Page:Reuben and other poems.pdf/76

 The sea is gemm’d with her, the sun’s wide eye Brightens all day on her, and when night comes, The stars mount up her rigging, the moon slips White feet upon her sharply-shadow’d decks, And, in her towers of steady sail high-sitting, Quietly sings the wind.

More: she herself, this world amid, convoys Another world, and other. Sound of lips And light of eyes, a burden of warm breath And hearts toward other hearts that beat, is come Upon the emptiness—a world of quick, Doing, devising Consciousness usurps This kingdom of untroubled one-ness—plays Its sole pulsating part in this huge O Of unspectator’d theatre. . . and then As in its entry, in its exit, brief— Vanishes. The ship passes and is gone.

A rushing star, thro’ Heaven’s capacious calm Down-hurling momentary fire: a swift Passion, that strong on some commanding spirit Leaps. . . fastens. . . fails: or, an importunate fly That, loud about its little business, One drowsy second of the summer noon Awakes, the next falls dead: invading so So takes possession, so predominates, And even so is pass’d the ship, and gone.