So I did his pens, and the jasper seal on his desk.
Something seemed to surge through me when I
touched them.

"So it is with you, but here
The joy I feel!
God knows what I feel, but it is joy!
Look, you are clean and fine and singled out!
I admire you so, you are beautiful: this clean
sweep of your sides, this firmness, this hard
mould!
I would die rather than have it injured with one
scar.
I wish I could grip you like the fist of the Lord,
and have you--"

So she said, and I wondered,
feeling trammelled and hurt.
It did not make me free.

Now I say to her: "No tool, no instrument, no
God!
Don't touch me and appreciate me.
It is an infamy.
You would think twice before you touched a
weasel on a fence
as it lifts its straight white throat.
Your hand would not be so flig and easy.
Nor the adder we saw asleep with her head on her
shoulder,
curled up in the sunshine like a princess;
when she lifted her head in delicate, startled
wonder
you did not stretch forward to caress her
though she looked rarely beautiful
and a miracle as she glided delicately away, with
such dignity.
And the young bull in the field, with his wrinkled,
sad face,
you are afraid if he rises to his feet,
though he is all wistful and pathetic, like a mono-
lith, arrested, static.

"Is there nothing in me to make you hesitate?
I tell you there is all these.
And why should you overlook them in me?--"

_NEW HEAVEN AND EARTH_

I

AND so I cross into another world
shyly and in homage linger for an invitation
from this unknown that I would trespass on.

I am very glad, and all alone in the world,
all alone, and very glad, in a new world
where I am disembarked at last.

I could cry with joy, because I am in the new world,
just ventured in.
I could cry with joy, and quite freely, there is
nobody to know.

And whosoever the unknown people of this un-
known world may be
they will never understand my weeping for joy
to be adventuring among them
because it will still be a gesture of the old world I
am making
which they will not understand, because it is
quite, quite foreign to them.

II

I WAS so weary of the world
I was so sick of it
everything was tainted with myself,
skies, trees, flowers, birds, water,
people, houses, streets, vehicles, machines,
nations, armies, war, peace-talking,
work, recreation, governin