LAKE AND SUN
I watched the setting sun Paint Time upon the lake, Stone silver bronze and gold, As an alchemist in dread Whose life is centred on This hour might see it break, The elixir turn to cold Solidity of lead.
0 complex of the mind: The apple upon the tongue Turns sour and biblical At the first unthinking bite, And even the naked wind Comes loving to the lung Like a bleary Bacchanal Bored at the thought of night.
But in this fading light. I watch the sailing swans And the sheer marvel of This single instant grows, And ice-blue-mountain-white Swim in the gold and bronze Fabulous birds of love Bright as the lunar snows.
For now a new element Is ours, and man among The stars shall bodily Suffice his soul and feel A momentary content— As the first ape that swung Down from the rocking tree Felt earth under his heel.
Atom Elixir both Are here by the fading lake Under the fiery sky Implicit In your grace, And what is my love worth If setting all to stake I am not first to fly Into the lapse of space? PATRIC DICKINSON.
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