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Poem by Robert Laurence Binyon Numbers Trefoil and Quatrefoil! What shaped those destinied small silent leaves Or numbered them under the soil? I lift my dazzled sight From grass to sky, From humming and hot perfume To scorching, quivering light, Empty blue! — Why, As I bury my face afresh In a sunshot vivid gloom — Minute infinity's mesh, Where spearing side by side Smooth stalk and furred uplift Their luminous green secrets from the grass, Tower to a bud and delicately divide — Do I think of the things unthought Before man was? Bodiless Numbers! When there was none to explore Your winding labyrinths occult, None to delve your ore Of strange virtue, or do Your magical business, you Were there, never old nor new, Veined in the world and alive: — Before the Planets, Seven; Before these fingers, Five! You that are globed and single, Crystal virgins, and you that part, Melt, and again mingle! We have hoisted sail in the night On the oceans that you chart: Dark winds carry us onward, on; But you are there before us, silent Answers, Beyond the bounds of the sun. You body yourselves in the stars, inscrutable dancers, Native where we are none. O inhuman Numbers! All things change and glide, Corrupt and crumble, suffer wreck and decay, But, obstinate dark Integrities, you abide, And obey but them who obey. All things else are dyed In the colours of man's desire: But you no bribe nor prayer Avails to soften or sway. Nothing of me you share, Yet I cannot think you away. And if I seek to escape you, still you are there Stronger than caging pillars of iron Not to be passed, in an air Where human wish and word Fall like a frozen bird. Music asleep In pulses of sound, in the waves! Hidden runes rubbed bright! Dizzy ladders of thought in the night! Are you masters or slaves — Subtlest of man's slaves, — Shadowy Numbers? In a vision I saw Old vulture Time, feeding On the flesh of the world; I saw The home of our use undated — Seasons of fruiting and seeding Withered, and hunger and thirst Dead, with all they fed on: Till at last, when Time was sated, Only you persisted, Dædal Numbers, sole and same, Invisible skeleton frame Of the peopled earth we tread on — Last, as first. Because naught can avail To wound or to tarnish you; Because you are neither sold nor bought, Because you have not the power to fail But live beyond our furthest thought, Strange Numbers, of infinite clue, Beyond fear, beyond ruth, You strengthen also me To be in my own truth. Robert Laurence Binyon Robert Laurence Binyon's other poems: ![]() 1191 Views |
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