A Reading of Life, and Other Poems | Page 3

youth.?These miserably disinclined,?The lamentably unembraced,?Insult the Pleasures Earth designed?To people and beflower the waste.?Wherefore the Pleasures pass them by:?For death they live, in life they die.
Her head the Goddess from them turns,?As from grey mounds of ashes in bronze urns.?She views her quivering couples unconsoled,?And of her beauty mirror they become,?Like orchard blossoms, apple, pear and plum,?Free of the cloud, beneath the flood of gold.?Crowned with wreaths that burn in dew,?Her couples whirl, sun-satiated,?Athirst for shade, they sigh, they wed,?They play the music made of two:?Oldest of earth, earth's youngest till earth's end:?Cunninger than the numbered strings,?For melodies, for harmonies,?For mastered discords, and the things?Not vocable, whose mysteries?Are inmost Love's, Life's reach of Life extend.
Is it an anguish overflowing shame?And the tongue's pudency confides to her,?With eyes of embers, breath of incense myrrh,?The woman's marrow in some dear youth's name,?Then is the Goddess tenderness?Maternal, and she has a sister's tones?Benign to soothe intemperate distress,?Divide despair from hope, and sighs from moans.?Her gentleness imparts exhaling ease?To those of her milk-bearer votaries?As warm of bosom-earth as she; of the source?Direct; erratic but in heart's excess;?Being mortal and ill-matched for Love's great force;?Like green leaves caught with flames by his impress.?And pray they under skies less overcast,?That swiftly may her star of eve descend,?Her lustrous morning star fly not too fast,?To lengthen blissful night will she befriend.
Unfailing her reply to woman's voice?In supplication instant. Is it man's,?She hears, approves his words, her garden scans,?And him: the flowers are various, he has choice.?Perchance his wound is deep; she listens long;?Enjoys what music fills the plaintive song;?And marks how he, who would be hawk at poise?Above the bird, his plaintive song enjoys.
She reads him when his humbled manhood weeps?To her invoked: distraction is implored.?A smile, and he is up on godlike leaps?Above, with his bright Goddess owned the adored.?His tales of her declare she condescends;?Can share his fires, not always goads and rends:?Moreover, quits a throne, and must enclose?A queenlier gem than woman's wayside rose.?She bends, he quickens; she breathes low, he springs?Enraptured; low she laughs, his woes disperse;?Aloud she laughs and sweeps his varied strings.?'Tis taught him how for touch of mournful verse?Rarely the music made of two ascends,?And Beauty's Queen some other way is won.?Or it may solve the riddle, that she lends?Herself to all, and yields herself to none,?Save heavenliest: though claims by men are raised?In hot assurance under shade of doubt:?And numerous are the images bepraised?As Beauty's Queen, should passion head the rout.
Be sure the ruddy hue is Love's: to woo?Love's Fountain we must mount the ruddy hue.?That is her garden's precept, seen where shines?Her blood-flower, and its unsought neighbour pines.?Daughter of light, the joyful light,?She bids her couples face full East,?Reflecting radiance, even when from her feast?Their outstretched arms brown deserts disunite,?The lion-haunted thickets hold apart.?In love the ruddy hue declares great heart;?High confidence in her whose aid is lent?To lovers lifting the tuned instrument,?Not one of rippled strings and funeral tone.?And doth the man pursue a tightened zone,?Then be it as the Laurel God he runs,?Confirmed to win, with countenance the Sun's.
Should pity bless the tremulous voice of woe?He lifts for pity, limp his offspring show.?For him requiring woman's arts to please?Infantile tastes with babe reluctances,?No race of giants! In the woman's veins?Persuasion ripely runs, through hers the pains.?Her choice of him, should kind occasion nod,?Aspiring blends the Titan with the God;?Yet unto dwarf and mortal, she, submiss?In her high Lady's mandate, yields the kiss;?And is it needed that Love's daintier brute?Be snared as hunter, she will tempt pursuit.?She is great Nature's ever intimate?In breast, and doth as ready handmaid wait,?Until perverted by her senseless male,?She plays the winding snake, the shrinking snail,?The flying deer, all tricks of evil fame,?Elusive to allure, since he grew tame.
Hence has the Goddess, Nature's earliest Power,?And greatest and most present, with her dower?Of the transcendent beauty, gained repute?For meditated guile. She laughs to hear?A charge her garden's labyrinths scarce confute,?Her garden's histories tell of to all near.?Let it be said, But less upon her guile?Doth she rely for her immortal smile.?Still let the rumour spread, and terror screens?To push her conquests by the simplest means.?While man abjures not lustihead, nor swerves?From earth's good labours, Beauty's Queen he serves.
Her spacious garden and her garden's grant?She offers in reward for handsome cheer:?Choice of the nymphs whose looks will slant?The secret down a dewy leer?Of corner eyelids into haze:?Many a fair Aphrosyne?Like flower-bell to honey-bee:?And here they flicker round the maze?Bewildering him in heart and head:?And here they wear the close demure,?With subtle peeps to reassure:?Others parade where love has bled,?And of its crimson weave their mesh:?Others to snap of fingers leap,?As bearing breast with love asleep.?These are her laughters in the flesh.?Or would she fit a warrior mood,?She lights her seeming unsubdued,?And indicates the fortress-key.?Or