Transitional Poem
29
When I consider each independent starWearing its world of darkness like a furAnd rubbing shoulders with infinity,I am content experience should beMore discontinuous than the points prickedOut by the mazy course of a derelict,Iceberg, or Flying Dutchman, and the heartStationary and passive as a chart.In such star-frenzy I could boast, betwixtMy yester and my morrow self are fixedAll the birds carolling and all the seasGroaning from Greenwich to the Antipodes.
But an eccentric hour may come, when systemsNot stars divide the dark; and then life's pistonsPounding into their secret cylinderBegin to tickle the most anchorite earWith hints of mechanisms that includeThe man. And once that rhythm arrests the blood,Who would be satisfied his mind is noContinent but an archipelago?They are preposterous paladins and pranceFrom myth to myth, who take an Agag stanceUpon the needle points of here and now,Where only angels ought to tread. AllowOne jointure feasible to man, one stateSquared with another—then he can integrate
