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