may own, Or if this flowered plant bears also a fruit Unto the true reality unknown. But as the rainbow, neither earth’s nor sky’s, Stands in the dripping freshness of lulled rain, A hope, not real yet not fancy’s, lies Athwart the moment of our ceasing pain. Somehow, since pain is felt yet felt as ill, Hope hath a better warrant than being hoped; Since pain is felt as aught we should not feel Man hath a Nature’s reason for having groped, Since Time was Time and age and grief his measures, Towards a better shelter than Time’s pleasures. 

 

XXXI.

 I am older than Nature and her Time By all the timeless age of Consciousness, And my adult oblivion of the clime Where I was born makes me not countryless. Ay, and dim through my daylight thoughts escape Yearnings for that land where my childhood dreamed, Which I cannot recall in colour or shape But haunts my hours like something that hath gleamed And yet is not as light remembered, Nor to the left or to the right conceived; And all round me tastes as if life were dead And the world made but to be disbelieved. Thus I my hope on unknown truth lay; yet How but by hope do I the unknown truth get? 

 

XXXII.

 When I have sense of what to sense appears, Sense is sense ere ’tis mine or mine in me is. When I hear, Hearing, ere I do hear, hears. When I see, before me abstract Seeing sees. I am part Soul part I in all I touch— Soul by that part I hold in common with all, And I the spoiled part, that doth make sense such As I can err by it and my sense mine call. The rest is wondering what these thoughts may mean, That come to explain and suddenly are gone, Like messengers that mock the message’ mien, Explaining all but the explanation; As if we a ciphered letter’s cipher hit And find it in an unknown language writ. 

 

XXXIII.

 He that goes back does, since he goes, advance, Though he doth not advance who goeth back, And he that seeks, though he on nothing chance, May still by words be said to find a lack. This paradox of having, that is nought In the world’s meaning of the things it screens, Is yet true of the substance of pure thought And there means something by the nought it means. For thinking nought does on nought being confer, As giving not is acting not to give, And, to the same unbribed true thought, to err Is to find truth, though by its negative. So why call this world false, if false to be Be to be 

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