The days pass by, empty of thought and will: His thought grows stagnant at its very springs, With every channel on the world of things Dammed up, and thus, by its long standing still, Poisons itself and sickens to decay. All his high love for her, his fair desire, Loses its light; and a dull rancorous fire, Burning darkness and bitterness that prey Upon his heart are left. His spirit burns Sometimes with hatred, or the hatred turns To a fierce lust for her, more cruel than hate, Till he is weary wrestling with its force: And evermore she haunts him, early and late, As pitilessly as an old remorse.
Streets and the solitude of country places Were once his friends. But as a man born blind, Opening his eyes from lovely dreams, might find The world a desert and men's larval faces So hateful, he would wish to seek again The darkness and his old chimeric sight Of beauties inward--so, that fresh delight, Vision of bright fields and angelic men, That love which made him all the world, is gone. Hating and hated now, he stands alone, An island-point, measureless gulfs apart From other lives, from the old happiness Of being more than self, when heart to heart Gave all, yet grew the greater, not the less.
Swiftly deliberate, he seeks the place. A small wind stirs, the copse is bright in the sun: Like quicksilver the shine and shadow run Across the leaves. A bramble whips his face, The tears spring fast, and through the rainbow mist He sees a world that wavers like the flame Of a blown candle. Tears of pain and shame, And lips that once had laughed and sung and kissed Trembling in the passion of his sobbing breath! The world a candle shuddering to its death, And life a darkness, blind and utterly void Of any love or goodness: all deceit, This friendship and this God: all shams destroyed, And truth seen now. Earth fails beneath his feet.
Shepherd, to yon tall poplars tune your flute: Let them pierce, keenly, subtly shrill, The slow blue rumour of the hill; Let the grass cry with an anguish of evening gold, And the great sky be mute.
Then hearken how the poplar trees unfold Their buds, yet close and gummed and blind, In airy leafage of the mind, Rustling in silvery whispers the twin-hued scales That fade not nor grow old.