LITMIR.BIZ

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howsoe'er remote,

       Discords out of discord spin

       Round and round derisive din:

       Sudden will a pallor pant

       Chill at screeches miscreant;

       Owls or spectres, thick they flee;

       Nightmare upon horror broods;

       Hooded laughter, monkish glee,

      Gaps the vital air.

       Enter these enchanted woods

      You who dare.

      IV.

       You must love the light so well

       That no darkness will seem fell.

       Love it so you could accost

       Fellowly a livid ghost.

      ​

      Whish! the phantom wisps away,

       Owns him smoke to cocks of day.

       In your breast the light must burn

       Fed of you, like corn in quern

       Ever plumping while the wheel

       Speeds the mill and drains the meal.

       Light to light sees little strange,

       Only features heavenly new;

       Then you touch the nerve of Change,

       Then of Earth you have the clue;

       Then her two-sexed meanings melt

       Through you, wed the thought and felt.

       Sameness locks no scurfy pond

       Here for Custom, crazy-fond:

       Change is on the wing to bud

       Rose in brain from rose in blood.

       Wisdom throbbing shall you see

       Central in complexity;

       From her pasture 'mid the beasts

      ​

      Rise to her ethereal feasts,

       Not, though lightnings track your wit

       Starward, scorning them you quit:

       For be sure the bravest wing

       Preens it in our common spring,

       Thence along the vault to soar,

       You with others, gathering more,

       Glad of more, till you reject

       Your proud title of elect,

       Perilous even here, while few

       Roam the arched greenwood with you.

      Heed that snare.

       Muffled by his cavern-cowl

       Squats the scaly Dragon-fowl,

       Who was lord ere light you drank,

       And lest blood of knightly rank

       Stream, let not your fair princess

       Stray: he holds the leagues in stress,

      Watches keenly there.

      ​

      Oft has he been riven; slain

       Is no force in Westermain.

       Wait, and we shall forge him curbs,

       Put his fangs to uses, tame,

       Teach him, quick as cunning herbs,

       How to cure him sick and lame.

       Much restricted, much enringed,

       Much he frets, the hooked and winged,

      Never known to spare.

       'Tis enough: the name of Sage

       Hits no thing in nature, nought;

       Man the least, save when grave Age

       From yon Dragon guards his thought.

       Eye him when you hearken dumb

       To what words from Wisdom come.

       When she says how few are by

       Listening to her, eye his eye.

       Him shall Change, transforming late,

       Wonderously renovate.

      ​

      Hug himself the creature may:

       What he hugs is loathed decay.

       Crying, slip thy scales, and slough!

       Change will strip his armour off;

       Make of him who was all maw,

       Inly only thrilling-shrewd,

       Such a servant as none saw

       Through his days of dragonhood.

       Days when growling o'er his bone,

       Sharpened he for mine and thine;

       Sensitive within alone;

       Scaly as in clefts of pine.

       Change, the strongest son of Life,

       Has the Spirit here to wife.

       Lo, their young of vivid breed,

       Bear the lights that onward speed,

       Threading thickets, mounting glades,

       Up the verdurous colonnades,

       Round the fluttered curves, and down,

      ​

      Out of sight of Earth's blue crown,

       Whither, in her central space,

       Spouts the Fount and Lure o' the chase.

       Fount unresting, Lure divine!

       There meet all: too late look most.

       Fire in water hued as wine,

       Springs amid a shadowy host;

       Circled: one close-headed mob,

       Breathless, scanning divers heaps

       Where a Heart begins to throb,

       Where it ceases, slow, with leaps

       And 'tis very strange, 'tis said,

       How you spy in each of them

       Semblance of that Dragon red,

       As the oak in bracken-stem.

       And 'tis said how each and each:

       Which commences, which subsides:

       First my Dragon! doth beseech

       Her who food for all provides.

      ​

      And she answers with no sign;

       Utters neither yea nor nay;

       Fires the water hued as wine;

       Kneads another spark in clay.

       Terror is about her hid;

       Silence of the thunders locked;

       Lightnings lining the shut lid;

       Fixity on quaking rocked.

       Lo, you look at Flow and Drought

       Interflashed and interwrought:

       Ended is begun, begun

       Ended, quick as torrents run.

       Young Impulsion spouts to sink;

       Luridness and lustre link;

       'Tis your come and go of breath;

       Mirrored pants the Life, the Death;

       Each of either reaped and sown:

       Rosiest rosy wanes to crone.

      

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