Forest Cathedrals

The forest cathedrals are tolling their loud leaves.

A blue wind blows through the green towers of trance,

Waking them to a song of secrecies

Between the dark earth and the dazzling sun.

What name is murmered by those trembling bells

That move to no religion of man's heart?

We of the fetterless feet are homeless ever.

We quest a paradise that looms beyond.

Our ache is an Infinite afar and above.

Away from the soil we strain, leaving behind

The dumb deep whence our clay has sprung towards heaven.

Our souls have cut us free from the earth's dream:

Rootless our bodies roam, answering their will,

And when the souls step out into the unknown

Our bodies drop back, careless if they fail.

But here in the wood-glooms a reverie

That craves no earth-escape stands Vigilling.

Here too is failure of the body's strength

Unless some vast elixir of ecstasy

Falls in the future from the implored Inane;

Yet every branch's call, the whole sap's cry

And the tense yearning of the knotted bole

Drag with relentless roots the earth to the sky!

Or else the sky is sought with a hundred arms

For no response of saviour grace to lift

The striving life apart from the dull dust

And merge it in a timeless quietude:

Those seeking arms fling high their wide embrace

To draw the spirit of ether and of fire

Down into earth through the root's plunging power. . .

O blue wind, blow your most awaking breath,

O green leaves, toll loudest your mystery,

O blind clay, send up your profoundest pull,

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O bright sun, slip like a seed most intense

Into our hearts that a new truth may spring

Like a great tree whose love wants heaven for earth!

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