Almost the body leads the laggard soul; bidding it see
The beauty of surrender, the tranquillity
Of fusion with the earth. The body turns to dust
Not only by a sudden whelming thrust,
Or at the end of a corrupting calm,
But oftentimes anticipates and, entering flowers and trees
Upon a hillside or along the brink
Of streams, encounters instances
Of its eventual enterprise:
Inhabits the enclosing clay,
In rhapsody is caught away
On a great tide
Of beauty, to abide
Translated through the night and day
Of time and, by the anointing balm
Of earth, to outgrow decay.
Hark in the wind—the word of silent lips!
Look where some subtle throat, that once had wakened lust,
Lies clear and lovely now, a silver link
Of change and peace!
Hollows and willows and a river-bed,
Anemones and clouds,
Raindrops and tender distances
Above, beneath,
Inherit and bequeath
Our far-begotten beauty. We are wed
With many kindred who were seeming dead.
Only the delicate woven shrouds
Are vanished, beauty thrown aside
To honor and uncover
A deeper beauty—as the veil that slips
Breathless away between a lover
And his bride.
So, by the body, may the soul surmise
The beauty of surrender, the tranquillity
Of fusion: when, set free
From semblance of mortality,
Yielding its dust the richer to endue
A common avenue
Of earth for other souls to journey through,
It shall put on in purer guise
The mutual beauty of its destiny.
And who shall fear for his identity
And who shall cling to the poor privacy
Of incompleteness, when the end explains
That what pride forfeits, beauty gains!
Therefore, O spirit, as a runner strips
Upon a windy afternoon,
Be unencumbered of what troubles you—
Arise with grace
And greatly go!—the wind upon your face!
Grieve not for the invisible transported brow
On which like leaves the dark hair grew,
Nor for the lips of laughter that are now
Laughing inaudibly in sun and dew,
Nor for the limbs that, fallen low
And seeming faint and slow,
Shall alter and renew
Their shape and hue
Like birches white before the moon
Or a young apple-tree
In spring or the round sea
And shall pursue
More ways of swiftness than the swallow dips
Among ... and find more winds than ever blew
The straining sails of unimpeded ships!
A sudden music, Celia, through a poplar-bough,
Where leaves are small and new,
Comes laughing and goes hastening like you.
Beauty is more than hands or face or eyes
Or the long curve that lies
Upon a bed waiting, more than the rise
Of sun among the birds, more than the oar that plies
Under the moon for lovers, more than a tune that buys
Pennies from time. Vision and touch comprise
Yesterday’s promise, today’s token
Of a fulfillment that shall have no need to be perceived or spoken,
Wherein all love is the award
Poured upon beauty and no heart is broken
And no grief is stored.
For never beauty dies
That lived. Nightly the skies
Assemble stars, the light of hopeful eyes,
And daily brood on the communal breath—
Which we call death.
Nothing is lost. Nothing I have of loveliness
Exceeds a minute part
Of my own loveliness when it shall be fulfilled
With Celia’s and all loveliness that lies
In every heart.
All that I have is but the start
And the beginning, the bewildering guess
Of what shall be distilled
Out of my soul by you and you,
Each soul of all souls, till one soul remains
Which every beauty shall imbue
Clean of the differences and pains....
I shall be Celia’s everlastingness.