II. FROM THE CREST.

So through the squalor, till the sky unfolds

To right and left its fringes, penned no more,

A thin canal,‘ twixt shore and ugly shore

Of hovels, poured contiguous from the moulds

Of Gothic horror. Town is left at last,

Save for the tentacles that probe,... a squat

Dun house or two, allotments, plot on plot

Of cabbage, jejune, ripe or passed,

Chequering with sick yellow or verdigris

The necropolitan ground; and neat paved ways

That edge the road... the town's last nerves... and cease,

As if in sudden shame, where hedges raise

Their dusty greenery on either hand.

Their path mounts slowly up the hill;

And, as they walk, to right and left expand

The plain and the golden uplands and the blue

Faint smoke of distances that fade from view;

And at their feet, remote and still?

The city spreads itself.

That glabrous dome that lifts itself so grand,

There in the marish, is the omphalos,

The navel, umbo, middle, central boss

Of the unique, sole, true Cloud-Cuckoo Land.

Drowsy with Sunday bells and Sunday beer

Afoam in silver rumkins, there it basks,

Thinking of labours past and future tasks

And pondering on the end, forever near,

Yet ever distant as the rainbow's spring.

For still in Cuckoo-Land they're labouring,

With hopes undamped and undiscouraged hearts:

A little musty, but superb, they sit,

Piecing a god together bit by bit

Out of the chaos of his sundered parts.

Unmoved, nay pitying, they view the grins

And lewd grimaces of the folk that jeer...

The vulgar herd, gross monster at the best,

Obscenum Mobile, the uttermost sphere,

Alas, too much the mover of the rest,

Though they turn sungates to its widdershins...

And in some half a million years perhaps

God may at last be made... a new, true Pan,

An Isis templed in the soul of man,

An Aphrodite with her thousand paps

Streaming eternal wisdom.

Yes, and man's vessel, all pavilioned out

With silk and flags in the fair wind astream,

Shall make the port at last, with a great shout

Ringing from all her decks, and rocking there shall dream

For ever, and dream true... calm in those roads

As lovers’ souls at evening, when they swim

Between the despairing sunset and the dim

Blue memories of mountains lost to sight

But, like half fancied, half remembered episodes

Of childhood, guessed at through the veils of night.

And the worn sailors at the mast who heard

The first far bells and knew the sound for home,

Who marked the land-weeds and the sand-stained foam

And through the storm-blast saw a wildered bird

Seek refuge at the mast-head... these at last

Shall earn due praise when all the hubbub's past;

And Cuckoo-Landers not a few shall prove.

You have fast closed the temple gates;

You stand without in the noon-tides glow,

But the innermost darkness, where God waits,

You do not know, you cannot know.