The Three Mirrors
Edwin Muir
1946
I looked in the first glass
And saw the fenceless field
And like broken stones in grass
The sad towns glint and shine.
The slowly twisting vine
Scribbed with wrath the stone,
The mountain summits were sealed
In incomprehensible wrath.
The hunting roads ran on
To round the flying hill
And bring the quarry home.
But the obstinate roots ran wrong,
The lumbering fate fell wrong,
The walls were askew with ill,
Askew went every path,
The dead lay askew in the tomb.
I looked in the second glass
And saw through the twisted scroll
In virtue undefiled
And new in eternity
Father and mother and child,
The house with its single tree,
Bed and board and cross.
And the dead asleep in the knoll.
But the blade and leaf
By an angry law were bent
To shapes of terror and grief,
By a law the field was rent,
The crack ran over the floor,
The child at peace in his play
Changed as he passed through a door,
Changed were the house and the tree,
Changed the dead in the knoll,
For locked in love and grief
Good with evil lay.
If I looked in the third glass
I should see evil and good
Standing side by side
In the ever standing wood,
The wise king safe on his throne,
The rebel raising the rout,
And each so deeply grown
Into his own place
He'd be past desire or doubt.
If I could look I should see
The world's house open wide,
The million millions rooms
And the quick god everywhere
Glowing at work and at rest,
Tranquillity in the air,
Peace of the humming looms
Weaving from east to west,
And you and myself there.
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