Statelier forms, and fairer faces, To carry man to new degrees These presents be the hostages Thou art better and not worse. And the god having given all, Is freed for ever from his thrall. THE VISIT. ASKEST, 'How long thou shalt stay?' Devastator of the day! Know, each substance and relation Thorough nature's operation, Hath its unit, bound, and metre, And every new compound Is some product and repeater, Product of the early found. But the unit of the visit, The encounter of the wise, Say what other metre is it Than the meeting of the eyes? Nature poureth into nature Through the channels of that feature. Riding on the ray of Sight, More fleet than waves or whirlwinds go, Or for service or delight, Hearts to hearts their meaning show, Sum their long experience, And import intelligence. Single look has drained the breast, Single moment years confessed. The duration of a glance Is the term of convenance, And, though thy rede be church or state, Frugal multiples of that. Speeding Saturn cannot halt; Linger, thou shalt rue the fault, If Love his moment overstay, Hatred's swift repulsions play. URIEL. Ir fell in the ancient periods Or ever the wild Time coined itself Into calendar months and days. This was the lapse of Uriel, Which in Paradise befel. Once among the Pleiads walking, SAID overheard the young gods talking, And the treason too long pent To his ears was evident. The young deities discussed Laws of form and metre just, Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams, With a look that solved the sphere, And stirred the devils everywhere, Gave his sentiment divine Against the being of a line: 'Line in nature is not found, Unit and universe are round; The stern old war-gods shook their heads, The rash word boded ill to all; The balance-beam of Fate was bent; The bonds of good and ill were rent; A sad self-knowledge withering fell In heaven once eminent, the god In the sea of generation, Or by knowledge grown too bright To hit the nerve of feebler sight. Straightway a forgetting wind If in ashes the fire-seed slept. But now and then truth-speaking things And, shrilling from the solar course, And the gods shook, they knew not why. |