Poems (Henley)/Not to the staring Day

by William Ernest Henley

XXIV To A. C.

Not to the staring Day,For all the importunate questionings he pursuesIn his big, violent voice,Shall those mild things of bulk and multitude,The Trees—God's sentinelsOver His gift of live, life-giving air,Yield of their huge, unutterable selves.Midsummer-manifold, each oneVoluminous, a labyrinth of life,They keep their greenest musings, and the dim dreamsThat haunt their leafier privacies,Dissembled, baffling the random gapeseed stillWith blank full-faces, or the innocent guileOf laughter flickering back from shine to shade,And disappearances of homing birds, And frolicsome freaksOf little boughs that frisk with little boughs.

But at the wordOf the ancient, sacerdotal Night,Night of the many secrets, whose effect—Transfiguring, hierophantic, dread—Themselves alone may fully apprehend,They tremble and are changed.In each, the uncouth individual soulLooms forth and gloomsEssential, and, their bodily presencesTouched with inordinate significance,Wearing the darkness like the liveryOf some mysterious and tremendous guild,They brood—they menace—they appal;Or the anguish of prophecy tears them, and they wringWild hands of warning in the faceOf some inevitable advance of doom;Or, each to the other bending, beckoning, signingAs in some monstrous market-place,They pass the news, these Gossips of the Prime,In that old speech their forefathersLearned on the lawns of Eden, ere they heard The troubled voice of EveNaming the wondering folk of Paradise.

Your sense is sealed, or you should hear them tellThe tale of their dim life, with allIts compost of experience: how the SunSpreads them their daily feast,Sumptuous, of light, firing them as with wine;Of the old Moon's fitful solicitudeAnd those mild messages the StarsDescend in silver silences and dews;Or what the sweet-breathing West,Wanton with wading in the swirl of the wheat,Said, and their leafage laughed;And how the wet-winged Angel of the RainCame whispering . . . whispering; and the gifts of the Year—The sting of the stirring sapUnder the wizardry of the young-eyed Spring,Their summer amplitudes of pomp,Their rich autumnal melancholy, and the shrill,Embittered housewiferyOf the lean Winter: all such things,And with them all the goodness of the Master, Whose right hand blesses with increase and life,Whose left hand honours with decay and death.

Thus under the constraint of NightThese gross and simple creatures,Each in his scores of rings, which rings are years,A servant of the Will!And God, the Craftsman, as He walksThe floor of His workshop, hearkens, full of cheerIn thus accomplishingThe aims of His miraculous artistry.