Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, FORMULATION, by KATHLEEN JESSIE RAINE


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First Line: Into which of the mind's moulds
Last Line: Come in a form I shall not too much fear.
Subject(s): Flowers; Soul; Vision


Into which of the mind's moulds
Will vision flow,
The divine formulation grow?

Once a woman perceived a holy head
Dropping its shining blood
Like fish-scales, or like rain-drops from the eaves.

Elsewhere it is a lotus-flower
Opening from the self-encentred Buddha
Composed for ever like a still dancer,

And once in Lambeth a hidden grain of sand
Held all the world that vision can command,
The great eternity within a poet's mind.

Grandiose archaic faces,
Contours of former souls' experience
Stand between my vision and what they saw,

Therefore come as a bird within the mind,
Or as a single leaf upon a tree of leaves
Suddenly made shining by the sun,

Or break like day upon a simple stone
Or in a dazzle of sunlight upon water,
Come as a jewelled moth, a budding flower

Come in a form I shall not too much fear.





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