O Who Shall Tame the Tarpan?*

A who shall tame the tarpan,

Horse of wild Tartary?

No word of wisdom in his ear

Blows out the fire in his eye!

He tosses off the saddle,

He never brooks the bit—

His snort at the earth comes clamouring

For a freedom infinite.

Out of the wastes of passion

He brings within his soul

A brutal beauty none can break:

Earth-life is not his goal.

He shakes up all our slumber,

He tramples on our light;

So deep his hoof-prints that they seem

A scorn of heaven's height.

But the vast and pathless places

He longs for are a love

Lost when he wandered into earth:

Wideness now waits above.

So, like a scorching chaos

He gallops through our mind,

And who shall teach him to forget

The abyss he has left behind?

We try to make him serve us;

But how can ever the pale

Gleams that we catch of infinite truth

Outshine his scarlet gale?

*"Tarpan": accent on the first syllable; "a" in the first syllable sounded as in "far," in the second as in "man".

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O there must come a luster

Blown like a golden wind

To bear down his own fury of flame

And dazzle his beauty blind!

Alone a giant splendour

Beyond the soul that is man's,

A limitless liberty that falls

Out of the untracked trance

Which overhangs the little

Seizures of human thought,

Can leap secure on that bare back:

Suddenly, secretly caught

By a strength from unknown summits,

Dropping with stunning weight,

The thunderous magnificence

Is led unto our gate.

The burning beast and radiant

Rider grow one surprise

Of rapturous harmony that rhymes

Hell's heat with paradise.

But never can this marvel

Suffuse our common day

Until the safeties and the shames

We treasure are thrown away.

For here is naked beauty,

Stark impulse with no fright,

And here truth naked of all mind,

The Eternal's pure self-sight!

20-7-48

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