The Carver In Stone

He was a man with wide and patient eyes,     Grey, like the drift of twitch-fires blown in June,     That, without fearing, searched if any wrong     Might threaten from your heart. Grey eyes he had     Under a brow was drawn because he knew     So many seasons to so many pass     Of upright service, loyal, unabased     Before the world seducing, and so, barren     Of good words praising and thought that mated his.     He carved in stone. Out of his quiet life     He watched as any faithful seaman charged     With tidings of the myriad faring sea,     And thoughts and premonitions through his mind     Sailing as ships from strange and storied lands     His hungry spirit held, till all they were     Found living witness in the chiselled stone.     Slowly out of the dark confusion, spread     By life's innumerable venturings     Over his brain, he would triumph into the light     Of one clear mood, unblemished of the blind     Legions of errant thought that cried about     His rapt seclusion: as a pearl unsoiled,     Nay, rather washed to lonelier chastity,     In gritty mud. And then would come a bird,     A flower, or the wind moving upon a flower,     A beast at pasture, or a clustered fruit,     A peasant face as were the saints of old,     The leer of custom, or the bow of the moon     Swung in miraculous poise - some stray from the world     Of things created by the eternal mind     In joy articulate. And his perfect mood     Would dwell about the token of God's mood,     Until in bird or flower or moving wind     Or flock or shepherd or the troops of heaven     It sprang in one fierce moment of desire     To visible form.     Then would his chisel work among the stone,     Persuading it of petal or of limb     Or starry curve, till risen anew there sang     Shape out of chaos, and again the vision     Of one mind single from the world was pressed     Upon the daily custom of the sky     Or field or the body of man.                                  His people     Had many gods for worship. The tiger-god,     The owl, the dewlapped bull, the running pard,     The camel, and the lizard of the slime,     The ram with quivering fleece and fluted horn,     The crested eagle and the doming bat     Were sacred. And the king and his high priests     Decreed a temple, wide on columns huge,     Should top the cornlands to the sky's far line.     They bade the carvers carve along the walls     Images of their gods, each one to carve     As he desired, his choice to name his god ...     And many came; and he among them, glad     Of three leagues' travel through the singing air     Of dawn among the boughs yet bare of green,     The eager flight of the spring leading his blood     Into swift lofty channels of the air,     Proud as an eagle riding to the sun ...     An eagle, clean of pinion - there's his choice.     Daylong they worked under the growing roof,     One at his leopard, one the staring ram,     And he winning his eagle from the stone,     Until each man had carved one image out,     Arow beyond the portal of the house.     They stood arow, the company of gods,     Camel and bat, lizard and bull and ram,     The pard and owl, dead figures on the wall,     Figures of habit driven on the stone     By chisels governed by no heat of the brain     But drudges of hands that moved by easy rule.     Proudly recorded mood was none, no thought     Plucked from the dark battalions of the mind     And throned in everlasting sight. But one     God of them all was witness of belief     And large adventure dared. His eagle spread     Wide pinions on a cloudless ground of heaven,     Glad with the heart's high courage of that dawn     Moving upon the ploughlands newly sown,     Dead stone the rest. He looked, and knew it so.     Then came the king with priests and counsellors     And many chosen of the people, wise     With words weary of custom, and eyes askew     That watched their neighbour face for any news     Of the best way of judgment, till, each sure     None would determine with authority,     All spoke in prudent praise. One liked the owl     Because an owl blinked on the beam of his barn.     One, hoarse with crying gospels in the street,     Praised most the ram, because the common folk     Wore breeches made of ram's wool. One declared     The tiger pleased him best, - the man who carved     The tiger-god was halt out of the womb -     A man to praise, being so pitiful.     And one, whose eyes dwelt in a distant void,     With spell and omen pat upon his lips,     And a purse for any crystal prophet ripe,     A zealot of the mist, gazed at the bull -     A lean ill-shapen bull of meagre lines     That scarce the steel had graved upon the stone -     Saying that here was very mystery     And truth, did men but know. And one there was     Who praised his eagle, but remembering     The lither pinion of the swift, the curve     That liked him better of the mirrored swan.     