Читать книгу Collected Poems: Volume Two - Alfred Noyes - Страница 34

I

How grandly glow the bays

Purpureally enwound

With those rich thorns, the brows

How infinitely crowned

That now thro' Death's dark house

Have passed with royal gaze:

Purpureally enwound

How grandly glow the bays.

II

Sweet, sweet and three-fold sweet,

Pulsing with three-fold pain,

Where the lark fails of flight

Soared the celestial strain;

Beyond the sapphire height

Flew the gold-wingèd feet,

Beautiful, pierced with pain,

Sweet, sweet and three-fold sweet;

III

And where Is not and Is Are wed in one sweet Name, And the world's rootless vine With dew of stars a-flame Laughs, from those deep divine Impossibilities, Our reason all to shame— This cannot be, but is;

IV

Into the Vast, the Deep

Beyond all mortal sight,

The Nothingness that conceived

The worlds of day and night, The Nothingness that heaved

Pure sides in virgin sleep,

Brought out of Darkness, light;

And man from out the Deep.

V

Into that Mystery

Let not thine hand be thrust:

Nothingness is a world

Thy science well may trust …

But lo, a leaf unfurled,

Nay, a cry mocking thee

From the first grain of dust—

I am, yet cannot be!

VI

Adventuring un-afraid

Into that last deep shrine,

Must not the child-heart see

Its deepest symbol shine,

The world's Birth-mystery,

Whereto the suns are shade?

Lo, the white breast divine—

The holy Mother-maid!

VII

How miss that Sacrifice,

That cross of Yea and Nay,

That paradox of heaven

Whose palms point either way,

Through each a nail being driven

That the arms out-span the skies

And our earth-dust this day

Out-sweeten Paradise.

VIII

We part the seamless robe,

Our wisdom would divide

The raiment of the King,

Our spear is in His side,

Even while the angels sing

Around our perishing globe,

And Death re-knits in pride

The seamless purple robe.

* * * *

IX

How grandly glow the bays Purpureally enwound With those rich thorns, the brows How infinitely crowned That now thro' Death's dark house Have passed with royal gaze: Purpureally enwound How grandly glow the bays.