The Mother Mourns

When mid-autumn's moan shook the night-time,      And sedges were horny,     And summer's green wonderwork faltered      On leaze and in lane,     I fared Yell'ham-Firs way, where dimly      Came wheeling around me     Those phantoms obscure and insistent      That shadows unchain.     Till airs from the needle-thicks brought me      A low lamentation,     As 'twere of a tree-god disheartened,      Perplexed, or in pain.     And, heeding, it awed me to gather      That Nature herself there     Was breathing in aerie accents,      With dirgeful refrain,     Weary plaint that Mankind, in these late days,      Had grieved her by holding     Her ancient high fame of perfection      In doubt and disdain . . .     - "I had not proposed me a Creature      (She soughed) so excelling     All else of my kingdom in compass      And brightness of brain     "As to read my defects with a god-glance,      Uncover each vestige     Of old inadvertence, annunciate      Each flaw and each stain!     "My purpose went not to develop      Such insight in Earthland;     Such potent appraisements affront me,      And sadden my reign!     "Why loosened I olden control here      To mechanize skywards,     Undeeming great scope could outshape in      A globe of such grain?     "Man's mountings of mind-sight I checked not,      Till range of his vision     Has topped my intent, and found blemish      Throughout my domain.     "He holds as inept his own soul-shell -      My deftest achievement -     Contemns me for fitful inventions      Ill-timed and inane:     "No more sees my sun as a Sanct-shape,      My moon as the Night-queen,     My stars as august and sublime ones      That influences rain:     "Reckons gross and ignoble my teaching,      Immoral my story,     My love-lights a lure, that my species      May gather and gain.     "'Give me,' he has said, 'but the matter      And means the gods lot her,     My brain could evolve a creation      More seemly, more sane.'     - "If ever a naughtiness seized me      To woo adulation     From creatures more keen than those crude ones      That first formed my train -     "If inly a moment I murmured,      'The simple praise sweetly,     But sweetlier the sage' - and did rashly      Man's vision unrein,     "I rue it! . . . His guileless forerunners,      Whose brains I could blandish,     To measure the deeps of my mysteries      Applied them in vain.     "From them my waste aimings and futile      I subtly could cover;     'Every best thing,' said they, 'to best purpose      Her powers preordain.' -     "No more such! . . . My species are dwindling,      My forests grow barren,     My popinjays fail from their tappings,      My larks from their strain.     "My leopardine beauties are rarer,      My tusky ones vanish,     My children have aped mine own slaughters      To quicken my wane.     "Let me grow, then, but mildews and mandrakes,      And slimy distortions,     Let nevermore things good and lovely      To me appertain;     "For Reason is rank in my temples,      And Vision unruly,     And chivalrous laud of my cunning      Is heard not again!"