Part 5

For many a hillside streamlet There falls with a broken tinkle, Falling and dying, falling and dying. In little cascades and pools, Where the world is furze and heather And flashing plovers and fixed larks, And an empty sky, whitish blue, That small world rules.

There, there, where the high waste bog-lands And the drooping slopes and the spreading valleys, The orchards and the cattle-sprinkled pastures Those travelling musics fill, There is my lost Abana, And there is my nameless Pharphar That mixed with my heart when I was a boy, And time stood still.

And I say I will go there and die there: But I do not go there, and sometimes I think that the train could not carry me there, And it's possible, maybe, That it's farther than Asia or Africa, Or any voyager's harbour, Farther, farther, beyond recall.... O even in memory!

I SHALL MAKE BEAUTY

I shall make beauty out of many things: Lights, colours, motions, sky and earth and sea, The soft unbosoming of all the springs Which that inscrutable hand allows to me, Odours of flowers, sounds of smitten strings, The voice of many a wind in many a tree, Fields, rivers, moors, swift feet and floating wings, Rocks, caves, and hills that stand and clouds that flee.

Men also and women, beautiful and dear, Shall come and pass and leave a fragrant breath; And my own heart, laughter and pain and fear, The majesties of evil and of death; But never, never shall my verses trace The loveliness of your most lovely face.

ENVOI

Beloved, when my heart's awake to God And all the world becomes His testimony, In you I most do see, in your brave spirit, Erect and certain, flashing deeds of light, A pure jet from the fountain of all being, A scripture clearer than all else to read.

And when belief was dead and God a myth, And the world seemed a wandering mote of evil, Endurable only by its impermanence, And all the planets perishable urns Of perished ashes, to you alone I clung Amid the unspeakable loneliness of the universe.

THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED. EDINBURGH