Sister Songs | Page 5

be
Shaken celestially,
Consentient with enamoured
wings, might know my love for thee. Yet is there more, whereat none
guesseth, love!
Upon the ending of my deadly night
(Whereof thou
hast not the surmise, and slight
Is all that any mortal knows thereof),

Thou wert to me that earnest of day's light,
When, like the back of
a gold-mailed saurian
Heaving its slow length from Nilotic slime,

The first long gleaming fissure runs Aurorian
Athwart the yet dun
firmament of prime.
Stretched on the margin of the cruel sea

Whence they had rescued me,
With faint and painful pulses was I
lying;
Not yet discerning well
If I had 'scaped, or were an icicle,

Whose thawing is its dying.
Like one who sweats before a despot's
gate,
Summoned by some presaging scroll of fate,
And knows not
whether kiss or dagger wait;
And all so sickened is his countenance,

The courtiers buzz, "Lo, doomed!" and look at him askance:- At
Fate's dread portal then
Even so stood I, I ken,
Even so stood I,

between a joy and fear,
And said to mine own heart, "Now if the end
be here!"
They say, Earth's beauty seems completest
To them that on their
death-beds rest;
Gentle lady! she smiles sweetest
Just ere she clasp
us to her breast.
And I,--now MY Earth's countenance grew bright,

Did she but smile me towards that nuptial-night?
But whileas on such
dubious bed I lay,
One unforgotten day,
As a sick child waking sees

Wide-eyed daisies
Gazing on it from its hand,
Slipped there for
its dear amazes;
So between thy father's knees
I saw THEE stand,

And through my hazes
Of pain and fear thine eyes' young wonder
shone.
Then, as flies scatter from a carrion,
Or rooks in spreading
gyres like broken smoke
Wheel, when some sound their quietude has
broke,
Fled, at thy countenance, all that doubting spawn:
The heart
which I had questioned spoke,
A cry impetuous from its depths was
drawn, -
"I take the omen of this face of dawn!"
And with the omen
to my heart cam'st thou.
Even with a spray of tears
That one light
draft was fixed there for the years.
And now? -
The hours I tread ooze memories of thee, Sweet!

Beneath my casual feet.
With rainfall as the lea,
The day is
drenched with thee;
In little exquisite surprises
Bubbling
deliciousness of thee arises
From sudden places,
Under the
common traces
Of my most lethargied and customed paces.
As an Arab journeyeth
Through a sand of Ayaman,
Lean Thirst,
lolling its cracked tongue,
Lagging by his side along;
And a
rusty-winged Death
Grating its low flight before,

Casting ribbed
shadows o'er
The blank desert, blank and tan:
He lifts by hap
toward where the morning's roots are
His weary stare, -
Sees,
although they plashless mutes are,
Set in a silver air
Fountains of
gelid shoots are,
Making the daylight fairest fair;
Sees the palm and
tamarind
Tangle the tresses of a phantom wind; -
A sight like
innocence when one has sinned!
A green and maiden freshness

smiling there,
While with unblinking glare
The tawny-hided desert
crouches watching her.
'Tis a vision:
Yet the greeneries Elysian
He has known in tracts afar;

Thus the enamouring fountains flow,
Those the very palms that
grow,
By rare-gummed Sava, or Herbalimar. -
Such a watered dream has tarried
Trembling on my desert arid;

Even so
Its lovely gleamings
Seemings show
Of things not
seemings;
And I gaze,
Knowing that, beyond my ways,
Verily

All these ARE, for these are she.
Eve no gentlier lays her cooling
cheek
On the burning brow of the sick earth,
Sick with death, and
sick with birth,
Aeon to aeon, in secular fever twirled,
Than thy
shadow soothes this weak
And distempered being of mine.
In all I
work, my hand includeth thine;
Thou rushest down in every stream

Whose passion frets my spirit's deepening gorge;
Unhood'st mine
eyas-heart, and fliest my dream;
Thou swing'st the hammers of my
forge;
As the innocent moon, that nothing does but shine,
Moves all
the labouring surges of the world.
Pierce where thou wilt the
springing thought in me,
And there thy pictured countenance lies
enfurled,
As in the cut fern lies the imaged tree.
This poor song that
sings of thee,
This fragile song, is but a curled
Shell outgathered
from thy sea,
And murmurous still of its nativity.
Princess of
Smiles!
Sorceress of most unlawful-lawful wiles!
Cunning pit for
gazers' senses,
Overstrewn with innocences!
Purities gleam white
like statues
In the fair lakes of thine eyes,
And I watch the sparkles
that use
There to rise,
Knowing these
Are bubbles from the
calyces
Of the lovely thoughts that breathe
Paving, like
water-flowers, thy spirit's floor beneath.
O thou most dear!
Who art thy sex's complex harmony
God-set
more facilely;
To thee may love draw near
Without one blame or
fear,
Unchidden save by his humility:
Thou Perseus' Shield!
wherein I view secure
The mirrored Woman's fateful-fair allure!


Whom Heaven still leaves a twofold dignity,
As girlhood gentle, and
as boyhood free;
With whom no most diaphanous webs enwind
The
bared limbs of the rebukeless mind.
Wild Dryad! all unconscious of
thy tree,
With which indissolubly
The tyrannous time shall one day
make thee whole;
Whose frank arms pass unfretted through its bole:

Who wear'st thy femineity
Light as entrailed blossoms, that shalt
find
It erelong silver shackles unto thee.
Thou whose young sex is
yet but in thy soul; -
As hoarded in the vine
Hang the gold skins of
undelirious wine,
As air sleeps, till it toss its limbs in breeze:-
In
whom the mystery which lures