Not To The Staring Day

To A. C.     Not to the staring Day,     For all the importunate questionings he pursues     In his big, violent voice,     Shall those mild things of bulk and multitude,     The Trees - God's sentinels     Over His gift of live, life-giving air,     Yield of their huge, unutterable selves.     Midsummer-manifold, each one     Voluminous, a labyrinth of life,     They keep their greenest musings, and the dim dreams     That haunt their leafier privacies,     Dissembled, baffling the random gapeseed still     With blank full-faces, or the innocent guile     Of laughter flickering back from shine to shade,     And disappearances of homing birds,     And frolicsome freaks     Of little boughs that frisk with little boughs.     But at the word     Of the ancient, sacerdotal Night,     Night of the many secrets, whose effect -     Transfiguring, hierophantic, dread -     Themselves alone may fully apprehend,     They tremble and are changed.     In each, the uncouth individual soul     Looms forth and glooms     Essential, and, their bodily presences     Touched with inordinate significance,     Wearing the darkness like the livery     Of some mysterious and tremendous guild,     They brood - they menace - they appal;     Or the anguish of prophecy tears them, and they wring     Wild hands of warning in the face     Of some inevitable advance of the doom;     Or, each to the other bending, beckoning, signing     As in some monstrous market-place,     They pass the news, these Gossips of the Prime,     In that old speech their forefathers     Learned on the lawns of Eden, ere they heard     The troubled voice of Eve     Naming the wondering folk of Paradise.     Your sense is sealed, or you should hear them tell     The tale of their dim life, with all     Its compost of experience:    how the Sun     Spreads them their daily feast,     Sumptuous, of light, firing them as with wine;     Of the old Moon's fitful solicitude     And those mild messages the Stars     Descend in silver silences and dews;     Or what the sweet-breathing West,     Wanton with wading in the swirl of the wheat,     Said, and their leafage laughed;     And how the wet-winged Angel of the Rain     Came whispering . . . whispering; and the gifts of the Year -     The sting of the stirring sap     Under the wizardry of the young-eyed Spring,     Their summer amplitudes of pomp,     Their rich autumnal melancholy, and the shrill,     Embittered housewifery     Of the lean Winter:    all such things,     And with them all the goodness of the Master,     Whose right hand blesses with increase and life,     Whose left hand honours with decay and death.     Thus under the constraint of Night     These gross and simple creatures,     Each in his scores of rings, which rings are years,     A servant of the Will!     And God, the Craftsman, as He walks     The floor of His workshop, hearkens, full of cheer     In thus accomplishing     The aims of His miraculous artistry.