The Bell calls in the town where full bears cleared the shaded land and brought high

daylight down to shine on field and trot and road. I hear but understand

contrarily and walk into the woods. I leave labor and load, take up a different

story. I keep an inventory of wonders and of uncommercial goods. I climb up

through the field that my long labor has kept clear. Projects plans unfulfilled,

waylay and snatch it me like briars. For there is no rest here where ceaseless

effort seems to be required, yet fails and spirit tires with flesh. Because failure

and weariness are sure in all that mortal wishing has inspired. I go in pilgrimage

across an old fenced boundary to wildness without age, wearing their long dominion,

the trees have been left free. They call the soil here Eden, slants and steeps,

hard to stand straight upon, even without a burden. No more a perfect garden. There's

an immortal memory that it keeps. I leave works daily rule and come here to this

restful place where music stirs the pool and from high stations of the air fall

notes of wordless grace, strewn remnants of the primal Sabbaths hymn. And I remember

here a tale of evil twined with good, serpent and vine, and innocence as evil strategy.

I let that go a while, for it is hopeless to correct by generations' toil, and I let

go my hopes and plans that no toil can perfect. There is no vision here, but what is seen?

White bloom, nothing explains, but a mute blessedness exceeding all distress, the fresh light

stained a hundred shades of green. Uproar of wheel and fire that has contained us like

a cell opens and lets us hear a stillness longer than all time where leaf and song fulfill

the passing light, pass with the light, return renewed as in a rhyme. This is no human

vision subject to our revision. God's eye holds every leaf as light is worn.

...