FOUR COLLOQUIES
TO H. P. K.
I. THE SEARCH
“WHY dost thou hide from these
Out along the hills halloaing?
Why hast forbade
Thy face, O goddess! to thy votaries?”
“Unasking and unknowing
Is he whom I make glad,
Like Dian grandly going
To the sleeping shepherd-lad.
Men that pursue learn not
To follow is my lot.”
“Happiness, secret one,
Heartbeat of the April weather,
Where art thou found?
Tell; lest I err too, yonder in the sun.”
II. FACT AND THE MYSTIC
“Good-morrow, Symbol.”—“Call me not
The name I neither love nor merit.”
—“That grave eternal name inherit,
Thine ever, though all men forgot.”
“Mistake me not; secure and free,
From rock to rock my falchion passes:
But Symbols trail through gray morasses
The tattered shows of faëry.”
“My Symbol thou, of phantom blood,
With starlight from thy temples raying;
Along thy floated body playing
Are withering wings, and wings in bud.”
“Alas, thine eye with clay is sealed.”
—“Symbol, before the clay’s denial,
While yet I had a god’s espial,
I saw thee in a solar field!”
“Nay: I am Fact.”—“Then lose thy praise;
And lest to-day no song behoove thee,
Lest mine impeach thee, or reprove thee,
Ah, Symbol, Symbol! go thy ways.”
“Where shall I find my light?”
“Turn from another’s track:
Whether for gain or lack,
Love but thy natal right.
Cease to follow withal,
Though on thine up-led feet
Flakes of the phosphor fall.
Oracles overheard
Are never again for thee,
Nor at a magian’s knee
Under the hemlock tree,
Burns the illumining word.”
“Whence shall I take my law?”
“Neither from sires nor sons,
Nor the delivered ones,
Holy, invoked with awe.
Rather, dredge the divine
Out of thine own poor dust,
Feebly to speak and shine.
Schools shall be as they are:
Be thou truer, and stray
Alone, intent, and away,
In a savage wild to obey
A dim primordial star.”
“Recall for me, recall
The time more true and ample;
The world whereon I trample,
How tortuous and small!
Behold, I tire of all.
Once, gods in jeweled mail
Through greenwood ways invited;
There now the moon is blighted,
And mosses long and pale
On lifeless cedars trail.”
“Child, keep this good unrest:
But give to thine own story
Simplicity with glory;
To greatness dispossessed,
Dominion of thy breast.
In abstinence, in pride,
Thou, who from Folly’s boldest
Thy sacred eye withholdest,
Another morn shalt ride
At Agamemnon’s side.”