 | |
| |
| I |
| I walk through the long schoolroom questioning; |
| A kind old nun in a white hood replies; |
| The children learn to cipher and to sing, |
| To study reading-books and history, |
| 5 | To cut and sew, be neat in everything |
| In the best modern way — the children's eyes |
| In momentary wonder stare upon |
| A sixty-year-old smiling public man. |
| |
| II |
| I dream of a Ledaean body, bent |
| 10 | Above a sinking fire, a tale that she |
| Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event |
| That changed some childish day to tragedy — |
| Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent |
| Into a sphere from youthful sympathy, |
| 15 | Or else, to alter Plato's parable, |
| Into the yolk and white of the one shell. |
| |
| III |
| And thinking of that fit of grief or rage |
| I look upon one child or t'other there |
| And wonder if she stood so at that age — |
| 20 | For even daughters of the swan can share |
| Something of every paddler's heritage — |
| And had that colour upon cheek or hair, |
| And thereupon my heart is driven wild: |
| She stands before me as a living child. |
| |
| IV |
| 25 | Her present image floats into the mind — |
| Did Quattrocento finger fashion it |
| Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind |
| And took a mess of shadows for its meat? |
| And I though never of Ledaean kind |
| 30 | Had pretty plumage once — enough of that, |
| Better to smile on all that smile, and show |
| There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow. |
| |
| V |
| What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap |
| Honey of generation had betrayed, |
| 35 | And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape |
| As recollection or the drug decide, |
| Would think her son, did she but see that shape |
| With sixty or more winters on its head, |
| A compensation for the pang of his birth, |
| 40 | Or the uncertainty of his setting forth? |
| |
| VI |
| Plato thought nature but a spume that plays |
| Upon a ghostly paradigm of things; |
| Solider Aristotle played the taws |
| Upon the bottom of a king of kings; |
| 45 | World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras |
| Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings |
| What a star sang and careless Muses heard: |
| Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird. |
| |
| VII |
| Both nuns and mothers worship images, |
| 50 | But those the candles light are not as those |
| That animate a mother's reveries, |
| But keep a marble or a bronze repose. |
| And yet they too break hearts — O Presences |
| That passion, piety or affection knows, |
| 55 | And that all heavenly glory symbolise — |
| O self-born mockers of man's enterprise; |
| |
| VIII |
| Labour is blossoming or dancing where |
| The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, |
| Nor beauty born out of its own despair, |
| 60 | Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. |
| O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer, |
| Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? |
| O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, |
| How can we know the dancer from the dance? |
