The Bird-Catcher Read Online Free PDF Page B

music
    Until it grew and filled the shadowy place,
    Swung with the arches, soared to the topmost vault,
    Put on the whole great structure as a garment,
    Sang with those ancient voices as with his own,
    And on the summit of the last pure chord
    Found unity and peace. He raised his hands:
    The music stopped, and his full-statured spirit
    Shrivelled. The horror of sheer height hung above him,
    The cavern of sheer depth was scooped below,
    And silence fell like doom. Out in the dark,
    Blind windows hung, dumb columns rose, vast trunks
    Upheaved the heavy foliage of the night,
    And darkness, emptiness, like birds of prey
    Swooped back and perched about him, grimly still,
    While he, as in the bright cup of a flower,
    Rigid, with sharpened senses, hung besieged.

Poetry and Memory
    Dark is the mind’s deep dwelling,
    Â Â Â Â Roofed and walled and floored
    With ancient rock. There water, slowly welling
    Â Â Â Â Or slowly dripped, is stored
    Â Â Â Â In a dim, deep, dreaming pool
    Unvexed by rain or sunlight or the cool
    Wings of the wind, untroubled by joy or grieving
    Or the bitterness and the ecstasy of living.
    Till the white young bathers come, warily treading,
    Lovely, desired, with rosy flesh
    Like the apple-bloom on grey boughs spreading
    Â Â Â Â In April, and their feet refresh
    Like April the grey desert place.
    Â Â Â Â For when with a sudden freakish grace
    They break the pool’s long sleep in an airy flight
    Of diving, the dim pool takes light,
    Blooms to soft fire in a thousand tongues unfurling
    That shed a shimmering beauty on roof and walls
    Â Â Â Â And rouse in those stern halls
    Laughing music of water, till the death
    Â Â Â Â Of that dark underworld
    Thrills harp-like with new ecstasy and the breath
    Â Â Â Â Of a thousand buds uncurling.

The Secret
    Under high boughs I lay in sunny grass.
    Â Â Â Â My mind a mirror was
    Reflecting leaves and sunshine; but no Past
    Â Â Â Â Nor fancied Future cast
    Their shadows there. For I was grass and trees,
    Â Â Â Â No less, no more than these;
    Lay in the sunlight, felt the warmth, and grew;
    Â Â Â Â And sunlight, air, and dew
    And earth were all my knowledge. But a breeze,
    Â Â Â Â Winnowing the laden trees,
    Drowned me in perfume of the Lime in flower,
    Â Â Â Â And by that perfume’s power
    My sense woke on a pale transtellar coast,
    Â Â Â Â Half recognized, half lost,
    As an old dream. I lingered there expecting,
    Â Â Â Â My mind a pool reflecting
    Unfathomed shapes by dim weeds blurred and webbed,
    Â Â Â Â While waves of memory ebbed
    And climbed again up, up the gleaming shoal,
    Â Â Â Â But never reached the pool.
    Then expectation shaped. I was aware
    Â Â Â Â Of one with sea-smoothed hair
    Leaning above me, in whose eyes I caught
    The urgence of the message that she brought.
    Â Â Â Â But, even as her lips stirred,
    There fell the clear call of a hidden bird
    Â Â Â Â Out of the Lime’s green leaves,
    Waking me to warm grass and the sunny leaves
    Â Â Â Â Of roofing boughs: unheard
    The utterance of that still-escaping word
    Whose solving fire, revealing light, shall set
    All realms of being aflame. So am I yet,
    Bewildered and uneasy traveller, blown
    Between two kingdoms, neither wholly known.

All is One
    I hear the flowing of great rivers
    And the long slow breathing of the wind,
    And solemnly, incessantly,
    Like gleaming fish
    In weeds beneath dim water,
    Stars on their universal way
    Glide among woven boughs.
    All is one,
    Surely, indivisibly.
    A falling pebble
    Ruffles the pool’s clear face,
    And in those wavering circles waken
    Powers that shall change the motion of Orion
    And vex the dreaming of a million stars.
    Deeds are immortal. Once the rose is gathered,
    Nothing can ever be the same again.

The Cage
    Man, afraid to be alive,
    Shut his soul in senses five,
    From fields