Awake, awake! For all the dear bay's glistening In uneven light still listening For whatever of utterance 5 Soul's chrysolm beauty may glance Into willing water's dark, My sweet meaning the whole of my bark. Set sail, set sail, my soul, set sail Let no hindrance, no halt, avail: 10 For we are the sweet of the tree, Blossom and bole, shoot and root we three, Myself, my soul, and me. Nor does the shaping heart forego To lend its beat to our argot, 15 My spirit a crystalline keel, Inspiration a motion wind feels Lifting in blessing ascent All some deeper sleep had blent With nightmare chimeras now forgot 20 By all within my steady boat. Somehow, now, still lingering Out of the sullen east the sun Has given my soul a tongue. Soul may speak what mind began: 25 Light's meditation is an ardor, Of my soul the keeper-warden Which never must be abandoned For so simple delight is saddened And everything of remembered worth 30 Thrown seedless to the earth Whence never another vine will reach From dusky plain unto the sun Bearing with ripeness as a spillage Grape or fruit of many an age 35 Longing time may bring to blossom Out of darkness' drowsy bosom. Gentle Charity, no farther, Must you bear this as a father Childish swearing does forebear. 40 Those who see not propounding noon Liquified in soul's triumphant swoon As swan lifts trumpeting his song All the purple light along At tender vespers, languid and long, 45 Or blinking matins, awake and strong, For themselves must conquer hatred Through loving hearts, many-gated, Until dim and churlish slaughter Lies self-becalmed as these waters. 50 Go out, go out, my broken-hearted-- With untroubled look depart them, Cast back no final, futile glance For all in a single chance Is your future concentrated. 55 Let not one chafing countenance, Deaf to this beneficence, Shake from their sordid hearts a sigh; Live in my smiles, or die! From here commences, in my sight, 60 An headlong, eternal light That every living form bedights, With dews of immortality Awakening soul's sweet rarity Floods the loosening dawn 65 With: ocean, field, and lawn, (Building light from evening's jet By apperception the mind begets) From the gentle fount of grass To the living wave like glass 70 No such light may overpass But must ignite in simpleness Love's million multiple beams! Every morning wayfarer 75 Whose light boat cannot tarry But pushes on out of darkness With whatever of best and best In tangles of light impressed In bossing golds on waves' breast 80 Plies resistless to the crest! Such silver as the eglantine To the dew-fraught morn resigns And heaven on every still thing deigns Rewarding quiet prayers 85 With this mercurial layer-- Such silver I say is savior When soul its own good blossom knows Nor will be shaken by the cold Into something hard and cold 90 But that a sheath of clear protecting Such firm flowers thus selecting That deep winter's dire infecting Shall not break them by its cold, In such clear light protecting. 95 All that night my heart had lain Upon this boat and silver stream Until all memory became Like the memory of a dream; And there true life began 100 Beneath night's stars swirled to one Past the extinguishment of suns When realer dream draws us on To dream of all we may have been And in heart's solace draws us on 105 In dreaming dream to dream again! O how cold the moon's a mirror For all the heats within her! I my own bright soul create Nor did this fascination make 110 To slave it to a universe I, living, gaze on as a hearse. My silver hand in dawn's lake Dips, its own soul to take; From this sweet enlivening 115 Come my symbols unquestioning: Crown upon my crown rests cherishing, The sword in my hand unperishing. Do not dispraise the light That, singing whatever's brightest, 120 Undoes the theft of night-- In soul-enchanting soliloquies Enmansioning aerial ways That we might thrive there all our days In realms of spendless purity 125 Absent nations' perfidy Heart to heart for sole surety; This our pledge, this our guarantee That all's well with humanity Once these bleak constants, fear and dread, 130 Lay to light exposed, and dead, The human plant may only mend, Think to create, and speak to praise, Throughout the endless paradise of days --Touch to caress, or move to love, 135 As this thoughtless rhyme does prove. Ai! Ai! High radiancy, Round eve's ever-changing sea Like universes' bright periphery, Back to sun-like man's centrality 140 I and all mortality Welcome both thy light, and thee. And if all the world condemn What all the heart commends What matter, so that heart sail on 145 In self-discovery without bourne Through mystic waters, blue and calm? What does pleasure's grieving echo give But light to dark-hearted lives? O when the trembling hand may shiver 150 And some momentary joy deliver To thought-locked face and brow What passes from that hand to bless In an unending tenderness As paradise were with us even now? 155 Memory makes no bounty of the scorn Dementia attempts to ripen on In sold human hearts since we're born; Whatever slender wing endeavors Be communicant with the treasure 160 One heart may hold forever Will find such wind in chambers there Beyond conjoining woe or care That they may sail infinity In the air of that one heart's ease. 165 Pleasure alone may live within The human bound of life given As light within these waters: Ungrieving, crystalline, faultless. And now my soul is voyaging on 170 In mystic waters blue and calm. For whatever true hope had wrought In time-defying, true love-knot How could Love forget?
From the collection "Ascent"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.