"For He grasps the pale Created by some thousand vital handles,

Till a Godshine, bluely winnowed through the sieve of thunderstorms,

Shimmers up the non-existent round the churning feet of angels;

And the atoms of that glory may be seraphs, being worms.

"Friends, your nature underlies us and your pulses overplay us;

Ye, with social sores unbandaged, can ye sing right and steer wrong?

For the transient cosmic, rooted in imperishable chaos,

Must be kneaded into drastics as material for a song.

[Pg 399]

"Eyes once purged from homebred vapours through humanitarian passion

See that monochrome a despot through a democratic prism;

Hands that rip the soul up, reeking from divine evisceration,

Not with priestlike oil anoint him, but a stronger-smelling chrism.

"Pass, O poet, retransfigured! God, the psychometric rhapsode,

Fills with fiery rhythms the silence, stings the dark with stars that blink;

All eternities hang round him like an old man's clothes collapsèd,

While he makes his mundane music—and he will not stop, I think."

and he will not stop, I think."

[Pg 400]

THE PERSON OF THE HOUSE

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