"Were I he," you are thinking,
You with the dreamer's forehead and pure eyes,
"What should I lose?--All,
All that is worthy the striving for, all my prize,
"All the truth of me, all
Life that is wonder, pity, and fear, requiring
Utter joy, utter pain,
From the heart that the infinite hurts with deep desiring
"Why is it I am not he?
Chance? The grace of God? The mystery's plan?
He, too, is human stuff,
A kneading of the old, brotherly slime of man.
"Am I a lover of men,
And turn abhorring as from fat slug or snake?
Lives obstinate in me too
Something the power of angels could not unmake?"
O self-questioner! None
Unlocks your answer. Steadily look, nor flinch.
This belongs to your kind,
And knows its aim and fails not itself at a pinch.
It is here in the world and works,
Not done with yet.--Up, then, let the test be tried!
Dare your uttermost, be
Completely, and of your own, like him, be justified.
NUMBERS
Trefoil and Quatrefoil!
What shaped those destinied small silent leaves
Or numbered them under the soil?
I lift my dazzled sight
From grass to sky,
From humming and hot perfume
To scorching, quivering light,
Empty blue!--Why,
As I bury my face afresh
In a sunshot vivid gloom--
Minute infinity's mesh,
Where spearing side by side
Smooth stalk and furred uplift
Their luminous green secrets from the grass,
Tower to a bud and delicately divide--
Do I think of the things unthought
Before man was?
Bodiless Numbers!
When there was none to explore
Your winding labyrinths occult,
None to delve your ore
Of strange virtue, or do
Your magical business, you
Were there, never old nor new,
Veined in the world and alive:--
Before the Planets, Seven;
Before these fingers, Five!
You that are globed and single,
Crystal virgins, and you that part,
Melt, and again mingle!
We have hoisted sail in the night
On the oceans that you chart:
Dark winds carry us onward, on;
But you are there before us, silent Answers,
Beyond the bounds of the sun.
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