[BNP/E3, 49A1 – 9]

28

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December 1905

I often think that the open sea

When not an eye is there to see,

And the open desert, clear of storm,

When it bears not the trace of a living form,

Must be the scene of thoughts of dread

That have compromised their act;

     That within perfect silence, dead

          To eye, to ear, to mortal tact…

There was place dead imaginings

          And that God in his irony

     Presents them horrors full and free

     And things that scorn the warm of things.

My shadow, where I see it not,

Has its things where presence seem mould a lot

Sum not my soul all mortal sense

But what we these dreamed things intense

Nor I, nor any clever can |know|;

For if I turn to look behind

How  swift I look I nothing find

It is but because I have turned

To look {…} so

‘Tis but because my soul hath loomed

To wake behind and see and know.

I know they are. But whence do they go

[9v]

Those unknown dread imaginings?

Perhaps they live on their own calm life

In the vague world of no strife

In the subtle essence of things.

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