wintry blast? |
|
|
|
|
| I am content to live it all again |
| And yet again, if it be life to pitch |
| Into the frog-spawn of
a blind man’s ditch, |
| A blind man battering blind men; |
| Or into that most fecund ditch of all, |
| The folly that
man does |
| Or must suffer, if he woos |
| A proud woman not kindred of his soul. |
|
|
|
|
| I am content to follow to
its source, |
| Every event in action or in thought; |
| Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot! |
| When such as I
cast out remorse |
| So great a sweetness flows into the breast |
| We must laugh and we must sing, |
| We are
blest by everything, |
| Everything we look upon is blest. |
