White Stallion

White stallion champing the barley

Of silent bliss—

Gathering into thy heart's

Vermilion abyss

A power outrunning time,

As if to a witching west

Out of a wizard east

Racing were one with rest,

A calm that suddenly views

Here grown to There,

A wide-awake sleep devouring

Aeons with a single stare!

Fastest of all the flames

Born of the Cave beyond sight,

Bringing on starry nostrils

A neigh that is night—

Carrier of immortality

Between blue wings,

Yet hooved with a hurry to spurn

Imperishable things—

On all the tracks of truth

Speed without peer,

But unappeased by winning

God's Derby every year!

O never-ageing stallion,

Down to lean-breasted earth

Thou comest like a lover

Through the low gate of birth,

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Renouncing the vast triumphs,

Graciously gone to stud

For mixing nameless nectar

With sobbing mortal blood!

Alone among the godheads

Thy soul was never drunk

With self-infinitudes,

But saw the Den far-sunk

Where weak yet restive fetlocks

Were secrets without keys,

Unknowing why for all the weakness

The running would not cease—

Why the dim quiver of fatigue

Was a tremble of blind joy

As if behind the fallen ears

There rose a heavenly "Hoy!"

Thou on thy thunderous hill

Couldst hear the strange despair

In those four tottering mysteries

Of the black-bodied mare.

Many a groping steed

Sought her for dam

Of darkling colts and fillies,

But like an oriflamme

The mane on her neck of night

Fluttered to a wind of dream,

And never from her heart ran forth

The future's shadowy stream.

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But now the lives to come

Take singing start

In the crimson distances

Of the deep heart.

The laugh of the mountain Cave,

The sigh of the Den below

Have married their mystic sounds:

Their children shall grow

A wonder-dappled pack,

Love's rich surpris

Even to the gaze of grandeur

That is paradise!

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