Ode To Fear

Variation on a Theme by Collins

Let the day glare: O memory, your tread

Beats to the pulse of suffocating night-

Night peering from his dark but fire-lit head

Burns on the day his tense and secret light.

Now they dare not to gloss your savage dream,

O beast of the heart, those saints who cursed your name;

You are the current of the frozen stream,

Shadow invisible, ambushed and vigilant flame.

My eldest companion present in solitude,

Watch-dog of Thebes when the blind hero strove:

You, omniscient, at the cross-roads stood

When Laius, the slain dotard, drenched the grove.

Now to the eye of prophecy immune,

Fading and harried, you stalk us in the street

From the recesses of the August noon,

Alert world over, crouched on the air's feet.

You are our surety to immortal life,

God's hatred of the universal stain-

The heritage, O Fear, of ancient strife

Compounded with the tissue of the vein.

And I when all is said have seen your form

Most agile and most treacherous to the world

When, on a child's long day, a dry storm

Burst on the cedars, lit by the sun and hurled!