Stained glass in the Arts & Crafts style, set in a medieval church
The sower goes out to sow. His sense and form
Move only in a landscape of stained glass;
The leads like ivy stems,
Enmeshing, bind him in.
Outside, it is afternoon; inside, the sun
Irradiates a face in shadow, eyes
Inclined toward the earth,
Crimsoning underfoot.
The glory round about and through his limbs
Is vision in excess of daily need,
Devotion in the work
Dispersed beyond the seed.
Victorian glass of eighteen ninety-seven,
Replacing the clear light in the west wall
In homage to a time
That built as if for ever.
The vision is of a vision that transfigured
Perspectives on the clear field; but with skill
The craftsman has contained,
Edged, the unearthly glow.
His observation accurate, the self
A blemish that his labour should efface,
Devotion to his craft
Speaks through the pictured face.
The sower does not see the field he sows.
He walks in rapture, but his eyes are glazed
That has no root in earth.
It is the craftsman’s sorrow, for he gave
These paradisal colours to the earth
But when he looked on earth
He found an absence there.
Here wayside, thorn, good ground and stony ground
Are stained through with devotion, with his need
For things to mean – the word
Secreted in the seed.