New Poems | Page 6

skies do grow a hollow mock,
My
fearful powers retire,
No longer strong,
Reversing the shook
banners of their song.
Ah, for a heart less native to high Heaven,

A hooded eye, for jesses
and restraint,
Or for a will accipitrine to pursue!
The veil of tutelar
flesh to simple livers given,
Or those brave-fledging fervours of the
Saint,
Whose heavenly falcon-craft doth never taint,
Nor they in
sickest time their ample virtue mew.
ORIENT ODE.

Lo, in the sanctuaried East,
Day, a dedicated priest
In all his robes
pontifical exprest,
Lifteth slowly, lifteth sweetly,
From out its
Orient tabernacle drawn,
Yon orb-ed sacrament confest
Which
sprinkles benediction through the dawn;
And when the grave
procession's ceased,
The earth with due illustrious rite
Blessed,--ere
the frail fingers featly
Of twilight, violet-cassocked acolyte,
His
sacerdotal stoles unvest--
Sets, for high close of the mysterious feast,

The sun in august exposition meetly
Within the flaming
monstrance of the West.
O salutaris hostia,
Quae coeli pandis
ostium!
Through breach-ed darkness' rampart, a
Divine assaulter,
art thou come!
God whom none may live and mark!
Borne within
thy radiant ark,
While the Earth, a joyous David,
Dances before
thee from the dawn to dark.
The moon, O leave, pale ruined Eve;

Behold her fair and greater daughter {1}
Offers to thee her fruitful
water,
Which at thy first white Ave shall conceive!
Thy gazes do on
simple her
Desirable allures confer;
What happy comelinesses rise

Beneath thy beautifying eyes!
Who was, indeed, at first a maid

Such as, with sighs, misgives she is not fair,
And secret views herself
afraid,
Till flatteries sweet provoke the charms they swear:
Yea, thy
gazes, blissful lover,
Make the beauties they discover!
What dainty
guiles and treacheries caught
From artful prompting of love's artless
thought
Her lowly loveliness teach her to adorn,
When thy plumes
shiver against the conscious gates of morn!
And so the love which is thy dower,

Earth, though her first-frightened
breast
Against the exigent boon protest,
(For she, poor maid, of her
own power
Has nothing in herself, not even love,
But an unwitting
void thereof),
Gives back to thee in sanctities of flower;
And holy
odours do her bosom invest,
That sweeter grows for being prest:

Though dear recoil, the tremorous nurse of joy,
From thine embrace
still startles coy,
Till Phosphor lead, at thy returning hour,
The
laughing captive from the wishing West.

Nor the majestic heavens less
Thy formidable sweets approve,
Thy
dreads and thy delights confess,
That do draw, and that remove.

Thou as a lion roar'st, O Sun,
Upon thy satellites' vex-ed heels;

Before thy terrible hunt thy planets run;
Each in his frighted orbit
wheels,
Each flies through inassuageable chase,
Since the hunt o'
the world begun,
The puissant approaches of thy face,
And yet thy
radiant leash he feels.
Since the hunt o' the world begun,
Lashed
with terror, leashed with longing,
The mighty course is ever run;

Pricked with terror, leashed with longing,
Thy rein they love, and thy
rebuke they shun.
Since the hunt o' the world began,
With love that
trembleth, fear that loveth,
Thou join'st the woman to the man;
And
Life with Death
In obscure nuptials moveth,
Commingling alien,
yet affin-ed breath.
Thou art the incarnated Light
Whose Sire is aboriginal, and beyond

Death and resurgence of our day and night;
From him is thy
vicegerent wand
With double potence of the black and white.
Giver
of Love, and Beauty, and Desire,
The terror, and the loveliness, and
purging,
The deathfulness and lifefulness of fire!
Samson's riddling
meanings merging
In thy twofold sceptre meet:
Out of thy minatory
might,
Burning Lion, burning Lion,
Comes the honey of all sweet,

And out of thee, the eater, comes forth meat.
And though, by thine
alternate breath,
Every kiss thou dost inspire
Echoeth
Back from
the windy vaultages of death;
Yet thy clear warranty above
Augurs
the wings of death too must

Occult reverberations stir of love

Crescent and life incredible;
That even the kisses of the just
Go
down not unresurgent to the dust.
Yea, not a kiss which I have given,

But shall tri-umph upon my lips in heaven,
Or cling a shameful
fungus there in hell.
Know'st thou me not, O Sun? Yea, well
Thou
know'st the ancient miracle,
The children know'st of Zeus and May;

And still thou teachest them, O splendent Brother,
To incarnate,
the antique way,
The truth which is their heritage from their Sire
In
sweet disguise of flesh from their sweet Mother.
My fingers thou hast

taught to con
Thy flame-chorded psalterion,
Till I can translate into
mortal wire--
Till I can translate passing well--
The heavenly
harping harmony,
Melodious, sealed, inaudible,
Which makes the
dulcet psalter of the world's desire.
Thou whisperest in the Moon's
white ear,
And she does whisper into mine,--
By night together, I
and she--
With her virgin voice divine,
The things I cannot half so
sweetly tell
As she can sweetly speak, I sweetly hear.
By her, the Woman, does Earth live, O Lord,
Yet she for Earth, and
both in thee.
Light out of Light!
Resplendent and prevailing Word

Of the Unheard!
Not unto thee, great Image, not to thee
Did the
wise heathen bend an idle knee;
And in an age of faith grown frore

If I too shall adore,
Be it accounted unto me
A bright sciential
idolatry!
God has given thee visible thunders
To utter thine
apocalypse of wonders;
And what want I of prophecy,
That at the
sounding from thy station
Of thy flagrant trumpet, see
The seals
that melt, the open revelation?
Or who a God-persuading angel needs,

That only heeds
The rhetoric of thy burning