Part 11
The greatest of all platitudes is the platitude that life is in the striving. Is this altogether true? I think not. Not for those menial offices so necessary to our decent existence, so little decent in their victims or themselves. But one does remember certain striving that brought with it almost instant happiness, like the reward of the child out coasting or the boy who has made good in a hard, grinding game. It is pleasant to think of one's first delicious surrender to fatigue after a long day's haul on a hot road. That surrender, in all one's joints, with all one's driven will, is the ecstasy that even the Puritan allowed himself. It is the nectar of the pioneer. In our civilization we take it away from the workers, as we take the honey from the bees--but I wish to think of things pleasant, not of our civilization. Fatigue of this golden kind is unlike the leaden fatigue of compulsion or of routine. It is the tang that means a man is young. If one gets it from games, even golf, I think it is pleasant. It is the great charm that Englishmen possess and understand.
These are ordinary pleasant things, not the pleasant things of the poet. They barely leave the hall of pleasant things. A true poet, I imagine, is one who captures in the swift net of his imagination the wild pleasantnesses and delights that to me would be flying presences quickly lost to view. But every man must bag what he can in his own net, whether he be rational or poetic. For myself, I have to use my imagination to keep from being snared by too many publicists and professors and persons of political intent. These are invaluable servants of humanity, admirable masters of our mundane institutions. But they fill the mind with _-ations_. They pave the meadows with concrete; they lose the free swing of pleasant things.
THE AVIATOR
_So endlessly the gray-lipped sea_ _Kept me within his eye,_ _And lean he licked his hollow flanks_ _And followed up the sky._
I was the lark whose song was heard When I was lost to sight, I was the golden arrow loosed To pierce the heart of night.
I fled the little earth, I climbed Above the rising sun, I met the morning in a blaze Before my hour was gone.
I ran beyond the rim of space, Its reins I flung aside, Laughter was mine and mine was youth And all my own was pride.
_So endlessly the gray-lipped sea_ _Kept me within his eye,_ _And lean he licked his hollow flanks_ _And followed up the sky._
From end to end I knew the way, I had no doubt or fear; The minutes were a forfeit paid To fetch the landfall near.
But all at once my heart I held, My carol frozen died, A white cloud laid her cheek to mine And wove me to her side.
Her icy fingers clasped my flesh, Her hair drooped in my face, And up we fell and down we rose And twisted into space.
_So endlessly the gray-lipped sea_ _Kept me within his eye,_ _And lean he licked his hollow flanks_ _And followed up the sky._
Laughter was mine and mine was youth, I pressed the edge of life, I kissed the sun and raced the wind, I found immortal strife.
Out of myself I spent myself, I lost the mortal share, My grave is in the ashen plain, My spirit in the air.
Good-by, sweet pride of man that flew, Sweet pain of man that bled, I was the lark that spilled his heart, The golden arrow sped.
_So endlessly the gray-lipped sea_ _Kept me within his eye,_ _And lean he licked his hollow flanks_ _And followed up the sky._
THE END