The House of the Titans and other Poems

I Do not chide them that they fly the wood, Hill, river, lake, remote and endless shore, Nor pluck jewels of words out of the light, But seek their song under those cliffs of stone And stone-gray air that reels dizzy with mist. They think if they but watch their world they will Be master of it, their speech recall today Unto tomorrow. They do not know that time Forgets its hours, its days, its years and all But that which has some touch of the timeless on it. We do not care to know of Plato's town By what light arts, what trick of life, men made The color of their days. But we remember One who by airy labors found a way From earth to heaven, and looked upon a sea, Shoreless, of beauty, and told of it in words Dipt in its shining. I have no blame that they Forget the aristocracy of speech, and use Slang of the town, and have no age in their thought, And think as children might do if their world Were newly born, and god or sage had never Dropt star or lantern into our abyss: Or look on frailty, seeing the skimming dancers With lightness of feet lighten the leaden heart, Jetting gay fire into the fireless mind. They might look upon transience all day long Yet be in company of the gods, could they But know the Master of the Ceremony, Cry with Aratus, "Full of Zeus the city: Full of Zeus the harbor; and full of Zeus Are all the ways of men," the vision that makes All lights be torches in the mystery, All speech be part of the soliloquy, Or endless canticle, all holy, sung By Him who is poet both of heaven and earth.