And they who carved the tiger-god and ram,     The camel and the pard, the owl and bull,     And lizard, listened greedily, and made     Humble denial of their worthiness,     And when the king his royal judgment gave     That all had fashioned well, and bade that each     Re-shape his chosen god along the walls     Till all the temple boasted of their skill,     They bowed themselves in token that as this     Never had carvers been so fortunate.     Only the man with wide and patient eyes     Made no denial, neither bowed his head.     Already while they spoke his thoughts had gone     Far from his eagle, leaving it for a sign     Loyally wrought of one deep breath of life,     And played about the image of a toad     That crawled among his ivy leaves. A queer     Puff-bellied toad, with eyes that always stared     Sidelong at heaven and saw no heaven there,     Weak-hammed, and with a throttle somehow twisted     Beyond full wholesome draughts of air, and skin     Of wrinkled lips, the only zest or will     The little flashing tongue searching the leaves.     And king and priest, chosen and counsellor,     Babbling out of their thin and jealous brains,     Seemed strangely one; a queer enormous toad     Panting under giant leaves of dark,     Sunk in the loins, peering into the day.     Their judgment wry he counted not for wrong     More than the fabled poison of the toad     Striking at simple wits; how should their thought     Or word in praise or blame come near the peace     That shone in seasonable hours above     The patience of his spirit's husbandry?     They foolish and not seeing, how should he     Spend anger there or fear - great ceremonies     Equal for none save great antagonists?     The grave indifference of his heart before them     Was moved by laughter innocent of hate,     Chastising clean of spite, that moulded them     Into the antic likeness of his toad     Bidding for laughter underneath the leaves.     He bowed not, nor disputed, but he saw     Those ill-created joyless gods, and loathed,     And saw them creeping, creeping round the walls,     Death breeding death, wile witnessing to wile,     And sickened at the dull iniquity     Should be rewarded, and for ever breathe     Contagion on the folk gathered in prayer.     His truth should not be doomed to march among     This falsehood to the ages. He was called,     And he must labour there; if so the king     Would grant it, where the pillars bore the roof     A galleried way of meditation nursed     Secluded time, with wall of ready stone     In panels for the carver set between     The windows - there his chisel should be set, -     It was his plea. And the king spoke of him,     Scorning, as one lack-fettle, among all these     Eager to take the riches of renown;     One fearful of the light or knowing nothing     Of light's dimension, a witling who would throw     Honour aside and praise spoken aloud     All men of heart should covet. Let him go     Grubbing out of the sight of those who knew     The worth of substance; there was his proper trade.     A squat and curious toad indeed ... The eyes,     Patient and grey, were dumb as were the lips,     That, fixed and governed, hoarded from them all     The larger laughter lifting in his heart.     Straightway about his gallery he moved,     Measured the windows and the virgin stone,     Till all was weighed and patterned in his brain.     Then first where most the shadows struck the wall,     Under the sills, and centre of the base,     From floor to sill out of the stone was wooed     Memorial folly, as from the chisel leapt     His chastening laughter searching priest and king -     Huge and wrinkled toad, with legs asplay,     And belly loaded, leering with great eyes     Busily fixed upon the void.                                     All days     His chisel was the first to ring across     The temple's quiet; and at fall of dusk     Passing among the carvers homeward, they     Would speak of him as mad, or weak against     The challenge of the world, and let him go     Lonely, as was his will, under the night     Of stars or cloud or summer's folded sun,     Through crop and wood and pasture-land to sleep.     None took the narrow stair as wondering     How did his chisel prosper in the stone,     Unvisited his labour and forgot.     And times when he would lean out of his height     And watch the gods growing along the walls,     The row of carvers in their linen coats     Took in his vision a virtue that alone     Carving they had not nor the thing they carved.     