Nirvana Days. Rice Cale Young

      Yes, were I in Japan today

      These things I'd do, and more.

      For Ise gleams in royal groves,

      And Nara with its lore,

      And Nikko hid in mountains – where

      The Shogun, great of yore,

      Built timeless tombs whose glory glooms

      Funereally o'er.

      These things I'd do! But last of all,

      On Kamakura's lea,

      I'd seek Daibutsu's face of calm

      And still the final sea

      Of all the West within me – from

      Its fret and fever free

      My spirit – into patience, peace,

      And passion's mastery.

      You who are old —

      And have fought the fight —

      And have won or lost or left the field —

      Weigh us not down

      With fears of the world, as we run!

      With the wisdom that is too right,

      The warning to which we cannot yield,

      The shadow that follows the sun,

      Follows forever!

      And with all that desire must leave undone,

      Though as a god it endeavor;

      Weigh, weigh us not down!

      But gird our hope to believe —

      That all that is done

      Is done by dream and daring —

      Bid us dream on!

      That Earth was not born

      Or Heaven built of bewaring —

      Yield us the dawn!

      You dreamt your hour – and dared, but we

      Would dream till all you despaired of be;

      Would dare – till the world,

      Won to a new wayfaring,

      Be thence forever easier upward drawn!

      Gulls on the wind,

      Crying! crying!

      Are you the ghosts

      Of Erin's dead?

      Of the forlorn

      Whose days went sighing

      Ever for Beauty

      That ever fled?

      Ever for Light

      That never kindled?

      Ever for Song

      No lips have sung?

      Ever for Joy

      That ever dwindled?

      Ever for Love that stung?

      I know not where it was I saw them sit,

      For in my dreams I had outwandered far

      That endless wanderer men call the sea —

      Whose winds like incantations wrap the world

      And help the moon in her high mysteries.

      I know not how it was that I was led

      Unto their tryst; or what dim infinite

      Of perfect and imperishable night

      Hung round, a radiance ineffable;

      For I was too intoxicate and tranced

      With beauty that I knew was very love.

      So when divinity from her had stolen

      Into his spirit, as, from fields of myrrh

      Or forests of red sandal by the sea,

      Steal slaking airs, and he began to speak,

      I could but gather these few fleeting words:

      "Your glance sends fragrance sweeter than the lily,

      Your hands are visible bodiments of song

      You are the voice that April light has lost,

      Her silence that was music of glad birds.

      The wind's heart have you, and its mystery,

      When poet Spring comes piping o'er the hills

      To make of Tartarus forgotten fear.

      Yea all the generations of the world,

      Whose whence and whither but the gods shall know.

      Are vassal to your vows forevermore."

      And she, I knew, made answer, for her words

      Fell warm as womanhood with wordless things,

      But I had drifted on within my dream,

      To that pale space which is oblivion.

      Night is above me,

      And Night is above the night.

      The sea is beside me soughing, or is still.

      The earth as a somnambulist moves on

      In a strange sleep …

      A sea-bird cries.

      And the cry wakes in me

      Dim, dead sea-folk, my sires —

      Who more than myself are me.

      Who sat on their beach long nights ago and saw

      The sea in its silence;

      And cursed it or implored:

      Or with the Cross defied;

      Then on the morrow in their boats went down.

      Night is above me …

      And Night is above the night.

      Rocks are about me, and, beyond, the sand …

      And the low reluctant tide,

      That rushes back to ebb a last farewell

      To the flotsam borne so long upon its breast.

      Rocks… But the tide is out,

      And the slime lies naked, like a thing ashamed

      That has no hiding-place.

      And the sea-bird hushes —

      The bird and all far cries within my blood —

      And earth as a somnambulist moves on.