Towards democracy

one

The Songs of the Birds 379

The rocks flow and the mountain shapes flow,

And the forests swim over the lands like cloud-shadows. The lines of the seeming-everlasting sea are changed, And its waves beat on unmapped phantom shores : ‘Not here, not here!’

All creatures fade from the embraces of their names, [And you and I, slow, slowly disentangling,]

The delicate hairbells quivering in the light,

The gorse, the heather, and the fox-gloves tall,

The meadows, and the river, rolling, fade:

Fade from their likenesses: fade crying ‘Follow!

Follow, for ever follow!’

Who hears, who sees?

Who hears the word of Nature?

The word of her eternal breathing, whispered wherever shali listen,

The word of the birds in the high trees calling,

Of the wind running over the grass,

The word of the glad prisoners, the tender footless

creatures, the plants of the earth,

Rising too, bright-eyed, out of their momentary masks? “Not here! not here!’

But over all the world, shadowing, shadowing :

The dream! the vast and ever present miracle of all time! The long-forgotten never-forgotten goal!

Over your own heart, out of its secretest depths :