THE WORDS OF THE PREACHER

TAKING infection from the vulgar air And sick with the extravagant disease Of life, my soul rejected the sweet snare Of happiness; declined That democratic bait, set in the world By fortune’s old and mediocre mind. To love a changing shape with perfect faith Is waste of faith; to follow dying things With deathless hope is vain; to go from breath To breath, so to be fed And put to sleep, is cheat and shame—because By piecemeal living a man is doomed, I said. For time with clever fingers ties the knot Of life that is extended like a rope, And bundling up the spinning of our thought (The ribbons and the lace That might have made a garment for the wind), Constricts our substance to a cipher’s space. Into the middle of my thought I crept And on the bosom of the angel lay, Lived all my life at once; and oh I wept My own future to be; Upon his death-soft burning plumage wept To vie with God for His eternity.