Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, HEAVEN IS BUT THE HOUR, by EDGAR LEE MASTERS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

HEAVEN IS BUT THE HOUR, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Eyes wide for wisdom, calm for joy or pain
Last Line: My sorrow and as well my hope.


Eyes wide for wisdom, calm for joy or pain,
Bright hair alloyed with silver, scarcely gold.
And gracious lips flower pressed like buds to hold
The guarded heart against excess of rain.
Hands spirit tipped through which a genius plays
With paints and clays,
And strings in many keys --
Clothed in an aura of thought as soundless as a flood
Of sun-shine where there is no breeze.
So is it light in spite of rhythm of blood,
Or turn of head, or hands that move, unite --
Wind cannot dim or agitate the light.
From Plato's idea stepping, wholly wrought
From Plato's dream, made manifest in hair,
Eyes, lips and hands and voice,
As if the stored up thought
From the earth sphere
Had given down the being of your choice
Conjured by the dream long sought.

For you have moved in madness, rapture, wrath
In and out of the path
Drawn by the dream of a face.
You have been watched, as star-men watch a star
That leaves its way, returns and leaves its way,
Until the exploring watchers find, can trace
A hidden star beyond their sight, whose sway
Draws the erratic star so long observed --
So have you wandered, swerved.

Always pursued and lost,
Sometimes half found, half-faced,
Such years we waste
With the almost:
The lips flower pressed like buds to hold
Guarded the heart of the flower,
But over them eyes not hued as the Dream foretold.
Or to find the lips too rich and the dower
Of eyes all gaiety
Where wisdom scarce can be.
Or to find the eyes, but to find offence
In fingers where the sense
Falters with colors, strings,
Not touching with closed eyes, out of an immanence
Of flame and wings.
Or to find the light, but to find it set behind
An eye which is not your dream, nor the shadow thereof,
As it were your lamp in a stranger's window.
And so almost to find
In the great weariness of love.

Now this is the tragedy:
If the Idea did not move
Somewhere in the realm of Love,
Clothing itself in flesh at last for you to see,
You could scarcely follow the gleam.
And the tragedy is when Life has made you over,
And denied you, and dulled your dream,
And you no longer count the cost,
Nor the past lament,
You are sitting oblivious of your discontent
Beside the Almost --
And then the face appears
Evoked from the Idea by your dead desire,
And blinds and burns you like fire.
And you sit there without tears,
Though thinking it has come to kill you, or mock your youth
With its half of the truth.

A beach as yellow as gold
Daisied with tents for a lovely mile.
And a sea that edges and walls the sand with blue,
Matching the heaven without a seam,
Save for the threads of foam that hold
With stitches the canopy rare as the tile
Of old Damascus. And O the wind
Which roars to the roaring water brightened
By the beating wings of the sun!
And here I walk, not seeking the Dream,
As men walk absent of heart or mind
Who have no wish for a sorrow lightened
Since all things now seem lost or won.
And here it is that your face appears!
Like a star brushed out from leaves by a breeze
When day's in the sky, though evening nears.
You are here by a tent with your little brood,
And I approach in a quiet mood
And see you, know that the Destinies
Have surrendered you at last.
Voice, lips and hands and the light of the eyes.

And I who have asked so much discover
That you find in me the man and lover
You have divined and visualized,
In quiet day dreams. And what is strange
Your boy of eight is subtly guised
In fleeting looks that half resemble
Something in me. Two souls may range
Mid this earth's billion souls for life,
And hide their hunger or dissemble.
For there are two at least created,
Endowed with alien powers that draw,
And kindred powers that by some law
Bind souls as like as sister, brother.
There are two at least who are for each other.
If we are such, it is not fated
You are for him, howe'er belated
The time's for us.

And yet is not the time gone by?
Your garden has been planted, dear.
And mine with weeds is over-grown.
Oh yes! 'tis only late July!
We can replant, ere frosts appear,
Gather the blossoms we have sown.
And I have preached that hearts should seize
The hour that brings realities....

Yes, I admit it all, we crush
Under our feet the world's contempt.
But when I raise the cup, it's blush
Reveals the snake's eyes, there's a hush
While a hand writes upon the wall:
Life cannot be re-made, exempt
From life that has been, something's gone
Out of the soil, in life updrawn
To growths that vine, and tangle, crawl,
Withered in part, or gone to seed.
'Tis not the same, though you have freed
The soil from what was grown....

Heaven is but the hour
Of the planting of the flower.
But heaven is the blossom to be,
Of the one Reality.
And heaven cannot undo the once sown ground.
But heaven is love in the pursuing,
And in the memory of having found....

The rocks in the river make light and sound
And show that the waters search and move.
And what is time but an infinite whole
Revealed by the breaks in thought, desire?
To put it away is to know one's soul.
Love is music unheard and fire
Too rare for eyes; between hurt beats
The heart detects it, sees how pure
Its essence is, through heart defeats. --
You are the silence making sure
The sound with which it has to cope,
My sorrow and as well my hope.





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