One plot, one crime, one treachery, nay, one name, Assumed, denounced, in echoes of replies. The doubt, exchanged, lit thousands of one flame Within those mutual eyes.
A mirror faced a mirror: in sweet pain His dangers with her pity did she track, Received her pity with his love again, And these she wafted back.
That masculine passion in her little breast She bandied with him; her compassion he Bandied with her. What tender sport! No rest Had love's infinity.
A mirror faced a mirror: O thy word, Thou lord of images, did lodge in me, Locked to my heart, homing from home, a bird, A carrier, bound for thee.
Thy migratory greatness, greater far For that return, returns; now grow divine By endlessness my visiting thoughts, that are Those visiting thoughts of thine.
"_Compel them to come in._"--ST. LUKE'S GOSPEL
You "made a virtue of necessity" By divine sanction; you, the loth, the grey, The random, gentle, unconvinced; O be The crowned!--you may, you may.
You, the compelled, be feasted! You, the caught, Be freemen of the gates that word unlocks! Accept your victory from that unsought, That heavenly paradox.
"_He shall rise up at the voice of a bird._"--ECCLESIASTES
Who then is "he"? Dante, Keats, Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley; all Rose in their greatness at the shrill decree, The little rousing inarticulate call.
For they stood up At the bird-voice, of lark, of nightingale, Drank poems from that throat as from a cup. Over the great world's notes did these prevail.
And not alone The signal poets woke. In listening man, Woman, and child a poet stirs unknown, Throughout the Mays of birds since Mays began.
He rose, he heard-- Our father, our St. Peter, in his tears-- The crowing, twice, of the prophetic bird, The saddest cock-crow of our human years.
Virgil stayed Dante with a wayside word; But long, and how, and loud and urgently The poets of my passion have I heard Summoning me.
It is their closest whisper and their call. Their greatness to this lowliness hath spoken, Their voices rest upon that interval, Their sign, their token.
Man at his little prayer tells Heaven his thought, To man entrusts his thought--"Friend, this is mine." The immortal poets within my breast have sought, Saying, "What is thine?"