The Fish
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n a cool curving world he liesAnd ripples with dark ecstasies.The kind luxurious lapse and stealShapes all his universe to feelAnd know and be; the clinging streamCloses his memory, glooms his dream,Who lips the roots o' the shore, and glidesSuperb on unreturning tides.Those silent waters weave for himA fluctuant mutable world and dim,Where wavering masses bulge and gapeMysterious, and shape to shapeDies momently through whorl and hollow,And form and line and solid followSolid and line and form to dreamFantastic down the eternal stream;An obscure world, a shifting world,Bulbous, or pulled to thin, or curled,Or serpentine, or driving arrows,Or serene slidings, or March narrows.There slipping wave and shore are one,And weed and mud. No ray of sun,But glow to glow fades down the deep(As dream to unknown dream in sleep);Shaken translucency illumesThe hyaline of drifting glooms;The strange soft-handed depth subduesDrowned colour there, but black to hues,As death to living, decomposes --Red darkness of the heart of roses,Blue brilliant from dead starless skies,And gold that lies behind the eyes,The unknown unnameable sightless whiteThat is the essential flame of night,Lustreless purple, hooded green,The myriad hues that lie betweenDarkness and darkness! . . . And all's one.Gentle, embracing, quiet, dun,The world he rests in, world he knows,Perpetual curving. Only -- growsAn eddy in that ordered falling,A knowledge from the gloom, a callingWeed in the wave, gleam in the mud --The dark fire leaps along his blood;Dateless and deathless, blind and still,The intricate impulse works its will;His woven world drops back; and he,Sans providence, sans memory,Unconscious and directly driven,Fades to some dank sufficient heaven. O world of lips, O world of laughter,Where hope is fleet and thought flies after,Of lights in the clear night, of criesThat drift along the wave and riseThin to the glittering stars above,You know the hands, the eyes of love!The strife of limbs, the sightless clinging,The infinite distance, and the singingBlown by the wind, a flame of sound,The gleam, the flowers, and vast aroundThe horizon, and the heights above --You know the sigh, the song of love! But there the night is close, and thereDarkness is cold and strange and bare;And the secret deeps are whisperless;And rhythm is all deliciousness;And joy is in the throbbing tide,Whose intricate fingers beat and glideIn felt bewildering harmoniesOf trembling touch; and music isThe exquisite knocking of the blood.Space is no more, under the mud;His bliss is older than the sun.Silent and straight the waters run.The lights, the cries, the willows dim,And the dark tide are one with him.
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