When mid-autumn’s moan shook the night-time,

   And sedges were horny,

And summer’s green wonderwork faltered

   On leaze and in lane,

I fared Yell’ham-Firs way, where dimly

   Came wheeling around me

Those phantoms obscure and insistent

   That shadows unchain.

Till airs from the needle-thicks brought me

   A low lamentation,

As ’twere of a tree-god disheartened,

   Perplexed, or in pain.

And, heeding, it awed me to gather

   That Nature herself there

Was breathing in aërie accents,

   With dirgeful refrain,

Weary plaint that Mankind, in these late days,

   Had grieved her by holding

Her ancient high fame of perfection

   In doubt and disdain . . .

—“I had not proposed me a Creature

   (She soughed) so excelling

All else of my kingdom in compass

   And brightness of brain

“As to read my defects with a god-glance,

   Uncover each vestige

Of old inadvertence, annunciate

   Each flaw and each stain!

“My purpose went not to develop

   Such insight in Earthland;

Such potent appraisements affront me,

   And sadden my reign!

“Why loosened I olden control here

   To mechanize skywards,

Undeeming great scope could outshape in

   A globe of such grain?

“Man’s mountings of mind-sight I checked not,

   Till range of his vision

Has topped my intent, and found blemish

   Throughout my domain.

“He holds as inept his own soul-shell—

   My deftest achievement—

Contemns me for fitful inventions

   Ill-timed and inane:

“No more sees my sun as a Sanct-shape,

   My moon as the Night-queen,

My stars as august and sublime ones

   That influences rain:

“Reckons gross and ignoble my teaching,

   Immoral my story,

My love-lights a lure, that my species

   May gather and gain.

“‘Give me,’ he has said, ‘but the matter

   And means the gods lot her,

My brain could evolve a creation

   More seemly, more sane.’

—“If ever a naughtiness seized me

   To woo adulation

From creatures more keen than those crude ones

   That first formed my train—

“If inly a moment I murmured,

   ‘The simple praise sweetly,

But sweetlier the sage’—and did rashly

   Man’s vision unrein,

“I rue it! . . . His guileless forerunners,

   Whose brains I could blandish,

To measure the deeps of my mysteries

   Applied them in vain.

“From them my waste aimings and futile

   I subtly could cover;

‘Every best thing,’ said they, ‘to best purpose

   Her powers preordain.’—

“No more such! . . . My species are dwindling,

   My forests grow barren,

My popinjays fail from their tappings,

   My larks from their strain.

“My leopardine beauties are rarer,

   My tusky ones vanish,

My children have aped mine own slaughters

   To quicken my wane.

“Let me grow, then, but mildews and mandrakes,

   And slimy distortions,

Let nevermore things good and lovely

   To me appertain;

“For Reason is rank in my temples,

   And Vision unruly,

And chivalrous laud of my cunning

   Is heard not again!”