A Reading of Life, and Other Poems | Page 3

to spring aloof.
She, tenderness, is pitiless to
them
Resisting in her godhead nature's truth.
No flower their face
shall be, but writhen stem;
Their youth a frost, their age the dirge for
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