Ideal Sciences

In the crystal regions they sit,
The Muses, plying their arts.

There is one for the practise
Of melody: she takes fine threads
And strings them together,
Binding them to patterns
Mirroring her skill,
Which were in the thread
All along -- she claims,
And the tapestries show:

The obscure earth illumined by astral
Aspects of the stars,
Constellate in a glow's
Eternity, moving by a necessary
Law, the same that guides
Her hand -- and other things
Of which we may not speak.

The Greeks have called her
Euterpe, whom I am liable to change
For Polyhymnia, Urania or Erato,
Even the dream desired
Like heaven, seen
As the boundaries of a bridge,
And like a bridge, as that which spans
Both time and a place, pressing
With its progress beyond
All progress to a region
Past its motion and a moment
Whose geometry is heard
In what only symbols can see...

No more of this, for sacredness
Is out of bounds:
We never hold the symbol
In the thought, and when we see,
We see particularity --

It is to this our study points
Though it is not itself a point.