Free Collected Poems by William Alexander Percy Page A

beautiful,
                             The incense-tainted leader of the Nine,
        With dim, averted eyes and prescience of pain —
    Knowing Thee frail and perishable, fit for youth.
    The gardens of the air were mine to walk with Thee,
                                            Dewed with the stars,
        Swept with the tinted splendors of the suns.
        Yet was the bliss too blissful to commend,
        And Thou, I knew, wert half divine, no more.
                                            Thro’ the live luxury
                             Of that aerial rapture always
        Crashed the vast battle sounds of earth,
        Where, tho’ the many died, myself died not,
        Where, tho’ the many bled, myself unwounded went.
                             The pagan god, Thyself half-seen,
                                            Is not enough, O God!
        Here, on the breaking verge of youth,
    Secureless from the fringes of the forward storm,
        I face the riven grey and call to Thee,
                             O God of righteousness, to Thee!
    Must I forswear song and the darling rapture,
    Thy gifts, tho’ taintless of the earth, yet beautiful?
    And bend me to the living of the life, half-armed,
    Lacking not valiance, but the accoutrements wherewith
                             Valiance may save itself from scorn?
        O God, hear Thou my faith which is as rock:
                   Thou art! All else is circumstance,
                             Random and unessential incident —
                                            Save this: in me Thou art.
        And so my moment wheels to its sure end
    Huge with divinity, its orbit as the sun’s,
                   Accounted and accountable as all
        The chaos-floating, golden universe.
                                                      But mine to mar;
                                            Mine to deliver unto death
        True to the disposition of its essence,
        Or in fulfillment bastard utterly.
                                            Eternal Thou; but I
        Swift-passing, in the passing powerful
                             Myself to darken with deliberate choice.
                                            One life, but one, is mine.
                                            I would not have it pass
                             Failing its high, potential utmost,
    A quivering of music-shaken strings — no more.
    Giver of bliss and pain, of song and prayer,
                                            Thou God that dost demand
    Single allegiance of the soul that sees
                             Thee dual only and at enmity —
        Hearken my choice, my supplication hark.
                             Tear out the rapture and the wings —
                                            Take back thy gift of song —
        Take, take the madness of the olive and the vine
                             With all their ecstasies, unless they be
    Not oil for gleaming of the games and clustered gold,
                   Not wine for leafy laughter of the feast,
    But aid and chrismed healing for the wounds
        Of them that smitten lie on that broad way
                   Known to the dusty sandals from