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A
kind old nun in a white hood replies;
The
children learn to cipher and to sing,
To
study reading-books and histories,
5 To cut
and sew, be neat in everything
In
the best modern way — the children's eyes
In
momentary wonder stare upon
A
sixty-year-old smiling public man.
I
dream of a Ledaean body, bent
10 Above a
sinking fire, a tale that she
Told
of a harsh reproof, or trivial event
That
changed some childish day to tragedy —
Told,
and it seemed that our two natures blent
Into
a sphere from youthful sympathy,
15 Or
else, to alter Plato's parable,
Into
the yolk and white of the one shell.
III
And
thinking of that fit of grief or rage
I
look upon one child or t'other there
And
wonder if she stood so at that age —
For
even daughters of the swan can share
5
Something of every paddler's heritage —
And
had that colour upon cheek or hair,
And
thereupon my heart is driven wild:
She
stands before me as a living child.
Her
present image floats into the mind —
10 Did
Quattrocento finger fashion it
Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind
And
took a mess of shadows for its meat?
And I
though never of Ledaean kind
Had
pretty plumage once — enough of that,
15 Better
to smile on all that smile, and show
There
is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.
What
youthful mother, a shape upon her lap
Honey
of generation had betrayed,
And
that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape
20 As
recollection or the drug decide,
Would
think her Son, did she but see that shape
With
sixty or more winters on its head,
A
compensation for the pang of his birth,
Or
the uncertainty of his setting forth?
25 Plato
thought nature but a spume that plays
Upon
a ghostly paradigm of things;
Solider Aristotle played the taws
Upon
the bottom of a king of kings;
World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras
30
Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings
What
a star sang and careless Muses heard:
Old
clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.
VII
Both nuns and mothers worship images,
But thos the candles light are not as those
That animate a mother's reveries,
But keep a marble or a bronze repose.
5 And yet they too break hearts — O presences
That passion, piety or affection knows,
And that all heavenly glory symbolise —
O self-born mockers of man's enterprise;
VIII
Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul.
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
5 O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
Reading: Harold Bloom, Among School-children
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