THE FORESELF

I had a self and life

        Before this life and self.

When the moon makes woods rife

        With possible fay or elf,

There comes in me a dreaming

That is like a light gleaming

        Somewhere in me away,

On seas that I have known

And placeless lands that own

        Another kind of day.

I dream, and as a blast

        Fans into fire an ember,

My heart gleams with a past

        That I cannot remember.

And as the ember's glowing

Is not fire but fire's showing,

        I waste the empty pelf

Of my mute sense of me.

As rain within the sea

        I fade within myself.

There are mazes of I.

        I am my unknown being.

I have, I know not why,

        Another kind of seeing

(Other than this vain vision

That is my soul's division

        From what girds sight about)

Where to see is to know,

Whose life is faith, and woe

        Fled by the hand of Doubt.

My life has happy hours:

        'Tis when I feel not living;

And, as the scent of flowers

        Round flowers a flower‑soul weaving

That is a corporate spirit,

From myself I inherit,

        My soul's blood's spirit‑air,

A foreself and inself

Which is the being‑pelf

        That with God's loss I share.