future both are met In the present's history; For the thread I hold is unbroken yet, And the thing I weave is unguessed at yet, In this human tapestry." 

 

 

 WISDOM AND YOUTH 

 In the depths of the forest Merlin dreamed; The shuttle of noon wove light and shade Over the moss and around the trees, And a network among the branches made. 

 He sat with his back against a tree, Grey as himself, and gnarled, and old; The lichen was grey as the ragged beard Over his friezen mantle's fold. 

 Still he sat, like an ancient stone That time has forgotten to wear away— While streamed the forest's green and gold, Like banners on a windy day. 

 And Merlin watched, as watches a tree, A sombre oak of antiquity, The myriad life that seethes and hums, Around its immobility. 

 Around himself, himself had made A monstrous and a mystic spell, Weblike, wherein he sat and dreamed; —So in its mesh may spider dwell! 

 His silence heard the things that grow In underwood of tangled green; His vision penetrated deep, Beneath the common surface screen; 

 The roots of things were plain to him, He saw the crowded under-earth, Where every life fought ceaselessly, To bring a future life to birth; 

 For him the stirring of the leaves Beneath a listless passing breeze, Spoke with a manifolded tongue From all the thickly growing trees; 

 For him the beetles and the mice Made magic of desires and fears, The bumble bee's slow rhythmic hum Seemed like the passing of the years. 

 And where a curving bramble-branch Lay half in shade and half in light, The universe's giant curves Were all discovered to his sight; 

 All things were all things' complement, For what the oak left unexpressed In line and hue, the silver birch Continued, in completion's quest. 

 There was no moss, nor stone, nor leaf, Nor lingering small drop of dew, But he resolved to harmony, And in the mystic mind-web drew. 

 So sat he, abstract as a 

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