And mingling of colors at a festival.

V

One day enriches a year. One woman makes

The rest look down. One man becomes a race,

Lofty like him, like him perpetual.

Or do the other days enrich the one?

And is the queen humble as she seems to be,

The charitable majesty of her whole kin?

The bristling soldier, weather-foxed, who looms

In the sunshine is a filial form and one

Of the land’s children, easily born, its flesh,

Not fustian. The more than casual blue

Contains the year and other years and hymns

And people, without souvenir. The day

Enriches the year, not as embellishment.

Stripped of remembrance, it displays its strength—

The youth, the vital son, the heroic power.

VI

The rock cannot be broken. It is the truth.

It rises from land and sea and covers them.

It is a mountain half way green and then,

The other immeasurable half, such rock

As placid air becomes. But it is not

A hermit’s truth nor symbol in hermitage.

It is the visible rock, the audible,

The brilliant mercy of a sure repose,

On this present ground, the vividest repose,

Things certain sustaining us in certainty.

It is the rock of summer, the extreme,

A mountain luminous half way in bloom

And then half way in the extremest light

Of sapphires flashing from the central sky,

As if twelve princes sat before a king.

VII

Far in the woods they sang their unreal songs,

Secure. It was difficult to sing in face

Of the object. The singers had to avert themselves

Or else avert the object. Deep in the woods

They sang of summer in the common fields.

They sang desiring an object that was near,

In face of which desire no longer moved,

Nor made of itself that which it could not find …

Three times the concentred self takes hold, three times

The thrice concentred self, having possessed

The object, grips it in savage scrutiny,

Once to make captive, once to subjugate

Or yield to subjugation, once to proclaim

The meaning of the capture, this hard prize,

Fully made, fully apparent, fully found.

VIII

The trumpet of morning blows in the clouds and through

The sky. It is the visible announced,

It is the more than visible, the more

Than sharp, illustrious scene. The trumpet cries

This is the successor of the invisible.

This is its substitute in stratagems

Of the spirit. This, in sight and memory,

Must take its place, as what is possible

Replaces what is not. The resounding cry

Is like ten thousand tumblers tumbling down

To share the day. The trumpet supposes that

A mind exists, aware of division, aware

Of its cry as clarion, its diction’s way

As that of a personage in a multitude:

Man’s mind grown venerable in the unreal.

IX

Fly low, cock bright, and stop on a bean pole. Let

Your brown breast redden, while you wait for warmth.

With one eye watch the willow, motionless.

The gardener’s cat is dead, the gardener gone