SECOND SIGHT

Whene'er thou dost undo

Thy dark, strange hair before the wind

And the wind takes it up and makes it woo

Tumult and violence in the way it sweeps

Along the air, mingling, unmingling, undefined

In the snake‑like madness it keeps.

Then I do know

That somewhere whence dreams come

And passions go,

Somewhere in that world contrary to this,

Yet landscaped, peopled as this is,

In a great southern sea

There is a storm and a hurled wreck

On rising rocks that cannot reck

For human misery.

The two things are but one.

Thy floating hair is that great ship undone

In a tossed, turbulent, dashed ocean.

Neither precedeth nor doth cause the other

Nor are the two as brother and brother,

But absolutely one, samely the same,

They have somehow an equal name

Where speech is of the essence of what is.

A real sight, like God's, should see the kiss

Of the wind through thy hair and the far storm

One thing, - ­yet two things because we see two

When we conceive them one, the double form

Coming to oneness in what we construe.

Therefore I grieve when thou letst thy hair take

The wind upon its long, thin, changing fingers,

For that sight of me that translates that to

The sterner meaning in what world I know

Only through what in me is not here awake, -

That sight of that mad wreck visibly lingers

And does in my imagination ache.

Alas! all things are linked, and we know not

Half the contents of our each casual thought.

We never see save one little dreamed bit

Of each feeling we have; we pass through it

Like rapid travellers that scarce can see

What they pass by and what they see see erringly.

What is the meaning of my writing this?

Nothing, save that this is,

I know not why, something I know and must

Utter, the purpose of it being with

That secret Being that made my body of dust

Bear my soul's ignored presence, and that breath

Of life that survives my each moment's death.