Tower of Ivory/Realities
REALITIES
I
The people of the earth go down,
Each with his wealth of dream,
To barter in the market town
A star for a torch's gleam;
To barter hope for certitude,
And mysteries of love
For passion's little interlude;
And joy for the laugh thereof.
They sell their treasuries of dreams
For dream's realities,
Their wealth of fairy quinqueremes
For ships of salter seas,
Their gods for shapes of tortured stone,
Their faith for shrines that fall,
The unknown for the touched and known,
Life at the living's call.
They barter songs for the throat that sings,
Frail dawns for drowsing days,
Eternal moods for brittle Things,
Thrush notes for roundelays,
The flame of thorn and eglantine
For fallow labored lands,
Tall lilies touched of Proserpine
For lilies of fair hands.
They buy and pass no more that way;
Their eyes forget the star,
Forget the mysteries of May,
Forget the dim and far.
They build them tower and high wall
To bolt against the spring,
To shutter out the mavis' call,
And heart's remembering.
II
Drops in a slow decay.
And Youth, a white moth fluttering,
Blows with the wind away;
And walls and towers made of hands,
And faith, and roundelay,
And laughter, and red fallow lands,
Pass like the withered spray.
And certitude grows rank with ease,
And idols turn to mold,
And passion's cup holds bitter lees,
And pale, soft hands grow cold;
All shimmering reality,
The world that shines and seems,
The earth, the mountains and the sea,
Are shadows of old dreams.
III
Is fallen into dust,
When plow and sword and fame and worth
Are rotted with black rust,
The Dream, still deathless, still unborn,
Blows in the hearts of men,
The star, the mystery, the morn,
Bloom agelessly again.
Older than Time with ages shod,
The matins of a thrush,
Deeper than reverence of God,
The summer evening's hush.
Than trampling death is grief more strong,
Love than its avatars,
And echo of an echoed song
Shall shake the eternal stars.