I would give you the world. In a moment, on a sigh, a heartbeat, the world is mine to give. A great sky has touched the skin of the water and time is measured at the moment of such intimacy. With roughened fingertips I push thoughts into the current. They will reach your shore another day. I give you the world if you can see it through me.
Before ever land was,
Before ever the sea,
Or soft hair of the grass,
Or fair limbs of the tree,
Or the flesh-colour'd fruit of my branches, I was, and thy soul was in me.
It takes little to seek another soul in solitary flight. Hunting, always hunting. We all are hunters.
First life on my sources
First drifted and swam;
Out of me are the forces
That save it or damn;
Out of me man and woman, and wild-beast and bird: before God was, I am.
Here are pathways that open to a wider place; the sand ahead is made of individual, unique grains, tumbled by wild force, crushed by time and storm. Grains as legion, nestled together, an ever-changing collective on the beach.
Who hath given, who hath sold it thee,
Knowledge of me?
Has the wilderness told it thee?
Hast thou learnt of the sea?
Hast thou communed in spirit with night? have the winds taken counsel with thee?
We trees, we dance inside stillness and revel in the deep soil on the rock of the island. Even the wind blows our way.
The tree many-rooted
That swells to the sky
With frondage red-fruited,
The life-tree am I...
My own blood is what stanches
The wounds in my bark;
Stars caught in my branches
Make day of the dark,
And are worshipp'd as suns till the sunrise shall tread out their fires as a spark.
Where dead ages hide under
The live roots of the tree,
In my darkness the thunder
Makes utterance of me;
In the clash of my boughs with each other ye hear the waves sound of the sea.
That noise is of Time,
As his feathers are spread
And his feet set to climb
Through the boughs overhead,
And my foliage rings round him and rustles, and branches are bent with his tread.
The storm-winds of ages
Blow through me and cease,
The war-wind that rages,
The spring-wind of peace,
Ere the breath of them roughen my tresses, ere one of my blossoms increase.
Stones as legion, nested, the audience on the sand. Step lightly, freely. I'll give this to you.
Be the ways of thy giving
As mine were to thee;
The free life of thy living,
Be the gift of it free;
Not as servant to lord, nor as master to slave, shalt thou give thee to me.
All forms of all faces,
All works of all hands
In unsearchable places
Of time-stricken lands,
All death and all life, and all reigns and all ruins, drop through me as sands.
In the darkening and whitening
Abysses adored,
With dayspring and lightning
For lamp and for sword...
Though sore be my burden
And more than ye know,
And my growth have no guerdon
But only to grow,
Yet I fail not of growing for lightnings above me or deathworms below.
These too have their part in me,
As I too in these;
Such fire is at heart in me,
Such sap is this tree's,
Which hath in it all sounds and all secrets of infinite lands and of seas.
In the spring-colour'd hours
When my mind was as May's
There brake forth of me flowers
By centuries of days,
Strong blossoms with perfume of manhood, shot out from my spirit as rays.
And the sound of them springing
And smell of their shoots
Were as warmth and sweet singing
And strength to my roots;
And the lives of my children made perfect with freedom of soul were my fruits.
I bid you but be;
I have need not of prayer;
I have need of you free
As your mouths of mine air;
That my heart may be greater within me, beholding the fruits of me fair.
One birth of my bosom;
One beam of mine eye;
One topmost blossom
That scales the sky;
Man, equal and one with me, man that is made of me, man that is I.
O children of banishment,
Souls overcast,
Were the lights ye see vanish meant
Alway to last,
Ye would know not the sun overshining the shadows and stars overpast.
Even the wind blows our way.
(This post can also be found at exmearden in a slightly brighter format.)