They do not live in the world,
Are not in time and space.
From birth to death hurled
No word do they have, not one
To plant a foot upon,
Were never in any place.

For with names the world was called
Out of the empty air,
With names was built and walled,
Line and circle and square,
Dust and emerald;
Snatched from deceiving death
By the articulate breath.

But these have never trod
Twice the familiar track,
Never never turned back
Into the memoried day.
All is new and near
In the unchanging Here
Of the fifth great day of God,
That shall remain the same,
Never shall pass away.
 

On the sixth day we came.
 

There is a stream
We have been told of.  Where it is
We do not know.  But it is not a dream,
Though like a dream.  We cannot miss
The road that leads us to it.  Fate
Will take us there that keeps us here.
Neither hope nor fear
Can hasten or retard the date
Of our deliverance; when we shall leave this sand
And enter the unknown and feared and longed-for land.

Since I emerged that day from the labyrinth,
Dazed with the tall and echoing passages,
The swift recoils, so many I almost feared
I’d meet myself returning at some smooth corner,
Myself or my ghost, for all there was unreal
After the straw ceased rustling and the bull
Lay dead upon the straw and I remained…

I could not live if this were not illusion.
It is a world, perhaps; but there’s another.
For once in a dream or trance I saw the gods
Each sitting on the top of his mountain-isle,
While down below the little ships sailed by…

That was the real world; I have touched it once,
And now shall know it always.  But the lie,
The maze, the wild-wood waste of falsehood, roads
That run and run and never reach an end,
Embowered in error – I’d be prisoned there
But that my soul has birdwings to fly free.

Oh these deceits are strong almost as life.
Last night I dreamt I was in the labyrinth,
And woke far on.  I did not know the place.

   ‘I give you half of me;
    No more, lest I should make
    A ground for perjury.
    For your sake, for my sake,
    Half will you take?’

    ‘Half I’ll not take nor give,
    For he who gives gives all.
    By halves you cannot live;
    Then let the barrier fall,
    In one circle have all.’

    “A wise and ancient scorner
    Said to me once:  Beware
    The road that has no corner
    Where you can linger and stare.
    Choose the square.

    ‘And let the circle run
    Its dull and fevered race.
    You, my dear, are one;
    Show your soul in your face;
    Maintain your place.

    ‘Give, but have something to give.
    No man can want you all.
    Live, and learn to live.
    When all the barriers fall
    You are nothing at all.’