Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917.
John Gray (18661934)348. The Tree of Knowledge
F
Did this tree spring?
How first beat its new life in bleak abode
Of virgin rock, strange metals for its food,
Towards its last hewn mould, the bitter rood?
First did it sprout, indeed,
A double wing.
Its loins unto:
The tender wings, with hope in every vein,
Beat feebly upward, saying: ‘Is this the pain
The Sooth spake of; to lift to God again
This blackness’ dark estate
Reformed anew?
To work this deed:
Earnest of promise absolute, these green
Sweet wings; a million engines pulse therein.
Yet can I leave not for a space, to lean
Upon a fulcrum known,
To know my need.’
To God a scale;
Wondering at its fibre and tough growth;
Saying, the while it purposed: ‘For He knoweth
My sore extremity, how I am loth
To cleave unto the dust
Which makes me hale.’
In height and girth;
Cast many branches forth and many wings;
Wherein and under, formed and fashioned things
Had great content and speech and twitterings:
Insect and fowl and beast
And sons of earth.
Each resolute root
Of the tree, making question in the deep
Of spirits, where the mighty metals sleep,
How long ere from its base the rock should leap;
Saying: ‘Yet have I hope
Of that my fruit.’
The hope at length
Fearsome and fierce and passionate. The sire
Warmed his son’s vitals with celestial fire,
Feeding him with sweet gum of strong desire,
Lest be not stanch enow
His godly strength.
With his white spouse,
Wounding the tree, and ravishing the son,
(Whence curses fallen and a world undone.)
For that rape, wrathfully a shining one
Drave them with fearful flame
Without their house.
Rough brood on brood,
Defiled before it, whiles the tree scanned each;
Leaned leaf and branch to grapple and beseech;
Till, on a certain day, requiring speech
Of the tree, at its base
The whole world stood:
Thou barren tree?
“Knowledge,” thou answerest? Thou hast set agape
The door of Knowledge only. Thy limbs ape
Some truth. We love thee not, nor love thy shape.
Imposture, thus and thus
We fashion thee.’
The gardener’s sons.
Strangely they built it newly, having cleft
Its being all asunder; stem bereft
Of quivering limbs, save one to right and left,
Urging the self-same wit
It gave them once.
Of these my woes,
What know those wrathful men, save, in yon place,
Perhaps, yon athlete, stripped for my embrace?
If longing cheat me not, writ in his face,
He knows about it all,
He knows, he knows.
Those wrathful men?
Passion! thou’rt come to me again too soon:
Too hot thou givst me back the fiery boon
I gave thee; love consumes me, that I swoon;
Thou, on my topmost bough,
My fruit again.’