background image
water among the stones 87
And in that steep stone cleft
What will be left
Of me is not the middling lover
Here, of a wife
With whom he gladly would live over
A second life --
Nor that one who'd begun
A better son,
Friend, father in his own thinking,
Than he became --
So maimed in the doing (heart here sinking)
And yet the same.
Say all these disappear
Into the sheer
Fire of that anger -- what's remaining?
Stranger, the sight,
Say, of the tall slim pale wild oats leaning,
In the late light,
Beautiful, on a stony rise
Before your eyes,
While you stand making out a crossing
Down where the stream
Slips roaring through boulders, and the spray's tossing,
And the alders gleam:
At such a moment, here
I'll stand, tho' not appear
But be coincident with your seeing
The shining scene
And in that moment have my being,
Unhuman, and serene.