A Reading of Life, and Other Poems | Page 2

rapturous waves we
saw her glide;
The pearly sea-shell half enclose;
The shoal of
sea-nymphs flush the tide;
And we, afire to kiss her feet, no more

Behold than tracks along a startled shore,
With brightened edges of
dark leaves that feign
An ambush hoped, as heartless night remain.
More closely, warmly: hither, hither! she,
The very she called forth
by ripened blood
For its next breath of being, murmurs; she,

Allurement; she, fulfilment; she,
The stream within us urged to flood;

Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent; O she,
Maid, woman
and divinity;
Our over-earthly, inner-earthly mate
Unmated; she,
our hunger and our fruit
Untasted; she our written fate
Unread;
Life's flowering, Life's root:
Unread, divined; unseen, beheld;
The
evanescent, ever-present she,
Great Nature's stern necessity
In
radiance clothed, to softness quelled;

With a sword's edge of
sweetness keen to take
Our breath for bliss, our hearts for fulness
break.

The murmur hushes down, the veil is rent.
Man's cry, earth's answer,
heaven's consent,
Her form is given to pardoned sight,
And lets our
mortal eyes receive
The sovereign loveliness of celestial white;

Adored by them who solitarily pace,
In dusk of the underworld's
perpetual eve,
The paths among the meadow asphodel,

Remembering. Never there her face
Is planetary; reddens to shore
sea-shell
Around such whiteness the enamoured air
Of noon that
clothes her, never there.
Daughter of light, the joyful light,
She
stands unveiled to nuptial sight,
Sweet in her disregard of aid

Divine to conquer or persuade.
A fountain jets from moss; a flower

Bends gently where her sunset tresses shower.
By guerdon of her
brilliance may be seen
With eyelids unabashed the passion's Queen.
Shorn of attendant Graces she can use
Her natural snares to make her
will supreme.
A simple nymph it is, inclined to muse
Before the
leader foot shall dip in stream:
One arm at curve along a rounded
thigh;
Her firm new breasts each pointing its own way
A knee half
bent to shade its fellow shy,
Where innocence, not nature, signals nay.

The bud of fresh virginity awaits
The wooer, and all roseate will
she burst:
She touches on the hour of happy mates;
Still is she
unaware she wakens thirst.
And while commanding blissful sight believe
It holds her as a body
strained to breast,
Down on the underworld's perpetual eve
She
plunges the possessor dispossessed;
And bids believe that image,
heaving warm,
Is lost to float like torch-smoke after flame;
The
phantom any breeze blows out of form;
A thirst's delusion, a defeated
aim.
The rapture shed the torture weaves;
The direst blow on human heart
she deals:
The pain to know the seen deceives;

Nought true but
what insufferably feels.
And stabs of her delicious note,
That is as
heavenly light to hearing, heard
Through shelter leaves, the laughter
from her throat,
We answer as the midnight's morning's bird.

She laughs, she wakens gleeful cries;
In her delicious laughter part
revealed;
Yet mother is she more of moans and sighs,
For longings
unappeased and wounds unhealed.
Yet would she bless, it is her task
to bless:
Yon folded couples, passing under shade,
Are her rich
harvest; bidden caress, caress,
Consume the fruit in bloom; not
disobeyed.
We dolorous complainers had a dream,
Wrought on the
vacant air from inner fire,
We saw stand bare of her celestial beam

The glorious Goddess, and we dared desire.
Thereat are shown reproachful eyes, and lips
Of upward curl to
meanings half obscure;
And glancing where a wood-nymph lightly
skips
She nods: at once that creature wears her lure.
Blush of our
being between birth and death:
Sob of our ripened blood for its next
breath:
Her wily semblance nought of her denies;
Seems it the
Goddess runs, the Goddess hies,
The generous Goddess yields. And
she can arm
Her dwarfed and twisted with her secret charm;

Benevolent as Earth to feed her own.
Fully shall they be fed, if they
beseech.
But scorn she has for them that walk alone;
Blanched men,
starved women, whom no arts can pleach.
The men as chief of
criminals she disdains,
And holds the reason in perceptive thought.

More pitiable, like rivers lacking rains,
Kissing cold stones, the
women shrink for drought.
Those faceless discords, out of nature
strayed,
Rank of the putrefaction ere decayed,
In impious singles
bear the thorny wreaths:
Their lives are where harmonious Pleasure
breathes
For couples crowned with flowers that burn in dew.

Comes there a tremor of night's forest horn
Across her garden from
the insaner crew,
She darkens to malignity of scorn.
A shiver
courses through her garden-grounds:
Grunt of the tusky boar, the
baying hounds,

The hunter's shouts, are heard afar, and bring
Dead
on her heart her crimsoned flower of Spring.
These, the irreverent of
Life's design,
Division between natural and divine
Would cast;
these vaunting barrenness for best,
In veins of gathered strength Life's
tide arrest;
And these because the roses flood their cheeks,
Vow

them in nature wise as when Love speaks.
With them is war; and well
the Goddess knows
What undermines the race who mount the rose;

How the ripe moment, lodged in slumberous hours,
Enkindled by
persuasion overpowers:
Why weak as are her frailer trailing weeds,

The strong when Beauty gleams o'er Nature's needs,
And timely guile
unguarded finds them lie.
They who her sway withstand a sea defy,

At every point of juncture must be proof;
Nor look for mercy from
the incessant surge
Her forces mixed of craft and passion urge
For
the one whelming wave