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.