I
There is no airy bridge, no corridor,
That leads me from the prison where I dwell,
In one dim narrow cell.
Into the world that I have hungered for,
Ceaselessly from my birth:
There is no way between the soul and Earth.
We live by sight: what is it that I see?
I turn, a narrow circle turns with me.
What is it that I hear? I cannot heat:
The voice of the immeasurable sea
Speaking these few poor furlongs from my ear.
I move, and all my little world moves too,
Trailing about me like a cloak: alack,
I do but beat my prison on, my back.
As snails that travel do.
II
I will cry out, and bid Earth answer me;
Vainly I cry, and vainly seek to know
The secret way she goes, or what may be
The secret way I go.
Sometimes I seem to hear a voice that sighs
Out of the silence, saying: Trouble me not
With idle questionings;
Am I not silent in all mortal things?
Has any voice once spoken from the skies?
Think thou, as I, thy solitary thought;
Trouble me not.
III
Yet there is beauty, real as a pain
In this inconstant show of green and blue,
That, like the unfelt air, I travel through,
Yet closes round me like the air again.
This carpet the smooth grass,
These azure hangings laced with silken white,
This leafy rustle, this bright watery stir,
All colours of the day and night,
That come, and are forgotten, and so pass,
Are they not each a delicate minister
And patient handmaid of delight?
Shadows they are, and shadows that I make
They may be: what am I?
I hear an echo and a voice reply
A dreamer dreaming that he is awake.
Earth out of which I came,
Red earth to which I go,
When I resign this name,
Whereby myself I know,
Mother and stranger and foe,
Shall there be any making friends at last
When this illimitable thirst and lust
Goes down into the dust?
Not living, then not dead,
Shall I be comforted
By the Earth I never knew in all the past.
There is no way,
Not though I feed the lilies, or refresh
The life of roses with my flesh,
Nay,
There is not any way, through death or birth,
Between the soul of man and Earth.
