MOLE.

Tunnelled in solid blackness creeps

The old mole-soul, and wakes or sleeps,

He knows not which, but tunnels on

Through ages of oblivion;

Until at last the long constraint

Of each-hand wall is lost, and faint

Comes daylight creeping from afar,

And mole-work grows crepuscular.

Tunnel meets air and bursts; mole sees

Men hugely walking... or are they trees?

And far horizons smoking blue,

And chasing clouds for ever new?

Green hills, like lighted lamps aglow

Or quenching‘ neath the cloud-shadow;

Quenching and blazing turn by turn,

Spring's great green signals fitfully burn.

Mole travels on, but finds the steering

A harder task of pioneering

Than when he thridded through the strait

Blind catacombs that ancient fate

Had carved for him. Stupid and dumb

And blind and touchless he had come

A way without a turn; but here,

Under the sky, the passenger

Chooses his own best way; and mole

Distracted wanders, yet his hole

Regrets not much wherein he crept,

But runs, a joyous nympholept,

This way and that, by all made mad —

River nymph and oread,

Ocean's daughters and Lorelei,

Combing the silken mystery,

The glaucous gold of her rivery tresses —

Each haunts the traveller, each possesses

The drunken wavering soul awhile;

Then with a phantom's cock-crow smile

Mocks craving with sheer vanishment.

Mole-eyes grow hawk's: knowledge is lent

In grudging driblets that pay high

Unconscionable usury

To unrelenting life. Mole learns

To travel more secure; the turns

Of his long way less puzzling seem,

And all those magic forms that gleam

In airy invitation cheat

Less often than they did of old.

The earth slopes upward, fold by fold

Of quiet hills that meet the gold

Serenity of western skies.

Over the world's edge with clear eyes

Our mole transcendent sees his way

Tunnelled in light: he must obey

Necessity again and thrid

Close catacombs as erst he did,

Fate's tunnellings, himself must bore

Through the sunset's inmost core.

The guiding walls to each-hand shine

Luminous and crystalline;

And mole shall tunnel on and on,

Till night let fall oblivion.