his heart apart.

And his feet passed over the sunset land
From the place forlorn where a forlorn band
Watching him flying we still did stand.
    Fleet are his feet and his heart apart.

    Vanishing now who would not stay
    To the blue hills on the verge of day.
    O soft! soft! Music play,
                Fading away,
                    (Fleet are his feet
                    And his heart apart)
                Fading away.

ECHOES

There is a far unfading city
    Where bright immortal people are;
Remote from hollow shame and pity,
    Their portals frame no guiding star
But blightless pleasure's moteless rays
    That follow their footsteps as they dance
Long lutanied measures through a maze
    Of flower-like song and dalliance.

There always glows the vernal sun,
    There happy birds for ever sing,
There faint perfumed breezes run
    Through branches of eternal spring;
There faces browned and fruit and milk
    And blue-winged words and rose-bloomed kisses
In galleys gowned with gold and silk
    Shake on a lake of dainty blisses.

Coyness is not, nor bear they thought,
    Save of a shining gracious flow;
All natural joys are temperate sought.
    For calm desire there they know,
A fire promiscuous, languorous, kind;
    They scorn all fiercer lusts and quarrels,
Nor blow about on anger's wind,
    Nor burn with love, nor rust with morals.

Folk in the far unfading city,
    Burning with lusts my senses are,
I am torn with love and shame and pity,
    Be to my heart a guiding star:
Wise youths and maidens in the sun,
    With eyes that charm and lips that sing,
And gentle arms that rippling run,
    Shed on my heart your endless spring!

THE MIND OF MAN

I

Beneath my skull-bone and my hair,
    Covered like a poisonous well,
There is a land: if you looked there
    What you saw you'd quail to tell.
You that sit there smiling, you
Know that what I say is true.

My head is very small to touch,
    I feel it all from front to back,
An earèd round that weighs not much,
    Eyes, nose-holes, and a pulpy crack:
Oh, how small, how small it is!
How could countries be in this?

Yet, when I watch with eyelids shut,
    It glimmers forth, now dark, now clear,
The city of Cis-Occiput,
    The marshes and the writhing mere,
The land that every man I see
Knows in himself but not in me.

II

Upon the borders of the weald
    (I walk there first when I step in)
Set in green wood and smiling field,
    The city stands, unstained of sin;
White thoughts and wishes pure
Walk the streets with steps demure.

In its clean groves and spacious halls
    The quiet-eyed inhabitants
Hold innocent sunny festivals
    And mingle in decorous dance;
Things that destroy, distort, deface,
Come never to that lovely place.

Never could evil enter thither,
    It could not live in that sweet air,
The shadow of an ill deed must wither
    And fall away to nothing there.
You would say as there you stand
That all was beauty in the land.

*****

But go you out beyond the gateway,
    Cleave you the woods and pass the plain,
Cross you the frontier down, and straightway
    The trees will end, the grass will wane,
And you will come to a wilderness
Of sticks and parchèd barrenness.

The middle of the land is this,
    A tawny desert midmost set,
Barren of living things it is,
    Saving at night some vampires flit
That nest them in the farther marish
Where all save vilest things must perish.

Here in this reedy marsh of green
    And oily pools, swarm insects fat
And birds of prey and beasts obscene,
    Things that the traveller shudders at,
All cunning things that creep and fly
To suck men's blood until they die.

Rarely from hence does aught escape
    Into the world of outer light,
But now and then some sable shape
    Outward will dash in sudden flight;
And men stand stonied or distraught
To know the loathly deed or thought.

But, ah! beyond the marsh you reach
    A purulent place more vile than all,
A festering lake too foul for speech,
    Rotten and black, with coils acrawl,
Where writhe with lecherous squeakings shrill
Horrors that make the heart stand still.

There, 'neath a heaven diseased, it lies,
    The mere alive with slimy worms,
With perverse terrible infamies,
    And murders and repulsive forms
That have no name, but slide here deep,
Whilst I, their holder, silence keep.

A REASONABLE PROTESTATION

[To F., who complained of his vagueness and lack of
dogmatic statement]

Not, I suppose, since I deny
Appearance is reality,
And doubt the substance of the earth
Does your remonstrance come to birth;
Not that at once I both affirm
'Tis not the skin that makes the worm
And every tactile thing with mass
Must find its symbol in the grass
And with a cool conviction say
Even a critic's more than clay
And every dog outlives his day.
This kind of vagueness suits your view,
You would not carp at it; for you
Did never stand with those who take
Their pleasures in a world opaque.
For you a tree would never be
Lovely were it but a tree,
And earthly splendours never splendid
If by transience unattended.
Your eyes are on a farther shore
Than any of earth; nor do adore
As godhead God's dead hieroglyph.
Nor would you be perturbed if
Some prophet with a voice of thunder
And avalanche arm should blast and founder
The logical pillars that maintain
This visible world which loads the brain,
Loads the brain and withers the heart
And holds man from his God apart.

But still with you remains the craving
For some more solid substance, having
Surface to touch, colour to see,
And form compact in symmetry.
You are not satisfied with these
Vague throbbings, nameless ecstasies,
Nor can your spirit find delight
In an amorphic great white light.
Not with such sickles can you reap;
If a dense earth you cannot keep
You want a dense heaven as substitute
With trees of plump celestial fruit,
Red apples, golden pomegranates,
And a river flowing by tall gates
Of topaz and of chrysolite
And walls of twenty cubits height.

Frank, you cry out against the age!
Nor you nor I can disengage
Ourselves from that in which we live
Nor seize on things God does not give.
Thirsty as you, perhaps, I long
For courtyards of eternal song,
Even as yours my feet would stray
In a city where 'tis always day
And a green