Yet she was near me, that eternal deep. O it is passing strange that love Can blow two ways across one soul. * * * * * And I was Aengus for a thousand years, And she, the ever-living, moved with me And strove amid the waves, and would not go.
"I have put my days and dreams out of mind' For all their hurry and their weary fret Availed me little. But another kind Of leaf that's fast in some more sombre wind, Is man on life, and all our tenuous courses Wind and unwind as vainly. * * * * * I have lived long, and died, Yea I have been dead, right often, And have seen one thing: The sun, while he is high, doth light our wrong And none can break the darkness with a song.
To-day's the cup. To-morrow is not ours: Nay, by our strongest bands we bind her not, Nor all our fears and our anxieties Turn her one leaf or hold her scimitar.
The deed blots out the thought And many thoughts, the vision; And right's a compass with as many poles As there are points in her circumference, 'Tis vain to seek to steer all courses even, And all things save sheer right are vain enough. The blade were vain to grow save toward the sun, And vain th' attempt to hold her green forever.
All things in season and no thing o'er long! Love and desire and gain and good forgetting, Thou canst not stay the wheel, hold none too long!
How our modernity, Nerve-wracked and broken, turns Against time's way and all the way of things, Crying with weak and egoistic cries! * * * * * All things are given over, Only the restless will Surges amid the stars Seeking new moods of life, New permutations. * * * * * See, and the very sense of what we know Dodges and hides as in a sombre curtain Bright threads leap forth, and hide, and leave no pattern.
I thought I had put Love by for a time And I was glad, for to me his fair face Is like Pain's face. A little light, The lowered curtain and the theatre! And o'er the frail talk of the inter-act Something that broke the jest! A little light, The gold, and half the profile! The whole face Was nothing like you, yet that image cut Sheer through the moment.
I have gone seeking for you in the twilight, Here in the flurry of Fifth Avenue, Here where they pass between their teas and teas. Is it such madness? though you could not be Ever in all that crowd, no gown Of all their subtle sorts could be your gown.