Why yes; a man indeed had furnished us
With more occasions to be useful to him.
God knows how readily we should have seized them.
But then he would have nothing, wanted nothing
Was in himself wrapped up, and self-sufficient,
As angels are.
Our eyes
are limpid
drops of water.
In each drop exists
a tiny sign
of our genius
which has given life to cold iron.
Our eyes
are limpid
drops of water
merged absolutely in the Ocean
that you could hardly recognize
the drop in a block of ice
in a boiling pan.
The masterpiece of these eyes
the fulfillment of their genius
the living iron.
In these eyes
filled with limpid
pure tears
had failed to emerge
from the infinite Ocean
if the strength
had dispersed,
we could never have mated
the dynamo with the turbine,
never have moved
those steel mountains in water
easily
as if made of hollow wood.
The masterpiece of these eyes
the fulfillment of their genius
of our unified labour
the living iron.
With shouts the torrents down the gorges go,
And storms are formed behind the storm we feel:
The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel.
Calmly take what ill betideth;
Patience wins the crown at length:
Rich repayment him abideth
Who endures in quiet strength.
Brave the tamer of the lion;
Brave whom conquered kingdoms praise;
Bravest he who rules his passions,
Who his own impatience sways.
And something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and I suddenly saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open.
We never know how high we are
Till we are asked to rise
And then if we are true to plan
Our statures touch the skies -
The Heroism we recite
Would be a normal thing
Did not ourselves the Cubits warp
For fear to be a King.
At bidding of a Will, to which we bend
(and must), but only dimly apprehend,
great processes march on, as Time unrolls
from dark beginnings to uncertain goals;
and as on page o'er-written without clue,
with script and limning packed of various hue,
an endless multitude of forms appear,
some grim, some frail, some beautiful, some queer,
each alien, except as kin from one
remote Origo, gnat, man, stone, and sun.
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
I am not without you,
that you are with me from the moment I wake until the moment I fall asleep,
that it's you when the wind caresses me,
that it's your voice I hear in the silence,
you whom I see when I close my eyes,
you who make me laugh and sing when I know no one else is around.
And the sleeper, eye unlidding,
Heard a voice for ever bidding
Much farewell to Dolly Gray;
Turning weary on his truckle-
Bed he heard the honey-suckle
Lauded in apiarian lay.