BLACKBIRD

I heard the windy woods at evening ringing

The thousand bells of April’s singing time;

Against the low sun there was a blackbird singing

A high passionate rhyme.

Was it his key of beauty, his angelhood,

Throwing the mind’s door open, setting me free,

That all oblivious of the darkening wood

I suddenly could see,

With the seeing that vexes not our mortal eyes

Save to disclose the spirit’s prismatic flame

Wherein the worlds fulfilled in silence rise?

Into that hush I came.

I saw in the gold west remotely pearled

The Light of Light, the Heaven of all skies;

Like buds, the folded beauty of the world

Was blossom in my eyes.

And through the cloudy arches of the light

I saw of Being the bright symbolic sign;

Saw down the vistaed chancels of the night

Life’s great fulfilment shine.

The hieroglyphic of the rising stars

Spelled a lost meaning to my burning mind.

The blackbird on the silver birch’s bars

His song to sleep resigned.

High in the deepening blue there burned away

A few cloud petals, still with sunset bright,

The last love touches of discarnate day

On the still mind of night.

I turned me homeward passionate to sing

The poem that would interpret the dull years;

The piercing beauty of that wayside thing

Moved my dumb heart to tears.

Yet there’s no word to say, no verse to write;

At words the glory’s gone as the sunsets go;

A wild-heart blackbird’s hidden in the light

Is all the song I know.