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IV

The Idea of a Colony

Nota: his soil is man's intelligence. That's better. That's worth crossing seas to find. Crispin in one laconic phrase laid bare His cloudy drift and planned a colony. Exit the mental moonlight, exit lex, Rex and principium, exit the whole Shebang. Exeunt omnes. Here was prose More exquisite than any tumbling verse: A still new continent in which to dwell. What was the purpose of his pilgrimage, Whatever shape it took in Crispin's mind, If not, when all is said, to drive away The shadow of his fellows from the skies, And, from their stale intelligence released, To make a new intelligence prevail? Hence the reverberations in the words Of his first central hymns, the celebrants Of rankest trivia, tests of the strength Of his aesthetic, his philosophy, The more invidious, the more desired. The florist asking aid from cabbages, The rich man going bare, the paladin Afraid, the blind man as astronomer, The appointed power unwielded from disdain.

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