Man Seeks to Cage Delight

Man seeks to cage delight

In vain, not seeing

That her strong-pinioned flight

Is all her being;

And sets about to frame

Dead fantasies-

Eternity, infinity-to tame

The ecstasy that flies.

And vexed by bonds of space,

By veils of time,

He dreams a special grace,

A power sublime

In these abstractions: vain

Unbodied signs,

Frail shadows of the ecstasy and pain

With which Orion shines,

And the rose unwinds

Each scented fold;

With which Man grows and finds

The note of gold

Hid in the heart of laughter,

Heart of sighs,

In measured golden music flying after

The golden voice that flies;

In love from marble wrought;

In love that chimes

Over clear-ringing thought

And well-tuned rhymes;

In love become a fact

Keen, swift, and fell,

When the whole self leaps forward to the act,

Clean as the whistling shell.

For when the body and mind,

Fused in one fire,

Leap like tiger on hind

On the one desire,

Then the careful thoughts and schemes

Of barren years

Go down into the pit of ruined dreams

And crumbling hopes and fears.

For to be single, sure

In one swift flash,

Pure flame or diamond pure;

To slough the ash

Of things burnt out; to gain

The fountain's powers

Gathered in little compass to attain

Its crown of glittering showers:

Martin Armstrong

This is the eternal, this

The infinite,

The gods' immortal kiss

Set warm and bright

On heroes' brows; in these

Brief moments' span

Shall man outlive the thousand centuries

Of the blind life of man. :

Therefore when I am sunk

To earth again,

And thirsty earth has drunk

My joy and pain,

T shall not know or need

Pity or praise

Or thanks or love from you, the human seed

Sprung out of later days.

For on the burning crest

Of great extremes,

Where the soul meets breast to breast

Its highest dreams,

Safe from stern fate's decrees,

Irrevocably

I have possessed and savored to the lees

My own eternity.

Martin Armstrong