Immeasurable haze: <br />The desert valley spreads <br />Up golden river-beds <br />As if in other days. <br />Trees rise and thin away, <br />And past the trees, the hills, <br />Pure line and shade of dust, <br />Bear witness to our wills: <br />We see them, for we must; <br />Calm in deceit, they stay. <br /> <br />High noon returns the mind <br />Upon its local fact: <br />Dry grass and sand; we find <br />No vision to distract. <br />Low in the summer heat, <br />Naming old graves, are stones <br />Pushed here and there, the seat <br />Of nothing, and the bones <br />Beneath are similar: <br />Relics of lonely men, <br />Brutal and aimless, then, <br />As now, irregular. <br /> <br />These are thy fallen sons, <br />Thou whom I try to reach. <br />Thou whom the quick eye shuns, <br />Thou dost elude my speech. <br />But when I go from sense <br />And trace thee down in thought, <br />I meet thee, then, intense <br />And know thee as I ought. <br />But thou art mind alone, <br />And I, alas, am bound <br />Pure mind to flesh and bone <br />And flesh and bone to ground. <br /> <br />These had no thought: at most <br />Dark faith and blinding earth. <br />Where is the trammeled ghost? <br />Was there another birth? <br />Only one certainty <br />Beside thine unfleshed eye, <br />Beside the spectral tree, <br />Can I discern: these die. <br />All of this stir of age, <br />Though it elude my sense <br />Into what heritage <br />I know not, seems to fall <br />Quiet beyond recall, <br />Into irrelevance.<br /><br />Yvor Winters<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-the-holy-spirit/
