Page:Selected Poems (Huxley).djvu/54



Tunnelled in solid blackness creeps The old mole-soul, and wakes or sleeps, He knows not which, but tunnels on Through ages of oblivion; Until at last the long constraint Of each hand-wall is lost, and faint Comes daylight creeping from afar, And mole-work grows crepuscular. Tunnel meets air and bursts; mole sees Men as strange as walking trees? And far horizons smoking blue, And chasing clouds for ever new; Green hills, like lighted lamps aglow Or quenched beneath the cloud-shadow; Quenching and blazing turn by turn, Spring's great green signals fitfully burn. Mole travels on, but finds the steering A harder task of pioneering Than when he thridded through the strait Blind catacombs that ancient fate Had carved for him. Stupid and dumb And blind and touchless he had come A way without a turn; but here,