Mandragora/The Saturnian

by John Cowper Powys

THE SATURNIAN

AH, I must follow it high and low,
   Tho' it leave me cold to your human touch!
Some starry sorcery made me so;
   And from my birth have I been such.
 
What is it I follow so secret-lone?
   Over the hills and along the sea?
Beauty with every seed is sown,
   For you, for them, for me?

Not so, by the gods! Do I not hear
   In the night a tender-muffled crying,
Rising, falling, sinking, dying?
   Oh, I must follow it thro' the world!

Not so, by the gods! When the dawn-wind stirs,
   Rustling over the river-reeds,
Trembling over the wet pastures,
   Shall I not follow it, whither it leads?

Oh, wild and sad, oh, wild and sweet,
   Is the lonely horn that I always hear,
Blown from the place where all streams meet,
   Where all horizons disappear!

The long sea-tides bring home to port,
   Their ships by many a moonlit wharf,

But an ebbing twilight carries my thought
   Beyond every coast it would anchor off.

Like a reef-bell rocking and ringing low,
   Under a grey and rain-swept sky,
The beauty I follow doth come and go,
   And if I found it, I should die.

The wild-bird of my longing sings
   Always in the next hollow,
And always, always it spreads its wings,
   When I cross the hill to follow.

All! Once when the burning noon was poured
   On moss and stone and dreaming sod,
I saw the great blue flower that God
   Made for the Son of God.

And do you think I can go content,
   With the beauty we meet with everywhere,
When I have breathed that flower's scent
   And seen it melt into the air?

Oh, I must follow it high and low,
   Though it leave me cold to your human touch,
Some starry sorcery made me so;
   And from my birth have I been such.