Knowing the health that flowed about his close     Imagining, the daily quiet won     From process of his clean and supple craft,     Those carvers there, far on the floor below,     Would haply be transfigured in his thought     Into a gallant company of men     Glad of the strict and loyal reckoning     That proved in the just presence of the brain     Each chisel-stroke. How surely would he prosper     In pleasant talk at easy hours with men     So fashioned if it might be - and his eyes     Would pass again to those dead gods that grew     In spreading evil round the temple walls;     And, one dead pressure made, the carvers moved     Along the wall to mould and mould again     The self-same god, their chisels on the stone     Tapping in dull precision as before,     And he would turn, back to his lonely truth.     He carved apace. And first his people's gods,     About the toad, out of their sterile time,     Under his hand thrilled and were recreate.     The bull, the pard, the camel and the ram,     Tiger and owl and bat - all were the signs     Visibly made body on the stone     Of sightless thought adventuring the host     That is mere spirit; these the bloom achieved     By secret labour in the flowing wood     Of rain and air and wind and continent sun ...     His tiger, lithe, immobile in the stone,     A swift destruction for a moment leashed,     Sprang crying from the jealous stealth of men     Opposed in cunning watch, with engines hid     Of torment and calamitous desire.     His leopard, swift on lean and paltry limbs,     Was fear in flight before accusing faith.     His bull, with eyes that often in the dusk     Would lift from the sweet meadow grass to watch     Him homeward passing, bore on massy beam     The burden of the patient of the earth.     His camel bore the burden of the damned,     Being gaunt, with eyes aslant along the nose.     He had a friend, who hammered bronze and iron     And cupped the moonstone on a silver ring,     One constant like himself, would come at night     Or bid him as a guest, when they would make     Their poets touch a starrier height, or search     Together with unparsimonious mind     The crowded harbours of mortality.     And there were jests, wholesome as harvest ale,     Of homely habit, bred of hearts that dared     Judgment of laughter under the eternal eye:     This frolic wisdom was his carven owl.     His ram was lordship on the lonely hills,     Alert and fleet, content only to know     The wind mightily pouring on his fleece,     With yesterday and all unrisen suns     Poorer than disinherited ghosts. His bat     Was ancient envy made a mockery,     Cowering below the newer eagle carved     Above the arches with wide pinion spread,     His faith's dominion of that happy dawn.     And so he wrought the gods upon the wall,     Living and crying out of his desire,     Out of his patient incorruptible thought,     Wrought them in joy was wages to his faith.     And other than the gods he made. The stalks     Of bluebells heavy with the news of spring,     The vine loaded with plenty of the year,     And swallows, merely tenderness of thought     Bidding the stone to small and fragile flight;     Leaves, the thin relics of autumnal boughs,     Or massed in June ...     All from their native pressure bloomed and sprang     Under his shaping hand into a proud     And governed image of the central man, -     Their moulding, charts of all his travelling.     And all were deftly ordered, duly set     Between the windows, underneath the sills,     And roofward, as a motion rightly planned,     Till on the wall, out of the sullen stone,     A glory blazed, his vision manifest,     His wonder captive. And he was content.     And when the builders and the carvers knew     Their labours done, and high the temple stood     Over the cornlands, king and counsellor     And priest and chosen of the people came     Among a ceremonial multitude     To dedication. And, below the thrones     Where king and archpriest ruled above the throng,     Highest among the ranked artificers     The carvers stood. And when, the temple vowed     To holy use, tribute and choral praise     Given as was ordained, the king looked down     Upon the gathered folk, and bade them see     The comely gods fashioned about the walls,     And keep in honour men whose precious skill     Could so adorn the sessions of their worship,     Gravely the carvers bowed them to the ground.     Only the man with wide and patient eyes     Stood not among them; nor did any come     To count his labour, where he watched alone     Above the coloured throng. He heard, and looked     Again upon his work, and knew it good,     Smiled on his toad, passed down the stair unseen,     And sang across the teeming meadows home.