Soul’s Scene

The clouds lain on forlorn spaces of sky, weary and lolling,
Watch grey waves of a lost sea wander sad, reckless and rolling,
A bare anguish of bleak beaches made mournful with the breath of the Northwind
And a huddle of melancholy hills in the distance.

The blank hour in some vast mood of a Soul lonely in Nature
On earth’s face puts a mask pregnantly carved, cut to misfeature,
And man’s heart and his stilled mind react hushed in a spiritual passion
Imitating the contours of her desolate waiting.

Impassible she waits long for the sun’s gold and the azure,
The sea’s song with its slow happy refrain’s plashes of pleasure, —
As man’s soul in its depths waits the outbreaking of the light and the godhead
And the bliss that God felt when he created his image.

Notes on Text
1942. A single handwritten manuscript precedes the On Quantitative Metre revision work.