The Testament of Beauty - A Poem in Four Books - Livres de poche

THE TESTAMENT O F BEAUTY - 1929 - CONTENTS I INTRODUCTION . p. I I1 SELFHOOD . 37 111 BREED . 81 IV ETI-IICK . . I31 T H E T E S T A M E N T O F B E A U T Y BOOK I - - Introduction -- M ORTAL Prudence, handmaid of divine Providence, hath inscrutable reckoning with Fate and Fortune We sail a changeful sea through halcyon days and storm, and when the ship laboureth, our stedfast purpose trembles like as the compass in a binnacle. Our stability is but balance, and conduct lies in masterful administration of the unforeseen. Twas late in my long journey, when I had clomb to where the path was narrowing and the company few, a glow of childlike wonder enthrald me, as if my sense 10 had come to a new birth purified, my mind enrapt re-awakening to a fresh initiation of life with like surprise of joy as any man may know who rambling wide hath turnd, resting on some hill-top to view the plain he has left, and seeth it now out-spredd mappd at his feet, a landscape so by beauty estranged he scarce wil ken familiar haunts, nor his own home, maybe, where far it lieth, small as a faded thought. Or as I well remember one highday in June bright on the seaward South-downs, where I had come afar 20 on a wild garden planted years agone, and fenced thickly within live-beechen walls the season it was of prodigal gay blossom, and mans skill had made a fair-orderd husbandry of thatt nativ pleasaunce But had ther been no more than earths wild loveliness, the blue sky and soft air and the unmown flowersprent lawns, I would hav lain me down and longd, as then I did, to lie there ever indolently undisturbd, and watch the common flowers that starrd the fine grass of the wold, waving in gay display their gold-headsto the sun, 30 each telling of its own inconscient happiness, each type a faultless essence of Gods will, such gems as magic master-minds in painting or music threw aside once for mans regard or disregard 2 things supreme in C emselves, eternal, unnumberd in the unexplored necessities of Life and Love. To such a mood I had come, by what charm I know not, where on thatt upland path I was pacing alone and yet was nothing new to me, only all was vivid and significant that had been dormant or dead as if in a museum the fossils on their shelves should come to life suddenly, or a winter rose-bed burst into crowded holiday of scent and bloom. I felt the domination of Natures secret urge, and happy escape therein as when in boyhood once from the rattling workshops of a great factory conducted into the engine-room I stood in face of the quiet driving power, that fast in nether cave seated, set all the floors a-quiver, a thousand looms throbbing and jennies dancing and I felt at heart a kinship with it and sympathy, as children wil with amicable monsters for in truth the mind is indissociable from what it contemplates, as thirst and generous wine are to a man that drinketh nor kenneth whether his pleasur is more in his desire or in the savor of the rich grape that allays it. Mans Reason is in such deep insolvency to sense, that tho she guide his highest flight heavnward, and teach him dignity morals manners and human comfort, she can delicatly and dangerously bedizen 60 the rioting joys that fringe the sad pathways of Hell...