The Moondial

Iron and granite and rust,

In a crumbling garden old,

Where the roses are paler than dust

And the lilies are green with gold,

Under the racing moon,

Inconscious of war or crime,

In a strange and ghostly noon,

It marks the oblivion of time.

The shadow steals through its arc,

Still as a frosted breath,

Fitful, gleaming, and dark

As the cold frustration of death.

But where the shadow may fall,

Whether to hurry or stay,

It matters little at all

To those who come that way.

For this is the dial of them

That have forgotten the world,

No more through the mad day-dream

Of striving and reason hurled.

Their heart as a little child

Only remembers the worth

Of beauty and love and the wild

Dark peace of the elder earth.

It registers the morrows

Of lovers and winds and streams,

And the face of a thousand sorrows

At the postern gate of dreams.

When the first low laughter smote

Through Lilith, the mother of joy,

And died and revived from the throat

Of Helen, the harpstring of Troy,

And wandering on through the years,

From the sobbing rain and the sea,

Caught sound of the world's gray tears

Or sense of the sun's gold glee,

Whenever the wild control

Burned out to a mortal kiss,

And the shuddering storm-swept soul

Climbed to its acme of bliss,

The green-gold light of the dead

Stood still in purple space,

And a record blind and dread

Was graved on the dial's face.

And once in a thousand years

Some youth who loved so well

The gods had loosed him from fears

In a vision of blameless hell,

Has gone to the dial to read

Those signs in the outland tongue,

Written beyond the need

Of the simple and the young.

For immortal life, they say,

Were his who, loving so,

Could explain the writing away

As a legend written in snow.

But always his innocent eyes

Were frozen into the stone.

From that awful first surprise

His soul must return alone.

In the morning there he lay

Dead in the sun's warm gold.

And no man knows to this day

What the dim moondial told.