The Sage He Quoth

Where do the answers lie? how can
That spring I tap I know is there?
How can for something that no man has seen
Like a starved dog most fretfully I pine?
From whence these elfin questions born?
Some little god perhaps he shapes them on a forge,
Or carves them of a pliant charméd wood;
Maybe he builds them like toy boats
And sets them on the ocean of the human mind
To smuggle pearls between its coasts.

Of a willow-woman have I read,
As beautiful as a statue of jade.

There is no man but he has heard of her;
From sight thereof the West itself was born;
But for a yellow lock of Helen’s hair,
No danger will a man not dare.
Who is the One that will me make
Into a living draught all thirst may slake?
There was a poet lawfully was wed
To the bright spirit of a peony.

The Sage he quoth:
Love is stronger than death.

An oracle in distant lands I sought,
But He is everywhere through whom the World was wrought;
The answer’s in the question, lad,
So ran an old man’s thought
Who by a leash a great black cat
Did drag the year throughout;
One thinks of Basho, whose delight
In falling petals equaled that
Of angels in their flight;
And of Marvell, the Platonist,
Among the orange blossoms
With golden melons at his feet,
Dreaming of slender nymphs
And of the Judgment Seat.