Soaked in the colours, a flake of the flying spray Flung over wreckage and yeast of the murderous town, Onward he flaunts it, innocent, vicious and gay, Prophet of prayers that are stifled and loves that drown, Urchin and sprat of the City that roars like a sea Surging around him in hunger and splendour and shame, Cruelty, luxury, madness, he leaps in his glee Out of the mazes of mist and the vistas of flame.
Ragged and tattered he scurries away in the gloom: Over the thundering traffic a moment his cry Mystery! Mystery!--reckless of death and doom Rings; and the great wheels roll and the world goes by. Lost, is it lost, that hollow-eyed flash of the light?-- Poor little face flying by with the word that saves, Pale little mouth of the mask of the measureless night, Shrilling the heart of it, lost like the foam on its waves!
This outer world is but the pictured scroll Of worlds within the soul, A coloured chart, a blazoned missal-book Whereon who rightly look May spell the splendours with their mortal eyes And steer to Paradise.
O, well for him that knows and early knows In his own soul the rose Secretly burgeons, of this earthly flower The heavenly paramour: And all these fairy dreams of green-wood fern, These waves that break and yearn, Shadows and hieroglyphs, hills, clouds and seas, Faces and flowers and trees, Terrestrial picture-parables, relate Each to its heavenly mate.
O, well for him that finds in sky and sea This two-fold mystery, And loses not (as painfully he spells The fine-spun syllables) The cadences, the burning inner gleam, The poet's heavenly dream.
Well for the poet if this earthly chart Be printed in his heart, When to his world of spirit woods and seas With eager face he flees And treads the untrodden fields of unknown flowers And threads the angelic bowers, And hears that unheard nightingale whose moan Trembles within his own, And lovers murmuring in the leafy lanes Of his own joys and pains.
For though he voyages further than the flight Of earthly day and night, Traversing to the sky's remotest ends A world that he transcends, Safe, he shall hear the hidden breakers roar Against the mystic shore; Shall roam the yellow sands where sirens bare Their breasts and wind their hair; Shall with their perfumed tresses blind his eyes, And still possess the skies.