POETRY.
THE COSMOPOLITAN.
(To EDITH Srrwer.L.) LEARN, all Time's vagrants, where to look ; And more, learn what to see— Hard ground in a pale, drudging brook, Light in the substance of a tree.
Earth was ashen, mind a mist, And mist the only day; In every song a satirist, Man but a motionable clay.
Ahnost I had put out these eyes,
The sun's own fury failed. Slayer of childhood, father of lies, Reason babbled and prevailed.
From this dark pride and stubborn dearth Slowly my self was freed.: For Clare uncovered infinite worth In a cold worm, a common weed.
The minute wealth of nature there With a new symbol smiles. You, Edith, my interpreter, Reveal the lost, tmfabled isles.
Now the dew falls in beads of gold, In clear, blue stone the rain. Wind and colour, heat and cold, Are flesh, no phantom of the brain.
I travel through my native woods And laugh all day to mark The squirrel sputter in cross moods, Or hear the happy woodlark.
Hard by grow many an Indian flower, Cedes, and upas : Heraldic lions, hour by hour, Trample down the yellow grass.
Philemon still in some white glade And Baucis, knee by knee, Sit here content as youth and maid- Yet hospitable, too, to Me.
All SENSE, all FAME, all VISION MON- Inseparable, triune,
Fashion from chaos, firm. and clean, This only earth, and' sun, and. moon.
For, truth, he's curst or Antichrist Who needs a more and. less, Demands a world anatomised, And calls the body nakedness.
What though sight dazzle and words fail I Beauty he knows- who. can Hold fast by every traveller's- tale,.
The world's one cosmopolitan.
ALAN PORTSB: