<html xmlns:tei="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0"><body><h1 align="center" class="head">Nature's Way</h1><div class="stanza"><p class="line">"FAULTILY faultless" may be ill—</p><p class="line">"Carefully careless" is worse still.</p><p class="line">I bought one day a book of rhyme—</p><p class="line">One long, fierce flout at tune and time;</p><p class="line">Ragged and jagged by intent.</p><p class="line">As if each line were earthquake-rent,</p><p class="line">Leagues on seismal leagues of it,</p><p class="line">Not unheroically writ,</p><p class="line">By one of whom I had been told</p><p class="line">That he, in scorn of canons old,</p><p class="line">Pedantic laws effete and dead,</p><p class="line">Went fearless to the pure well-head</p><p class="line">Of song's most ancient legislature—</p><p class="line">Art's uncorrupted mother. Nature.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Nature! whose lapidary seas</p><p class="line">Labour a pebble without ease.</p><p class="line">Till they unto perfection bring</p><p class="line">That miracle of polishing;</p><p class="line">Who never negligently yet</p><p class="line">Fashioned an April violet,</p><p class="line">Nor would forgive, did June disclose</p><p class="line">Unceremoniously the rose;</p><p class="line">Who makes the toadstool in the grass</p><p class="line">The carven ivory surpass,</p><p class="line">So guiltless of a fault or slip</p><p class="line">Is its victorious workmanship,</p><p class="line">Who suffers us pure Form to see</p><p class="line">In a dead leaf's anatomy;</p><p class="line">And pondering long where greenly sleep</p><p class="line">The unravished secrets of the deep.</p><p class="line">Bids the all-courted pearl express</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Her final thoughts on flawlessness;</p><p class="line">But visibly aches when doomed to bring</p><p class="line">Some inchoate amorphous thing,</p><p class="line">Loathed by its very mother for</p><p class="line">The unfinish she doth most abhor,</p><p class="line">Into a world her curious wit</p><p class="line">Would fain have shaped all-exquisite</p><p class="line">As the acorn cup's simplicity.</p><p class="line">Or the Moon's patience with the sea,</p><p class="line">Or the superb, the golden grief</p><p class="line">Of each October for each leaf,</p><p class="line">Phrased in a rhetoric that excels</p><p class="line">Isaiah's and Ezekiel's.</p></div></body></html> · Great War