Poems | Page 6

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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 dare it? How praise the woman, who but know the
spirit? How praise the colour of her eyes, uncaught While they were
coloured with her varying thought How her mouth's shape, who only
use to know What tender shape her speech will fit it to? Or her lips'
redness, when their joined veil Song's fervid hand has parted till it wore
them pale?
If I would praise her soul (temerarious if!), All must be mystery and
hieroglyph. Heaven, which not oft is prodigal of its more To singers, in
their song too great before; By which the hierarch of large poesy is
Restrained to his once sacred benefice; Only for her the salutary awe
Relaxes and stern canon of its law; To her alone concedes pluralities, In
her alone to reconcile agrees The Muse, the Graces, and the Charities;
To her, who can the trust so well conduct To her it gives the use, to us
the usufruct.
What of the dear administress then may I utter, though I spoke her own
carved perfect way? What of her daily gracious converse known,
Whose heavenly despotism must needs dethrone And subjugate all
sweetness but its own? Deep in my heart subsides the infrequent word,
And there dies slowly throbbing like a wounded bird. What of her
silence, that outsweetens speech? What of her thoughts, high marks for
mine own thoughts to reach? Yet (Chaucer's antique sentence so to
turn), Most gladly will she teach, and gladly learn; And teaching her,
by her enchanting art, The master threefold learns for all he can impart.
Now all is said, and all being said,--aye me! There yet remains unsaid
the very She. Nay, to conclude (so to conclude I dare), If of her virtues
you evade the snare, Then for her faults you'll fall in love with her.
Alas, and I have spoken of her Muse - Her Muse, that died with her
auroral dews! Learn, the wise cherubim from harps of gold Seduce a
trepidating music manifold; But the superior seraphim do know None
other music but to flame and glow. So she first lighted on our frosty
earth, A sad musician, of cherubic birth, Playing to alien ears--which
did not prize The uncomprehended music of the skies - The exiled airs
of her far Paradise. But soon from her own harpings taking fire, In love
and light her melodies expire. Now Heaven affords her, for her silenced
hymn, A double portion of the seraphim.
At the rich odours from her heart that rise, My soul remembers its lost

Paradise, And antenatal gales blow from Heaven's shores of spice; I
grow essential all, uncloaking me From this encumbering virility, And
feel the primal sex of heaven and poetry: And parting from her, in me
linger on Vague snatches of Uranian antiphon.
How to the petty prison could she shrink Of femineity?--Nay, but I
think In a dear courtesy her spirit would Woman assume, for grace to
womanhood. Or, votaress to the virgin Sanctitude Of reticent
withdrawal's sweet, courted pale, She took the cloistral flesh, the sexual
veil, Of her sad, aboriginal sisterhood; The habit of cloistral flesh
which founding Eve indued.
Thus do I know her: but for what men call Beauty--the loveliness
corporeal, Its most just praise a thing unproper were To singer or to
listener, me or her. She wears that body but as one indues A robe, half
careless, for it is the use; Although her soul and it so fair agree, We
sure may, unattaint of heresy, Conceit it might the soul's begetter be.
The immortal could we cease to contemplate, The mortal part suggests
its every trait. God laid His fingers on the ivories Of her pure members
as on smoothed keys, And there out-breathed her spirit's harmonies I'll
speak a little proudly:- I disdain To count the beauty worth my wish or
gaze, Which the dull daily fool can covet or obtain. I do confess the
fairness of the spoil, But from such rivalry it takes a soil. For her I'll
proudlier speak:- how could it be That I should praise