A Dialogue Of Self And Soul i{My Soul} I summon to the winding ancient stair; Set all your mind upon the steep ascent, Upon the broken, crumbling battlement, Upon the breathless starlit air, Upon the star that marks the hidden pole; Fix every wandering thought upon That quarter where all thought is done: Who can distinguish darkness from the soul i{My Self}. The consecretes blade upon my knees Is Satos ancient blade, still as it was, Still razor-keen, still like a looking-glass Unspotted by the centuries; That flowering, silken, old embroidery, torn From some court-ladys dress and round The wodden scabbard bound and wound Can, tattered, still protect, faded adorn i{My Soul.} Why should the imagination of a man Long past his prime remember things that are Emblematical of love and war? Think of ancestral night that can, If but imagination scorn the earth And interllect is wandering To this and that and tother thing, Deliver from the crime of death and birth. i{My self.} Montashigi, third of his family, fashioned it Five hundred years ago, about it lie Flowers from I know not what embroidery -- Hearts purple -- and all these I set For emblems of the day against the tower Emblematical of the night, And claim as by a soldiers right A charter to commit the crime once more. i{My Soul.} Such fullness in that quarter overflows And falls into the basin of the mind That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind, For intellect no longer knows i{Is} from the i{Ought,} or i{knower} from the i{Known -- } That is to say, ascends to Heaven; Only the dead can be forgiven; But when I think of that my tongues a stone. i{My Self.} A living man is blind and drinks his drop. What matter if the ditches are impure? What matter if I live it all once more? Endure that toil of growing up; The ignominy of boyhood; the distress Of boyhood changing into man; The unfinished man and his pain Brought face to face with his own clumsiness; The finished man among his enemies? -- How in the name of Heaven can he escape That defiling and disfigured shape The mirror of malicious eyes Casts upon his eyes until at last He thinks that shape must be his shape? And whats the good of an escape If honour find him in the wintry blast? I am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind mans ditch, A blind man battering blind men; Or into that most fecund ditch of all, The folly that man does Or must suffer, if he woos A proud woman not kindred of his soul. I am content to follow to its source Every event in action or in thought; Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot! When such as I cast out remorse So great a sweetness flows into the breast We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blest.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 21:05:55 +0000
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