I Desert
Reading edition
Desert
I
This profit yet remains
Of exile and the hour
That life in losing gains
Perhaps a fuller flower.
Not less the prunèd shoot,
Not less the barren year,
Which yields the perfect fruit,
Which makes the meaning clear.
For on this desert soil
A blessing comes unsought—
Space for a single toil,
Time for a single thought.
When in distractions tost,
Since oft distractions claim
For moments never lost
Of each its higher aim,
We live, we learn the wealth
The joyous hours may bring,
But jealous time by stealth
Puts all of it to wing;
Pursuing empty arts
We gain no noble goal,
And lose, in learning parts,
The grandeur of the whole.
If Patience, pouring tears—
She cannot but lament
The long unfruitful years
Of exile, idly spent—
Have patience, she will find
They were not all in vain,
But each has left behind
A little store of gain—
A wider wisdom bought
With labour; problems solved;
The themes of inner thought
More thoroughly revolved.
So one who entertain’d
The prosperous of the earth;
No good from any gain’d,
But lost his wealth and worth;
In wrath he gather’d round
The indigent and old;
Each wretch, amazed he found,
Had left a gift of gold.
So one who sought a land
Where all the earth is ore;
But had he sifted sand
He would have gather’d more.
II
The Sun arose and took
The lofty heav’ns of right;
From out the heav’ns he shook
The pestilence of his light.
He paced upon his path
And from his right hand hurl’d
The javelins of his wrath,
Contemptuous of the world.
Before his scornful lips
The forests fell down dead,
And scowling in eclipse
Disbanding thunders fled.
He fills the hills with fire
And blasts the barren plain;
He hath stript the stricken briar,
And slain the thorn again.
He cracks the rocks, and cakes
The quagmires into crust,
And slays the snake, and makes
The dead leaf writhe in dust.
He halts in heav’n half way
And blackens earth with light;
And the dark doom of day
Lies on us like the night.
A Land of clamorous cries;
Of everlasting light;
Of noises in the skies
And noises in the night.
There is no night; the Sun
Lives thro’ the night again;
The image of the Sun
Is burnt upon the brain.
O God! he still returns;
He slays us in the dust;
The brazen Death-Star burns
And stamps us into dust.
III
The air is thunder-still.
What motion is with us?
Deep shocks of thunder fill
The deep sky ruinous;
As if, down lumbering large
Upon these desert tracts,
He had fallen about the marge
In cloudy cataracts.
And spot by spot in dust
The writhing raindrops lie,
And turn like blood to rust—
Writhe, redden, shrink, and dry.
A Land where all day long,
Day-long descanting dirge,
The heavy thunders hang
And moan upon the verge;
Where all day long the kite
Her querulous question cries,
And circles lost in light
About the yellow skies;
And thou, O Heart, art husht
In the deep dead of day,
Half restless and half crusht,
Half soaring too away.
Day-long the querulous kite
Her querulous question cries,
And sails, a spot of night,
About the vasty skies.
The puff’d cheeks of typhoons
Blow thro’ the worthless clouds
That roll in writhing moons
In skies of many moods,
None fruitful; and the clouds
Take up the dust and dance
A dance of death and shrouds—
Mock, mow, retire, advance.
IV
Where is the rain? We hear
The footsteps of the rain,
Walking in dust, and, near,
Dull thunders over the plain.
Cloud?—dust. The wind awakes;
The base dust we have trod
Smokes up to heaven and takes
The thunderings of God.
No rain. The angry dust
Cries out against the rain;
The clouds are backward thrust;
The monstrous Sun again.
We hoped the rain would fall
After the dreadful day,
For we heard the thunders call
Each other far away.
We hoped for rain because
After thunder rain is given;
And yet it only was
The mockery of heaven.
He is the lord of us;
He will unconquered sink,
Red, but victorious,
And smoking to the brink.
Shout, barren thunders, shout
And rattle and melt again!
So fall the fates about,
So melt the hopes of men.
Rattle aloft and wake
The sleepers on the roofs,
Wild steeds of heav’n, and shake
Heav’n with your echoing hoofs.
Awake the weary at night
Until they cry, “The rain!”—
Then take to tempestuous flight
And melt into air again.
V
This is the land of Death;
The sun his taper is
Wherewith he numbereth
The dead bones that are his.
He walks beside the deep
And counts the mouldering bones
In lands of tumbling steep
And cataracts of stones.
About his feet the hosts
Of dead leaves he hath slain
Awaken, shrieking ghosts
Demanding life again.
O silent Sepulchre,
Great East, disastrous clime;
O grave of things that were;
O catacombs of time;
O silent catacombs;
O blear’d memorial stones;
Where laughing in the tombs
Death plays with mouldering bones;
And through dead bones the stalk
Of the living herb is thrust;
And we, the living, walk
In wastes of human dust.
Dust—thou art dust. Thy Sun,
Thy lord, and lord of dust,
Doth stamp thee into one
Great plain of dust; and dust
Thy heav’ns, thy nights, thy days;
Thy temples and thy creeds;
Thy crumbling palaces;
Thy far forgotten deeds,—
Infinite dust. Half living,
We clothe ourselves in dust
And live, not to be living,
But because we must.
Thy winds are full of death;
Death comes we know not whence;
Thy forests have a breath
Of secret pestilence;
Thy rivers rolling large
Are blest with no sweet green,
But silent at the marge
The waiting monsters seen.
No scented silence, eve,
But night a noisy gloom;
And we thy captives live,
The derelicts of doom.