Sister Songs | Page 9

feast;

Whose robes are fluent crystal, crocus-hued,
Whose wings are
wind a-fire, whose mantles wrought
From spray that falling rainbows
shake
These, ye familiars to my wizard thought,
Make things of
journal custom unto her;
With lucent feet imbrued,
If young Day
tread, a glorious vintager,
The wine-press of the purple-foamed east;

Or round the nodding sun, flush-faced and sunken,
His wild
bacchantes drunken
Reel, with rent woofs a-flaunt, their westering
rout.
- But lo! at length the day is lingered out,
At length my Ariel
lays his viol by;
We sing no more to thee, child, he and I;
The day
is lingered out:
In slow wreaths folden
Around yon censer, sphered,
golden,
Vague Vesper's fumes aspire;
And glimmering to eclipse

The long laburnum drips
Its honey of wild flame, its jocund spilth of
fire.
Now pass your ways, fair bird, and pass your ways,
If you will;
I
have you through the days!
A flit or hold you still,
And perch you
where you list
On what wrist, -
You are mine through the times!
I
have caught you fast for ever in a tangle of sweet rhymes. And in your
young maiden morn,
You may scorn,
But you must be
Bound and
sociate to me;
With this thread from out the tomb my dead hand shall
tether thee!
Go, sister-songs, to that sweet sister-pair
For whom I have your frail
limbs fashioned,
And framed feateously; -
For whom I have your
frail limbs fashioned
With how great shamefastness and how great
dread,
Knowing you frail, but not if you be fair,
Though framed
feateously;

Go unto them from me.
Go from my shadow to their
sunshine sight,
Made for all sights' delight;
Go like twin swans that
oar the surgy storms
To bate with pennoned snows in candent air:

Nigh with abased head,
Yourselves linked sisterly, that sister-pair,

And go in presence there;
Saying--"Your young eyes cannot see our
forms,
Nor read the yearning of our looks aright;
But time shall trail
the veilings from our hair,
And cleanse your seeing with his euphrasy,


(Yea, even your bright seeing make more bright,
Which is all
sights' delight),
And ye shall know us for what things we be.
"Whilom, within a poet's calyxed heart,
A dewy love we trembled all
apart;
Whence it took rise
Beneath your radiant eyes,
Which
misted it to music. We must long,
A floating haze of silver subtile
song,
Await love-laden
Above each maiden
The appointed hour
that o'er the hearts of you -
As vapours into dew
Unweave, whence
they were wove, -
Shall turn our loosening musics back to love."
INSCRIPTION
When the last stir of bubbling melodies
Broke as my chants sank
underneath the wave
Of dulcitude, but sank again to rise
Where
man's embaying mind those waters lave,
(For music hath its
Oceanides
Flexuously floating through their parent seas,
And such
are these),
I saw a vision--or may it be
The effluence of a dear
desired reality?
I saw two spirits high, -
Two spirits, dim within the
silver smoke
Which is for ever woke
By snowing lights of
fountained Poesy.
Two shapes they were familiar as love;
They
were those souls, whereof
One twines from finest gracious daily
things,
Strong, constant, noticeless, as are heart-strings
The golden
cage wherein this song-bird sings;
And the other's sun gives hue to all
my flowers,
Which else pale flowers of Tartarus would grow,

Where ghosts watch ghosts of blooms in ghostly bowers; -
For we do
know
The hidden player by his harmonies,
And by my thoughts I
know what still hands thrill the keys.
And to these twain--as from the mind's abysses
All thoughts draw
toward the awakening heart's sweet kisses, With proffer of their
wreathen fantasies, -
Even so to these
I saw how many brought their
garlands fair,
Whether of song, or simple love, they were, -
Of
simple love, that makes best garlands fair.
But one I marked who
lingered still behind,
As for such souls no seemly gift had he:
He

was not of their strain,
Nor worthy of so bright beings to entertain,

Nor fit compeer for such high company.
Yet was he, surely, born to
them in mind,
Their youngest nursling of the spirit's kind.
Last stole
this one,
With timid glance, of watching eyes adread,
And dropped
his frightened flower when all were gone;
And where the frail flower
fell, it withered.
But yet methought those high souls smiled thereon;

As when a child, upstraining at your knees
Some fond and fancied
nothings, says, "I give you these!"

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