Poems | Page 9

crept, Reached not the heart that courage kept With winds and years beswept.
And in its boughs did close and kindly nest The birds, as they within its breast, By all its leaves caressed.
But bird nor child might touch by any art Each other's or the tree's hid heart, A whole God's breadth apart;
The breadth of God, he breadth of death and life! Even so, even so, in undreamed strife With pulseless Law, the wife, -
The sweetest wife on sweetest marriage-day, - Their souls at grapple in mid-way, Sweet to her sweet may say:
"I take you to my inmost heart, my true!" Ah, fool! but there is one heart you Shall never take him to!
The hold that falls not when the town is got, The heart's heart, whose immured plot Hath keys yourself keep not!
Its ports you cannot burst--you are withstood - For him that to your listening blood Sends precepts as he would.
Its gates are deaf to Love, high summoner; Yea, Love's great warrant runs not there: You are your prisoner.
Yourself are with yourself the sole consortress In that unleaguerable fortress; It knows you not for portress
Its keys are at the cincture hung of God; Its gates are trepidant to His nod; By Him its floors are trod.
And if His feet shall rock those floors in wrath, Or blest aspersion sleek His path, Is only choice it hath.
Yea, in that ultimate heart's occult abode To lie as in an oubliette of God, Or as a bower untrod,
Built by a secret Lover for His Spouse; - Sole choice is this your life allows, Sad tree, whose perishing boughs So few birds house!

DREAM-TRYST

The breaths of kissing night and day Were mingled in the eastern Heaven: Throbbing with unheard melody Shook Lyra all its star-chord seven: When dusk shrunk cold, and light trod shy, And dawn's grey eyes were troubled grey; And souls went palely up the sky, And mine to Lucide.
There was no change in her sweet eyes Since last I saw those sweet eyes shine; There was no change in her deep heart Since last that deep heart knocked at mine. Her eyes were clear, her eyes were Hope's, Wherein did ever come and go The sparkle of the fountain-drops From her sweet soul below.
The chambers in the house of dreams Are fed with so divine an air, That Time's hoar wings grow young therein, And they who walk there are most fair. I joyed for me, I joyed for her, Who with the Past meet girt about: Where our last kiss still warms the air, Nor can her eyes go out.

A CORYMBUS FOR AUTUMN

Hearken my chant, 'tis As a Bacchante's, A grape-spurt, a vine-splash, a tossed tress, flown vaunt 'tis! Suffer my singing, Gipsy of Seasons, ere thou go winging; Ere Winter throws His slaking snows In thy feasting-flagon's impurpurate glows! The sopped sun--toper as ever drank hard - Stares foolish, hazed, Rubicund, dazed, Totty with thine October tankard. Tanned maiden! with cheeks like apples russet, And breast a brown agaric faint-flushing at tip, And a mouth too red for the moon to buss it, But her cheek unvow its vestalship; Thy mists enclip Her steel-clear circuit illuminous, Until it crust Rubiginous With the glorious gules of a glowing rust. Far other saw we, other indeed, The crescent moon, in the May-days dead, Fly up with its slender white wings spread Out of its nest in the sea's waved mead! How are the veins of thee, Autumn, laden? Umbered juices, And pulped oozes Pappy out of the cherry-bruises, Froth the veins of thee, wild, wild maiden! With hair that musters In globed clusters, In tumbling clusters, like swarthy grapes, Round thy brow and thine ears o'ershaden; With the burning darkness of eyes like pansies, Like velvet pansies Wherethrough escapes The splendid might of thy conflagrate fancies; With robe gold-tawny not hiding the shapes Of the feet whereunto it falleth down, Thy naked feet unsandalled; With robe gold-tawny that does not veil Feet where the red Is meshed in the brown, Like a rubied sun in a Venice-sail.
The wassailous heart of the Year is thine! His Bacchic fingers disentwine His coronal At thy festival; His revelling fingers disentwine Leaf, flower, and all, And let them fall Blossom and all in thy wavering wine. The Summer looks out from her brazen tower, Through the flashing bars of July, Waiting thy ripened golden shower; Whereof there cometh, with sandals fleet, The North-west flying viewlessly, With a sword to sheer, and untameable feet, And the gorgon-head of the Winter shown To stiffen the gazing earth as stone.
In crystal Heaven's magic sphere Poised in the palm of thy fervid hand, Thou seest the enchanted shows appear That stain Favonian firmament; Richer than ever the Occident Gave up to bygone Summer's wand. Day's dying dragon lies