The Moondial

Iron and granite and rust,     In a crumbling garden old,     Where the roses are paler than dust     And the lilies are green with gold,     Under the racing moon,     Inconscious of war or crime,     In a strange and ghostly noon,     It marks the oblivion of time.     The shadow steals through its arc,     Still as a frosted breath,     Fitful, gleaming, and dark     As the cold frustration of death.     But where the shadow may fall,     Whether to hurry or stay,     It matters little at all     To those who come that way.     For this is the dial of them     That have forgotten the world,     No more through the mad day-dream     Of striving and reason hurled.     Their heart as a little child     Only remembers the worth     Of beauty and love and the wild     Dark peace of the elder earth.     It registers the morrows     Of lovers and winds and streams,     And the face of a thousand sorrows     At the postern gate of dreams.     When the first low laughter smote     Through Lilith, the mother of joy,     And died and revived from the throat     Of Helen, the harpstring of Troy,     And wandering on through the years,     From the sobbing rain and the sea,     Caught sound of the world's gray tears     Or sense of the sun's gold glee,     Whenever the wild control     Burned out to a mortal kiss,     And the shuddering storm-swept soul     Climbed to its acme of bliss,     The green-gold light of the dead     Stood still in purple space,     And a record blind and dread     Was graved on the dial's face.     And once in a thousand years     Some youth who loved so well     The gods had loosed him from fears     In a vision of blameless hell,     Has gone to the dial to read     Those signs in the outland tongue,     Written beyond the need     Of the simple and the young.     For immortal life, they say,     Were his who, loving so,     Could explain the writing away     As a legend written in snow.     But always his innocent eyes     Were frozen into the stone.     From that awful first surprise     His soul must return alone.     In the morning there he lay     Dead in the sun's warm gold.     And no man knows to this day     What the dim moondial told.