Exit Anima

"Hospes comesque corporis,     Quae nunc abitis in loca?"     Cease, Wind, to blow     And drive the peopled snow,     And move the haunted arras to and fro,     And moan of things I fear to know     Yet would rend from thee, Wind, before I go     On the blind pilgrimage.     Cease, Wind, to blow.     Thy brother too,     I leave no print of shoe     In all these vasty rooms I rummage through,     No word at threshold, and no clue     Of whence I come and whither I pursue     The search of treasures lost     When time was new.     Thou janitor     Of the dim curtained door,     Stir thy old bones along the dusty floor     Of this unlighted corridor.     Open! I have been this dark way before;     Thy hollow face shall peer     In mine no more. . . . .     Sky, the dear sky!     Ah, ghostly house, good-by!     I leave thee as the gauzy dragon-fly     Leaves the green pool to try     His vast ambition on the vaster sky,--     Such valor against death     Is deity.     What, thou too here,     Thou haunting whisperer?     Spirit of beauty immanent and sheer,     Art thou that crooked servitor,     Done with disguise, from whose malignant leer     Out of the ghostly house     I fled in fear?     O Beauty, how     I do repent me now,     Of all the doubt I ever could allow     To shake me like the aspen bough;     Nor once imagine that unsullied brow     Could wear the evil mask     And still be thou!     Bone of thy bone,     Breath of thy breath alone,     I dare resume the silence of a stone,     Or explore still the vast unknown,     Like a bright sea-bird through the morning blown,     With all his heart one joy,     From zone to zone.