While the land drowses
And through the spacious hours
The dark herd browses,
Low horns with level sweep
Like sickles, half in sleep,
The golden lilies reap
And mow the flowers.
White egrets ride
Each bossy croup and dome
Of sombre hide,
Like silver plumes that wave
Black hearses to the grave
Or on the midnight wave
The torching foam:—
Some of them bolder
Flit round my horse: and one
Lights on my shoulder
Preening his ermine there
But with as little care
As of the passing air
Or faded sun.
Signal and sign
Of snowy truce to men!
Unfurl the fine
White thistles of your frills,
Fan from my brain its ills,
And from your slender quills
Shed me a pen—
That I may write
All that from here I mark:
How, singed with light,
Black-bodied though it goes
The hornèd crescent shows,
Where one hind-quarter glows,
Branded, the Dark!
Though from a star—
So horned, so black with spite,
Might seem from far
The thunder-bearing world
Through soot and fury hurled,
On its dark hump is furled
A flame as white.
Cyphered with Light
(Its Master’s brand and name)
Though dim to sight,
Its shadow loom to seat
The solar paraclete
Faint-silvered, like a sleet
Of ghostly flame—
Just as this moon,
Far straying bull, now lost
Beyond the dune:
It bears an egret white
To torch it through the night,
Save but to Faith, its light
A wraith of frost.
Patience will keep
That phantom torch aglow
That seems asleep
To all but watchful eyes:
And live to see it rise
Sun-drawn into the skies
With swans of snow.
For they’ll survive
Who from an offal-leap
Can feed and thrive,
Thanking their God for life,
As for a friend or wife;
And count the pain or strife
As over-cheap.
To be a slave
Content: or driven, first
Of the mad wave,
In the front rank to fight—
What matter Left or Right,
So in our hearts the light
For which we thirst?
For humble herds are we
As those with which we ride,
And daily see
In our toil, that warns,
The boaster with his scorns
Thrown by the very horns
That were his pride.
Then—with the worst
Accepted, best to trust—
Only can burst
This passion so divine
As blackens all the shine
Of wealth, the lust of wine,
The wine of lust—
The seeded spark
That in the few can spring,
To whom the dark
Is room and scope; the Night,
When most a foe to sight,
The fiercest appetite
For what we bring.
From sky to sky that bleeds
Derided warnings,
As hornèd Tagus leads
His myriad waves to graze
With moonèd brows ablaze,
To trample down the days
And toss the mornings!—
Our chosen herds,
All torch-lit with the snow
Of ghostly birds,
Mooned by the droving Light
And surging on with might,
Are rivers to the Night
Through which we go!