seas. You have passed from out of sight And my questions blow Back from the straight horizon that ends all one sees. Now like a vessel in port You unlade your riches unto death, And glad are the eager dead to receive you there. Let the dead sort Your cargo out, breath from breath Let them disencumber your bounty, let them all share. I imagine dead hands are brighter, Their fingers in sunset shine With jewels of passion once broken through you as a prism Breaks light into jewels; and dead breasts whiter For your wrath; and yes, I opine They anoint their brows with your blood, as a perfect chrism. On your body, the beaten anvil, Was hammered out That moon-like sword the ascendant dead unsheathe Against us; sword that no man will Put to rout; Sword that severs the question from us who breathe. Surely you've trodden straight To the very door. You have surely achieved your fate; And the perfect dead are elate To have won once more. Now to the dead you are giving Your last allegiance. But what of us who are living And fearful yet of believing In your pitiless legions.
SHADES
SHALL I tell you, then, how it is?— There came a cloven gleam Like a tongue of darkened flame To flicker in me. And so I seem To have you still the same In one world with me. In the flicker of a flower, In a worm that is blind, yet strives, In a mouse that pauses to listen Glimmers our Shadow; yet it deprives Them none of their glisten. In every shaken morsel I see our shadow tremble As if it rippled from out of us hand in hand. As if it were part and parcel, One shadow, and we need not dissemble Our darkness: do you understand? For I have told you plainly how it is.
BREAD UPON THE WATERS.
SO you are lost to me! Ah you, you ear of corn straight lying, What food is this for the darkly flying Fowls of the Afterwards! White bread afloat on the waters, Cast out by the hand that scatters Food untowards, Will you come back when the tide turns? After many days? My heart yearns To know. Will you return after
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