The Winds

To me the winds that die and start,          And strive in wars that never cease,          Are dearer than the level peace         That lies unstirred at summer's heart;         More dear to me the shadowed wold,          Where, with report of tempest rife,          The air intensifies with life,         Than quiet fields of summer's gold.         I am the winds' admitted friend:          They seal our linked fellowships          With speech of warm or icy lips,         With touch of west and east that blend.         And when my spirit listless stands,          With folded wings that do not live,          Their own assuageless wings they give         To lift her from the stirless lands.                 *        *        *        *        *         Within the place unmanifest          Where central Truth is immanent,          Lies there a vast, entire content         Of sound and movement one in rest?         I know not this. Yet in my heart,          I feel that where all truths concur,          The shrine is peaceless with the stir         Of winds that enter and depart.