VI
Wild iris, the hidden violet, and clover
And a dozen jewels nameless to me
Rise in the rank pasture by the river.
What is more real? And these too evening
Encompasses, and night devours altogether.
Fireflies remember the nightly death
Of flowers, luring the wanderer by the river
Tranced in the fire of memory and the dew
To consecrate himself to quest for those
Ten thousand grails. I am not the knight
Of flowers. I am the beast rather
Seen by Gahereth drinking of the river
From whose belly issued the cry of dogs.
VII
Much has been said in dispraise of memory
And I deny it all. I shall not live
In this place long-the meditation
On the signs and sacred images of desire
Has an end. This place I shall revisit
On the shrunken stream in autumn coming up
The current in an old tin boat to where
My house untenanted is hid by fainting blooms
Suffered by summer to grow much too long.
And I will greet the god of the place
With temperate rejoicing and call him by the name
I knew when last I loved-and for the dance
The hamadryads will forsake their trees.
VIII
What is this wind which twists
all,
Letting nothing be final or blooming,
But all, at once, rooted and wandering?
Is this the hour and the minute of the end,
When the gigantic oak goes straying on the land
And streams withdraw to caverns underground?
Far inland I behold the driven gull
