A Reading of Life, and Other Poems | Page 4

is it heart for heart that craves,?She flecks along a run of waves?The one to promise deeper sea.
Bands of her limpid primitives,?Or patterned in the curious braid,?Are the blest man's; and whatsoever he gives,?For what he gives is he repaid.?Good is it if by him 'tis held?He wins the fairest ever welled?From Nature's founts: she whispers it: Even I?Not fairer! and forbids him to deny,?Else little is he lover. Those he clasps,?Intent as tempest, worshipful as prayer, -?And be they doves or be they asps, -?Must seem to him the sovereignty fair;?Else counts he soon among life's wholly tamed.?Him whom from utter savage she reclaimed,?Half savage must he stay, would he be crowned?The lover. Else, past ripeness, deathward bound,?He reasons; and the totterer Earth detests,?Love shuns, grim logic screws in grasp, is he.?Doth man divide divine Necessity?From Joy, between the Queen of Beauty's breasts?A sword is driven; for those most glorious twain?Present her; armed to bless and to constrain.?Of this he perishes; not she, the throned?On rocks that spout their springs to the sacred mounts.?A loftier Reason out of deeper founts?Earth's chosen Goddess bears: by none disowned?While red blood runs to swell the pulse, she boasts,?And Beauty, like her star, descends the sky;?Earth's answer, heaven's consent unto man's cry,?Uplifted by the innumerable hosts.
Quickened of Nature's eye and ear,?When the wild sap at high tide smites?Within us; or benignly clear?To vision; or as the iris lights?On fluctuant waters; she is ours?Till set of man: the dreamed, the seen;?Flushing the world with odorous flowers:?A soft compulsion on terrene?By heavenly: and the world is hers?While hunger after Beauty spurs.
So is it sung in any space?She fills, with laugh at shallow laws?Forbidding love's devised embrace,?The music Beauty from it draws.
Poem: A Reading of Life--The Test Of Manhood
Like a flood river whirled at rocky banks,?An army issues out of wilderness,?With battle plucking round its ragged flanks;?Obstruction in the van; insane excess?Oft at the heart; yet hard the onward stress?Unto more spacious, where move ordered ranks,?And rise hushed temples built of shapely stone,?The work of hands not pledged to grind or slay.?They gave our earth a dress of flesh on bone;?A tongue to speak with answering heaven gave they.?Then was the gracious birth of man's new day;?Divided from the haunted night it shone.
That quiet dawn was Reverence; whereof sprang?Ethereal Beauty in full morningtide.?Another sun had risen to clasp his bride:?It was another earth unto him sang.
Came Reverence from the Huntress on her heights??From the Persuader came it, in those vales?Whereunto she melodiously invites,?Her troops of eager servitors regales??Not far those two great Powers of Nature speed?Disciple steps on earth when sole they lead;?Nor either points for us the way of flame.?From him predestined mightier it came;?His task to hold them both in breast, and yield?Their dues to each, and of their war be field.
The foes that in repulsion never ceased,?Must he, who once has been the goodly beast?Of one or other, at whose beck he ran,?Constrain to make him serviceable man;?Offending neither, nor the natural claim?Each pressed, denying, for his true man's name.
Ah, what a sweat of anguish in that strife?To hold them fast conjoined within him still;?Submissive to his will?Along the road of life!?And marvel not he wavered if at whiles?The forward step met frowns, the backward smiles.?For Pleasure witched him her sweet cup to drain;?Repentance offered ecstasy in pain.?Delicious licence called it Nature's cry;?Ascetic rigours crushed the fleshly sigh;?A tread on shingle timed his lame advance?Flung as the die of Bacchanalian Chance,?He of the troubled marching army leaned?On godhead visible, on godhead screened;?The radiant roseate, the curtained white;?Yet sharp his battle strained through day, through night.
He drank of fictions, till celestial aid?Might seem accorded when he fawned and prayed;?Sagely the generous Giver circumspect,?To choose for grants the egregious, his elect;?And ever that imagined succour slew?The soul of brotherhood whence Reverence drew.
In fellowship religion has its founts:?The solitary his own God reveres:?Ascend no sacred Mounts?Our hungers or our fears.?As only for the numbers Nature's care?Is shown, and she the personal nothing heeds,?So to Divinity the spring of prayer?From brotherhood the one way upward leads.?Like the sustaining air?Are both for flowers and weeds.?But he who claims in spirit to be flower,?Will find them both an air that doth devour.
Whereby he smelt his treason, who implored?External gifts bestowed but on the sword;?Beheld himself, with less and less disguise,?Through those blood-cataracts which dimmed his eyes,?His army's foe, condemned to strive and fail;?See a black adversary's ghost prevail;?Never, though triumphs hailed him, hope to win?While still the conflict tore his breast within.
Out of that agony, misread for those?Imprisoned Powers warring unappeased,?The ghost of his black adversary rose,?To smother light, shut heaven, show earth diseased.?And long with him was wrestling ere emerged?A mind to read in him the reflex shade?Of its fierce torment; this way, that way urged;?By craven compromises