The Mind Of Man

    I

    Beneath my skull-bone and my hair,
    Covered like a poisonous well,
    There is a land: if you looked there
    What you saw you'd quail to tell.
    You that sit there smiling, you
    Know that what I say is true.

    My head is very small to touch,
    I feel it all from front to back,
    An earèd round that weighs not much,
    Eyes, nose-holes, and a pulpy crack:
    Oh, how small, how small it is!
    How could countries be in this?

    Yet, when I watch with eyelids shut,
    It glimmers forth, now dark, now clear,
    The city of Cis-Occiput,
    The marshes and the writhing mere,
    The land that every man I see
    Knows in himself but not in me.


    II

    Upon the borders of the weald
    (I walk there first when I step in)
    Set in green wood and smiling field,
    The city stands, unstained of sin;
    White thoughts and wishes pure
    Walk the streets with steps demure.

    In its clean groves and spacious halls
    The quiet-eyed inhabitants
    Hold innocent sunny festivals
    And mingle in decorous dance;
    Things that destroy, distort, deface,
    Come never to that lovely place.

    Never could evil enter thither,
    It could not live in that sweet air,
    The shadow of an ill deed must wither
    And fall away to nothing there.
    You would say as there you stand
    That all was beauty in the land.

    *    *    *    *    *

    But go you out beyond the gateway,
    Cleave you the woods and pass the plain,
    Cross you the frontier down, and straightway
    The trees will end, the grass will wane,
    And you will come to a wilderness
    Of sticks and parchèd barrenness.

    The middle of the land is this,
    A tawny desert midmost set,
    Barren of living things it is,
    Saving at night some vampires flit
    That nest them in the farther marish
    Where all save vilest things must perish.

    Here in this reedy marsh of green
    And oily pools, swarm insects fat
    And birds of prey and beasts obscene,
    Things that the traveller shudders at,
    All cunning things that creep and fly
    To suck men's blood until they die.

    Rarely from hence does aught escape
    Into the world of outer light,
    But now and then some sable shape
    Outward will dash in sudden flight;
    And men stand stonied or distraught
    To know the loathly deed or thought.

    But, ah! beyond the marsh you reach
    A purulent place more vile than all,
    A festering lake too foul for speech,
    Rotten and black, with coils acrawl,
    Where writhe with lecherous squeakings shrill
    Horrors that make the heart stand still.

    There, 'neath a heaven diseased, it lies,
    The mere alive with slimy worms,
    With perverse terrible infamies,
    And murders and repulsive forms
    That have no name, but slide here deep,
    Whilst I, their holder, silence keep.