Malade - Free Audiobook

DREAMS OLD AND NASCENT

NASCENT

MY world is a painted fresco, where coloured shapes
     Of old, ineffectual lives linger blurred and warm;
     An endless tapestry the past has woven drapes
     The halls of my life, compelling my soul to conform.

     The surface of dreams is broken,
     The picture of the past is shaken and scattered.
     Fluent, active figures of men pass along the railway,
         and I am woken
     From the dreams that the distance flattered.

     Along the railway, active figures of men.
     They have a secret that stirs in their limbs as they
         move
     Out of the distance, nearer, commanding my dreamy
         world.

     Here in the subtle, rounded flesh
     Beats the active ecstasy.
     In the sudden lifting my eyes, it is clearer,
     The fascination of the quick, restless Creator moving
         through the mesh
     Of men, vibrating in ecstasy through the rounded
         flesh.

     Oh my boys, bending over your books,
     In you is trembling and fusing
     The creation of a new-patterned dream, dream of a
         generation:
     And I watch to see the Creator, the power that
         patterns the dream.

     The old dreams are beautiful, beloved, soft-toned,
         and sure,
     But the dream-stuff is molten and moving mysteriously,
     Alluring my eyes; for I, am I not also dream-stuff,
     Am I not quickening, diffusing myself in the pattern,
         shaping and shapen?

     Here in my class is the answer for the great yearning:
     Eyes where I can watch the swim of old dreams
         reflected on the molten metal of dreams,
     Watch the stir which is rhythmic and moves them
         all as a heart-beat moves the blood,
     Here in the swelling flesh the great activity working,
     Visible there in the change of eyes and the mobile
         features.

     Oh the great mystery and fascination of the unseen
         Shaper,
     The power of the melting, fusing Force—heat,
         light, all in one,
     Everything great and mysterious in one, swelling and
         shaping the dream in the flesh,
     As it swells and shapes a bud into blossom.

     Oh the terrible ecstasy of the consciousness that I
         am life!
     Oh the miracle of the whole, the widespread, labouring
         concentration
     Swelling mankind like one bud to bring forth the
         fruit of a dream,
     Oh the terror of lifting the innermost I out of the
         sweep of the impulse of life,
     And watching the great Thing labouring through the
         whole round flesh of the world;
     And striving to catch a glimpse of the shape of the
         coming dream,
     As it quickens within the labouring, white-hot metal,
     Catch the scent and the colour of the coming dream,
     Then to fall back exhausted into the unconscious,
         molten life!