Close on the heart of
Earth his bosom beats,
When he the mandate
lodged in it obeys,
Alive to breast a future
wrapped in haze,
Strike camp, and onward,
like the wind’s cloud-fleets.
Unresting she, unresting
he, from change
To change, as rain of
cloud, as fruit of rain;
She feels her blood-tree
throbbing in her grain,
Yet skyward branched,
with loftier mark and range.
No miracle the sprout
of wheat from clod,
She knows, nor growth
of man in grisly brute;
But he, the flower at
head and soil at root,
Is miracle, guides he
the brute to God.
And that way seems he
bound; that way the road,
With his dark-lantern
mind, unled, alone,
Wearifully through forest-tracts
unsown,
He travels, urged by
some internal goad.
Dares he behold the
thing he is, what thing
He would become is in
his mind its child;
Astir, demanding birth
to light and wing;
For battle prompt, by
pleasure unbeguiled.
So moves he forth in
faith, if he has made
His mind God’s
temple, dedicate to truth.
Earth’s nourishing
delights, no more gainsaid,
He tastes, as doth the
bridegroom rich in youth.
Then knows he Love,
that beckons and controls;
The star of sky upon
his footway cast;
Then match in him who
holds his tempters fast,
The body’s love
and mind’s, whereof the soul’s.
Then Earth her man for
woman finds at last,
To speed the pair unto
her goal of goals.
Or is’t the widowed’s
dream of her new mate?
Seen has she virulent
days of heat in flood;
The sly Persuader snaky
in his blood;
With her the barren
Huntress alternate;
His rough refractory
off on kicking heels
To rear; the man dragged
rearward, shamed, amazed;
And as a torrent stream
where cattle grazed,
His tumbled world.
What, then, the faith she feels?
May not his aspect,
like her own so fair
Reflexively, the central
force belie,
And he, the once wild
ocean storming sky,
Be rebel at the core?
What hope is there?
’Tis that in each
recovery he preserves,
Between his upper and
his nether wit,
Sense of his march ahead,
more brightly lit;
He less the shaken thing
of lusts and nerves;
With such a grasp upon
his brute as tells
Of wisdom from that
vile relapsing spun.
A Sun goes down in wasted
fire, a Sun
Resplendent springs,
to faith refreshed compels.
Poem: The Cageing Of Ares
[Iliad, v. V. 385 — Dedicated to the Council at The Hague.]
How big of breast our
Mother Gaea laughed
At sight of her boy
Giants on the leap
Each over other as they
neighboured home,
Fronting the day’s
descent across green slopes,