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Heaven Is But The Hour

by Edgar Lee Masters

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.