III
In evening’s limpid air,
What time the dew’s soothings
Unto the earth downpour,
Invisibly and unheard—
For tender shoe-gear wear
The soothing dews, like all that’s kind-gentle—:
Bethinkst thou then, bethinkst thou, burning heart,
How once thou thirstedest
For heaven’s kindly teardrops and dew’s down-droppings,
All singed and weary thirstedest,
What time on yellow grass-pathways
Wicked, occidental sunny glances
Through sombre trees about thee sported,
Blindingly sunny glow-glances, gladly-hurting?
“Of truth the wooer? Thou?”—so taunted they—
Nay! Merely poet!
A brute insidious, plundering, grovelling,
That aye must lie,
That wittingly, wilfully, aye must lie:
For booty lusting,
Motley masked,
Self-hidden, shrouded,
Himself his booty—
He—of truth the wooer?
Nay! Mere fool! Mere poet!
Just motley speaking,
From mask of fool confusedly shouting,
Circumambling on fabricated word-bridges,
On motley rainbow-arches,
’Twixt the spurious heavenly,
And spurious earthly,
Round us roving, round us soaring,—
Mere fool! Mere poet!
He—of truth the wooer?
Not still, stiff, smooth and cold,
Become an image,
A godlike statue,
Set up in front of temples,
As a God’s own door-guard:
Nay! hostile to all such truthfulness-statues,
In every desert homelier than at temples,
With cattish wantonness,
Through every window leaping
Quickly into chances,
Every wild forest a-sniffing,
Greedily-longingly, sniffing,
That thou, in wild forests,
’Mong the motley-speckled fierce creatures,
Shouldest rove, sinful-sound and fine-coloured,
With longing lips smacking,
Blessedly mocking, blessedly hellish, blessedly bloodthirsty,
Robbing, skulking, lying—roving:—
Or unto eagles like which fixedly,
Long adown the precipice look,
Adown their precipice:⸺
Oh, how they whirl down now,
Thereunder, therein,
To ever deeper profoundness whirling!—
Then,
Sudden,
With aim aright,
With quivering flight,
On lambkins pouncing,
Headlong down, sore-hungry,
For lambkins longing,
Fierce ’gainst all lamb-spirits,
Furious-fierce ’gainst all that look
Sheeplike, or lambeyed, or crisp-woolly,
—Grey, with lambsheep kindliness!
Even thus,
Eaglelike, pantherlike,
Are the poet’s desires,
Are thine own desires ’neath a thousand guises,
Thou fool! Thou poet!
Thou who all mankind viewedst—
So God, as sheep—:
The God to rend within mankind,
As the sheep in mankind,
And in rending laughing—
That, that is thine own blessedness!
Of a panther and eagle—blessedness!
Of a poet and fool—the blessedness!⸺
In evening’s limpid air,
What time the moon’s sickle,
Green, ’twixt the purple-glowings,
And jealous, steal’th forth:
—Of day the foe,
With every step in secret,
The rosy garland-hammocks
Downsickling, till they’ve sunken
Down nightwards, faded, downsunken:—
Thus had I sunken one day
From mine own truth-insanity,
From mine own fervid day-longings,
Of day aweary, sick of sunshine,
—Sunk downwards, evenwards, shadowwards:
By one sole trueness
All scorched and thirsty:
—Bethinkst thou still, bethinkst thou, burning heart,
How then thou thirstedest?—
That I should banned be
From all the trueness!
Mere fool! Mere poet!