XIII
THE ANSWER
Can you net the lights and darks that in the water play?
Or bring, to sing your babe to sleep, the soughing of the pine?
Gather into lanterns the holy Milky Way?
Or round about your shoulders wrap the white moonshine?
The hills of early morning hear her silver laugh and call,
She couches in the dusky fields beneath the evening star;
Catch who can! How graciously she smiles, a gentle thrall!
Then drops her lovely bonds and spreads her wings and floats afar.
Beauty has a thousand homes, she is captive never:
Daughter of eternity she will not cabined be.
A word she hath, a look she hath, joy she hath forever,
When she shines for Kubla Khan or gleams in dreams for me.
We whimper like a sleeping child lest fairy Xanadu
Should once again, as once before, vanish beside the sea;
We wake and know the bubble gone, yet all the glory true,
And Beauty leading o'er the waves—a Flying Victory.
