The train in running across the weald has fallen into a
steadier stroke
So
even, it beats like silence, and sky and earth in one
unbroke
Embrace of
darkness lie around, and crushed between them all the
loose
And littered
lettering of leaves and hills and houses closed, and we can
use
The open book of
landscape no more, for the covers of darkness have shut
upon
Its written
pages, and sky and earth and all between are closed in
one.
And we are smothered between the darkness, we close our
eyes and say “Hush!” we try
To escape in sleep the terror of this immense
deep darkness, and we lie
Wrapped up for sleep. And then, dear God, from
out of the twofold darkness, red
As if from the womb the moon arises, as if the
twin-walled darkness had bled
In one great spasm of birth and given us this
new, red moon-rise
Which lies on the knees of the darkness bloody, and makes us hide
our eyes.
The train beats frantic in haste, and struggles
away
From this ruddy
terror of birth that has slid down
From out of the loins of night to flame our
way
With fear; but
God, I am glad, so glad that I drown
My terror with joy of confirmation, for
now
Lies God all red
before me, and I am glad,
As the Magi were when they saw the rosy
brow
Of the Infant
bless their constant folly which had
Brought them thither to God: for now I
know
That the Womb
is a great red passion whence rises all
The shapeliness that decks us
here-below:
Yea like
the fire that boils within this ball
Of earth, and quickens all herself with
flowers,
God burns
within the stiffened clay of us;
And every flash of thought that we and
ours
Send up to
heaven, and every movement, does
Fly like a spark from this God-fire of
passion;
And pain of
birth, and joy of begetting,
And sweat of labour, and the meanest
fashion
Of fretting
or of gladness, but the jetting
Of a trail of the great fire against the
sky
Where we can see
it, a jet from the innermost fire:
And even in the watery shells that
lie
Alive within the
oozy under-mire,
A
grain of this same fire I can descry.
And then within the screaming birds that fly
Across the lightning when the
storm leaps higher;
And then the swirling, flaming folk that try
To come like fire-flames at
their fierce desire,
They are as earth’s dread, spurting flames that ply
Awhile and gush forth death and
their expire.
And
though it be love’s wet blue eyes that cry
To hot love to relinquish its
desire,
Still in
their depths I see the same red spark
As rose tonight upon us from the
dark.