Histrion

Uncollected Poems 1912-1917

No man hath dared to write this thing as yet,And yet I know, how that the souls of all men greatAt times pass athrough us,And we are melted into them, and are notSave reflexions of their souls.Thus am I Dante for a space and amOne Francois Villon, ballad-lord and thief,Or am such holy ones I may not writeLest blasphemy be writ against my name;This for an instant and the flame is gone.

‘Tis as in midmost us there glows a sphereTranslucent, molten gold, that is the “I”And into this some form projects itself:Christus, or John, or eke the Florentine;And as the clear space is not if a form’sImposed thereon,So cease we from all being for the time,And these, the Masters of the Soul, live on.

“Histrion” Uncollected Poems 1912-1917