And the low droning of the drowsy bees
That boomed across the meadows. He was glad
At dawn or sundown; glad when Autumn came
With her worn livery and scarlet crown,

And glad when winter rocked the earth to rest.
Strange that he sleeps today when life is young,
And the wild banners of the spring are blowing
With green inscriptions of the old delight."

I heard them whisper in the quiet room.
I longed to open then my sealed eyes,
And tell them of the glory that was mine.
There was no darkness where my spirit flew,
There was no night beyond the teeming world.
Their April was like winter where I roamed;
Their flowers were like stones where now I fared.
Earth's day! it was as if I had not known

What sunlight meant! . . . Yea, even as they grieved
For all that I had lost in their pale place,
I swung beyond the borders of the sky,
And floated through the clouds, myself the air,
Myself the ether, yet a matchless being
Whom God had snatched from penury and pain
To draw across the barricades of heaven.
I clomb beyond the sun, beyond the moon;
In flight on flight I touched the highest star;
I plunged to regions where the spring is born,
Myself (I asked not how) the April wind,
Myself the elements that are of God.
Up flowery stairways of eternity

I whirled in wonder and untrammeled joy,
An atom, yet a portion of His dream-
His dream that knows no end. . . .

I was the rain,

I was the dawn, I was the purple east,
I was the moonlight on enchanted nights,
(Yet time was lost to me); I was a flower
For one to pluck who loved me; I was bliss,
And rapture, splendid moments of delight;

And I was prayer, and solitude, and hope;
And always, always, always I was love.
I tore asunder flimsy doors of time,

And through the windows of my soul's new sight
I saw beyond the ultimate bounds of space.
I was all things that I had loved on earth-
The very moonbeam in that quiet room,
The very sunlight one had dreamed I lost,
The soul of the returning April grass,
The spirit of the evening and the dawn,
The perfume in unnumbered hawthorn-blooms.
There was no shadow on my perfect peace,
No knowledge that was hidden from my heart.
I learned what music meant; I read the years;
I found where rainbows hide, where tears begin;
I trod the precincts of things yet unborn.

Yea, while I found all wisdom (being dead),
They grieved for me

I should have grieved for them!

Mark Turbyfill

STRANGERS

I shall tell you:

I am seeing and seeing strangers

Who are not strangers,

For there is something in their eyes,

And about their faces

That whispers to me

(But so low

That I can never quite hear)

Of the lost half of myself

Which I have been seeking since the beginning of earth;

And I could follow them to the end of the world,

Would they but lean nearer, nearer,

And tell me.

THINGS NOT SEEN

The sea-gull poises

In the charged, expectant air.

The sea-gull poises

With delicate resistance.

Its sheer conscious being
Is cause to strike creation
Out of all this emptiness.

The sea-gull waits,
Wavering slightly

Against this mighty immanence.

So does my heart wait

For the release of a substance

Not yet seen.

PRAYER FOR SOPHISTICATION

Close all open things, O God!

Close the rose,

The throats of flutes and birds.

Close all eyes

To tears not yet fallen.

Close my heart.

Close all open things, O God!

A SONG FOR SOULS UNDER FIRE

Lo, that doves

Should soften

These surging streets!

I found him talking simply and gladly of God,

In the unmoved city of granite

And noise.

Thought kindled in his cheek,

And his white faith

Was the tree in spring

To look upon.

He whispered me he knew the God of Daniel

In the lions' den;

The faith of Joan of Arc

On parapets.

He will walk, a spirit

Of unguessed power,

Into battle.

He will walk unreached

Into fire!

SHAPES

Let us deliberately sit into design,
With these elephant ears
Stretched from the glazed pot
Into green wax consciousness.

Let us exert

Our unused selves

Into other static

Sharpnesses.

In what fleet gestures
Have you found eternity?

His amber-painted torso

A Persian dancer

Has conceived into a leaf-line,

The head inclined.

JOURNEY

Life is more sweet than I

Knew-the shifted scene

Less wavered, more trimmed with light Than the years before.

Look down. People pass over the ice

As a file of thin ghosts creep

And fade beyond a hill.

You, and you, and you-
Small souls, shrinking away.

And you, and you, and you,
Bearing lights in your hands,
Approaching eternally. Life is
More sweet than I knew.

BENEDICTION

Let no blasphemer till the sacred earth

Or scatter seed upon it,

Lest fruit should fail

And weed-scars sting its fineness.

Send him here who loves its beauty
And its brownness.

He will plow the earth

As a dancer dances

Ecstatically.

Let no blasphemer till the sacred earth Or scatter seed upon it.