Sister Songs | Page 7

aerial mind, for thy
weak feet,
Let down the silken ladder of her thought.
She bare thee
with a double pain,
Of the body and the spirit;
Thou thy fleshly
weeds hast ta'en,
Thy diviner weeds inherit!
The precious streams
which through thy young lips roll
Shall leave their lovely delta in thy
soul:
Where sprites of so essential kind
Set their paces,
Surely

they shall leave behind
The green traces
Of their sportance in the
mind,
And thou shalt, ere we well may know it,
Turn that daintiness,
a poet, -
Elfin-ring
Where sweet fancies foot and sing.
So it may
be, so it SHALL be, -
Oh, take the prophecy from me!
What if the
old fastidious sculptor, Time,
This crescent marvel of his hands

Carveth all too painfully,
And I who prophesy shall never see?

What if the niche of its predestined rhyme,
Its aching niche, too long
expectant stands?
Yet shall he after sore delays
On some exultant
day of days
The white enshrouding childhood raise
From thy fair
spirit, finished for our gaze;
While we (but 'mongst that happy "we"

The prophet cannot be!)
While we behold with no astonishments,

With that serene fulfilment of delight
Wherewith we view the sight

When the stars pitch the golden tents
Of their high campment on
the plains of night.
Why should amazement be our satellite?
What
wonder in such things?
If angels have hereditary wings,
If not by
Salic law is handed down
The poet's crown,
To thee, born in the
purple of the throne,
The laurel must belong:
Thou, in thy mother's
right
Descendant of Castalian-chrismed kings -
O Princess of the
Blood of Song!
Peace; too impetuously have I been winging
Toward vaporous
heights which beckon and beguile
I sink back, saddened to my inmost
mind;
Even as I list a-dream that mother singing
The poesy of
sweet tone, and sadden, while
Her voice is cast in troubled wake
behind
The keel of her keen spirit. Thou art enshrined

In a too
primal innocence for this eye -
Intent on such untempered radiancy -

Not to be pained; my clay can scarce endure
Ungrieved the
effluence near of essences so pure.
Therefore, little, tender maiden,

Never be thou overshaden
With a mind whose canopy
Would shut
out the sky from thee;
Whose tangled branches intercept Heaven's
light:
I will not feed my unpastured heart
On thee, green pleasaunce
as thou art,
To lessen by one flower thy happy daisies white.
The
water-rat is earth-hued like the runlet
Whereon he swims; and how in

me should lurk
Thoughts apt to neighbour thine, thou creature sunlit?

If through long fret and irk
Thine eyes within their browed recesses
were
Worn caves where thought lay couchant in its lair;
Wert thou
a spark among dank leaves, ah ruth!
With age in all thy veins, while
all thy heart was youth;
Our contact might run smooth.
But life's
Eoan dews still moist thy ringed hair;
Dian's chill finger-tips
Thaw
if at night they happen on thy lips;
The flying fringes of the sun's
cloak frush
The fragile leaves which on those warm lips blush;
And
joy only lurks retired
In the dim gloaming of thine irid.
Then since
my love drags this poor shadow, me,
And one without the other may
not be,
From both I guard thee free.
It still is much, yes, it is much,

Only--my dream!--to love my love of thee;
And it is much, yes, it
is much,
In hands which thou hast touched to feel thy touch
In
voices which have mingled with thine own
To hear a double tone.

As anguish, for supreme expression prest,
Borrows its saddest tongue
from jest,
Thou hast of absence so create
A presence more
importunate;
And thy voice pleads its sweetest suit
When it is mute.

I thank the once accursed star
Which did me teach
To make of
Silence my familiar,
Who hath the rich reversion of thy speech,

Since the most charming sounds thy thought can wear,
Cast off, fall
to that pale attendant's share;
And thank the gift which made my
mind
A shadow-world, wherethrough the shadows wind
Of all the
loved and lovely of my kind.
Like a maiden Saxon, folden,
As she flits, in moon-drenched mist;

Whose curls streaming flaxen-golden,
By the misted moonbeams kist,

Dispread their filmy floating silk
Like honey steeped in milk:
So,
vague goldenness remote,
Through my thoughts I watch thee float.

When the snake summer casts her blazoned skin
We find it at the turn
of autumn's path,
And think it summer that rewinded hath,
Joying
therein;
And this enamouring slough of thee, mine elf,
I take it for
thyself;
Content. Content? Yea, title it content.
The very loves that
belt thee must prevent
My love, I know, with their legitimacy:
As

the metallic vapours, that are swept
Athwart the sun, in his light
intercept
The very hues
Which THEIR conflagrant elements effuse.

But, my love, my heart, my fair,
That only I should see thee rare,

Or tent to the hid core thy rarity, -
This were a mournfulness more
piercing far
Than that those other loves my own must bar,
Or thine
for others leave thee none for me.
But on a day whereof I think,
One shall dip his hand to drink
In that
still water of thy soul,
And its imaged tremors race
Over thy
joy-troubled face,
As the intervolved reflections roll
From a shaken
fountain's brink,
With swift light wrinkling its alcove.
From the
hovering wing of Love
The warm stain shall flit roseal on thy cheek,

Then, sweet blushet! whenas he,
The destined paramount