[BNP/E3, 49A3 – 43-44]

 

10-1-1914.

 

Made large by slant locks of a dawn

That never comes, whence no bird sings,

The Palace overlooks a lawn

Where dreams and thoughts are outer-things.

Alleys and parks where intertwined

Are things of Flesh and things of Mind,

Material presences unfleshed,

Spiritual local-things self-meshed

By things material as a stone.

By someone who doth surely come

The Palace strange is never reached

And the Great King reigns there alone.

 

His vassals are his visions. Through

The abyssal corridors and halls

A thought footstep is about to

Sound, but it soundeth not at all.

 

[43v]

 

2.

 

A great voice is about to call

A coming King’s name that will bring

A princess to the Waiting King.

But no voice sounds. From o’er the wall

That cuts off the West from the sight

O’ th’ windows that stare that way, soon

The sound of horses towards the Lawn

Will sound, but no sound e’er doth light

On the King’s ears. All as the moon

Is false, there where ‘tis ever dawn.

 

The King reigns over dreams he makes,

But even those vassals obey not.

So much those dreams he makes he takes 

For real that they stand outside

His power and ruling of his thought

And his thought vassals him deride.

 

His life is a sea without tide.

 

[44r]

 

3.

 

He reigns eternally. No hour

Advances towards his hushed domain.

His endless and almighty power

Is all that there is in his reign.

 

His gardens never had a flower.

 

He has no days, no sleeps, no time.

Nothing but Space fills up his world.

This world of ours, whose thought doth rhyme

In us that know it to an absurd

Despair, is to him: the vague dream

Of happiness, that which doth seem

The Princess and the Love to him.

 

Eternally across the Lawn

The same stopped shadows of the Dawn

Cover with crapes his empty sight.

 

[44v]

 

4.

 

The unrisen sun that doth but fawn

On Presence, is to him a night

Endless as what in him is fright

And is not fright as to us fright is known.

 

Who crowned him king? Who made him dwell

In that Palace inaccessible

Even to himself that dwells therein?

He knows not. But a Thought doth win

His heart with a perplexed despair.

He thinks that perhaps reigning there

Like a dream of his own laid down

Upon the quay, he is the one

Whom in worlds real, (but dreams to him,

That knows no more than that abode),

Mortals – real lies to him all dim –

Pray to and wonder of as God.