A Tale

This youth too long has heard the break

    Of waters in a land of change.

    He goes to see what suns can make

    From soil more indurate and strange.

    He cuts what holds his days together

    And shuts him in, as lock on lock:

    The arrowed vane announcing weather,

    The tripping racket of a clock;

    Seeking, I think, a light that waits

  Still as a lamp upon a shelf, —

  A land with hills like rocky gates

  Where no sea leaps upon itself.

  But he will find that nothing dares

  To be enduring, save where, south

  Of hidden deserts, torn fire glares

  On beauty with a rusted mouth, —

  Where something dreadful and another

  Look quietly upon each other.