Poems | Page 5

The harping of mortals!
II.
Where wings to rustle use, But this poor tarrier - Searching my spirit's eaves - Find I for carrier. Ah! bring them back to me Swiftly, sweet comer! Swift, swift, and bring with you Song's Indian summer! Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals!
III.
Whereso your angel is, My angel goeth; I am left guardianless, Paradise knoweth! I have no Heaven left To weep my wrongs to; Heaven, when you went from us; Went with my songs too. Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals!
IV.
I have no angels left Now, Sweet, to pray to: Where you have made your shrine They are away to. They have struck Heaven's tent, And gone to cover you: Whereso you keep your state Heaven is pitched over you! Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals!
V.
She that is Heaven's Queen Her title borrows, For that she pitiful Beareth our sorrows. So thou, Regina mi, Spes infirmorum; With all our grieving crowned Mater dolorum! Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals!
VI.
Yet, envious coveter Of other's grieving! This lonely longing yet 'Scapeth your reaving. Cruel! to take from a Sinner his Heaven! Think you with contrite smiles To be forgiven? Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals!
VII.
Penitent! give me back Angels, and Heaven; Render your stolen self, And be forgiven! How frontier Heaven from you? For my soul prays, Sweet, Still to your face in Heaven, Heaven in your face, Sweet! Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals!

SCALA JACOBI PORTAQUE EBURNEA

Her soul from earth to Heaven lies, Like the ladder of the vision, Whereon go To and fro, In ascension and demission, Star-flecked feet of Paradise.
Now she is drawn up from me, All my angels, wet-eyed, tristful, Gaze from great Heaven's gate Like pent children, very wistful, That below a playmate see.
Dream-dispensing face of hers! Ivory port which loosed upon me Wings, I wist, Whose amethyst Trepidations have forgone me, - Hesper's filmy traffickers!

GILDED GOLD

Thou dost to rich attire a grace, To let it deck itself with thee, And teachest pomp strange cunning ways To be thought simplicity. But lilies, stolen from grassy mold, No more curled state unfold Translated to a vase of gold; In burning throne though they keep still Serenities unthawed and chill. Therefore, albeit thou'rt stately so, In statelier state thou us'dst to go.
Though jewels should phosphoric burn Through those night-waters of thine hair, A flower from its translucid urn Poured silver flame more lunar-fair. These futile trappings but recall Degenerate worshippers who fall In purfled kirtle and brocade To 'parel the white Mother-Maid. For, as her image stood arrayed In vests of its self-substance wrought
To measure of the sculptor's thought - Slurred by those added braveries; So for thy spirit did devise Its Maker seemly garniture, Of its own essence parcel pure, - From grave simplicities a dress, And reticent demurenesses, And love encinctured with reserve; Which the woven vesture should subserve. For outward robes in their ostents Should show the soul's habiliments. Therefore I say,--Thou'rt fair even so, But better Fair I use to know.
The violet would thy dusk hair deck With graces like thine own unsought. Ah! but such place would daze and wreck Its simple, lowly rustic thought. For so advanced, dear, to thee, It would unlearn humility! Yet do not, with an altered look, In these weak numbers read rebuke; Which are but jealous lest too much God's master-piece thou shouldst retouch. Where a sweetness is complete, Add not sweets unto the sweet! Or, as thou wilt, for others so In unfamiliar richness go; But keep for mine acquainted eyes The fashions of thy Paradise.

HER PORTRAIT

Oh, but the heavenly grammar did I hold Of that high speech which angels' tongues turn gold! So should her deathless beauty take no wrong, Praised in her own great kindred's fit and cognate tongue. Or if that language yet with us abode. Which Adam in the garden talked with God! But our untempered speech descends--poor heirs! Grimy and rough-cast still from Babel's bricklayers: Curse on the brutish jargon we inherit, Strong but to damn, not memorise, a spirit! A cheek, a lip, a limb, a bosom, they Move with light ease in speech of working-day; And women we do use to praise even so. But here the gates we burst, and to the temple go. Their praise were her dispraise; who dare, who dare, Adulate the seraphim for their burning hair? How, if with them I dared, here should I