Here at my earthly station set,
The revolutions of the year
Bear me bound and only let
This astronomic world appear.
Yet if I could reverse my course
Through ever-deepening yesterday,
Retrace the path that led me here,
Could I find a different way?
I would see eld’s frosted hair
Burn black again and passion rage
On to its source and die away
At last in childhood’s tranquil age.
Charlemagne’s death-palsied hand
Would move once more and never rest,
Until by deadlier weakness bound
It lay against his mother’s breast.
Saint Augustine gives back his soul
To stumble in the endless maze,
After Jesus Venus stands
In the full centre of his gaze,
While still from death to life to naught
Gods, dynasties, and nations flit;
Though for a while among the sand
Unchanged the changing Pharaohs sit.
Fast the horizons empty. Now
Nothing’s to see but wastes and rocks,
And on the thinning Asian plains
A few wild shepherds with their flocks …
So, back or forward, still we strike
Through Time and touch its dreaded goal.
Eternity’s the fatal flaw
Through which run out world, life and soul.
And there in transmutation’s blank
No mortal mind has ever read,
Or told what soul and shape are, there,
Blue wave, red rose, and Caesar’s head.
For there Immortal Being in
Solidity more pure than stone
Sleeps through the circle, pillar, arch,
Spiral, cone, and pentagon.
To the mind’s eternity I turn,
With leaf, fruit, blossom on the spray,
See the dead world grow green within
Imagination’s one long day.
There while outstretched upon the Tree
Christ looks across Jerusalem’s towers,
Adam and Eve unfallen yet
Sleep side by side within their bowers.
There while fast in the Roman snare
The Carthaginian thinks of home,
A boy carefree in Carthage streets,
Hannibal fights a little Rome,
David and Homer tune their harps,
Gaza is up, sprung from its wreck,
Samson goes free, Delilah’s shears
Join his strong ringlets to his neck.
A dream! the astronomic years
Patrolled by stars and planets bring
Time led in chains from post to post
Of the all-conquering Zodiac ring.