The Body To The Soul

You have dragged me on through the wild wood ways

You have given me toil and scanty rest

I have seen the light of ten thousand days

Grow dim and sink and fade in the West

Once you bore me forth from the dusty gloom

Weeping and helpless and naked and blind

Now you would hide me deep down in the tomb

And wander away on the moonlit wind

You would bury me like a thing of shame

Silently into the darkness thrust

You would mix my heart that was once a flame

With the mouldering clay and the wandering dust

The eyes that wept for your sorrowful will

Shall be laid among evil and unclean things

The heart that was faithful through good and ill

You scorn for a flutter of tawdry wings

You were the moonlight, I lived in the Sun

Could there ever be peace between us twain?

I sought the Many, you seek the One

You are the slayer, I am the slain

Oh soul, when you mount to your flame-built throne

Will you dream no dream of the broken clay?

Will you breathe o’er the stars in your pathway strown

No sigh for the daisies of yesterday?

As you wander the shining corridors

A lonely wave in the ocean of light

Have you never a thought of the lake’s lost shores

Or the fire-lit cottage dim and white?

Shall not the dear smell of the rain-wet soil

Through the windless spheres and the silence float?

Shall not my hands that are brown with toil

Take your dreams and high desires by the throat?

Behold, I reach forth from beyond the years

I will cry to you from beneath the sod

I will drag you back from the starry spheres

Yea, down from the very bosom of God

You cannot hide from the Sun and the wind

Or the whispered song of the April rain

The proud earth that moulds all things to her mind

Shall gather you out of the deeps again

You shall follow once more a wandering fire

You shall gaze again on the starlit sea

You shall gather roses out of the mire

Alas, but you shall not remember me