On Houses
Then a mason came forth and said, "Speak to us of Houses."
And he answered and said:
Build of your imaginings a bower in the wilderness ere you
build a house within the city walls.
For even as you have home-comings in your twilight, so has
the wanderer in you, the ever distant and alone.
Your house is your larger body.
It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the
night; and it is not dreamless. Does not your house dream? And dreaming,
leave the city for grove or hilltop?
Would that I could gather your houses into my hand, and
like a sower scatter them in forest and meadow.
Would the valleys were your streets, and the green paths
your alleys, that you might seek one another through vineyards, and come
with the fragrance of the earth in your garments.
But these things are not yet to be.
In their fear your forefathers gathered you too near
together. And that fear shall endure a little longer. A little longer
shall your city walls separate your hearths from your fields.
And tell me, people of Orphalese, what have you in these
houses? And what is it you guard with fastened doors?
Have you peace, the quiet urge that reveals your power?
Have you remembrances, the glimmering arches that span the
summits of the mind?
Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things
fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain?
Tell me, have you these in your houses?
Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that
stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and becomes a host, and then
a master?
Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge
makes puppets of your larger desires.
Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron.
It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed and jeer
at the dignity of the flesh.
It makes mock of your sound senses, and lays them in
thistledown like fragile vessels.
Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the
soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.
But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you
shall not be trapped nor tamed.
Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.
It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but
an eyelid that guards the eye.
You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through
doors, nor bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor
fear to breathe lest walls should crack and fall down.
You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the
living.
And though of magnificence and splendour, your house shall
not hold your secret nor shelter your longing.
For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion
of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the
songs and the silences of night.