Sister Songs | Page 3

brows be, save of one,?With such Hesperian fulgence compassed,?Which in her moving seemed to wheel about her head.
O Spring's little children, more loud your lauds upraise,?For this is even Sylvia, with her sweet, feat ways!?Your lovesome labours lay away,?And prank you out in holiday,?For syllabling to Sylvia;?And all you birds on branches, lave your mouths with May,?To bear with me this burthen?For singing to Sylvia!
7.
Spring, goddess, is it thou, desired long??And art thou girded round with this young train? -?If ever I did do thee ease in song,?Now of thy grace let me one meed obtain,?And list thou to one plain.?Oh, keep still in thy train?After the years when others therefrom fade,?This tiny, well-beloved maid!?To whom the gate of my heart's fortalice,?With all which in it is,?And the shy self who doth therein immew him?'Gainst what loud leagurers battailously woo him,?I, bribed traitor to him,?Set open for one kiss.
Then suffer, Spring, thy children, that lauds they should upraise To Sylvia, this Sylvia, her sweet, feat ways;?Their lovely labours lay away,?And trick them out in holiday,?For syllabling to Sylvia;?And that all birds on branches lave their mouths with May,?To bear with me this burthen,?For singing to Sylvia.
8.
A kiss? for a child's kiss??Aye, goddess, even for this.?Once, bright Sylviola! in days not far,?Once--in that nightmare-time which still doth haunt?My dreams, a grim, unbidden visitant -?Forlorn, and faint, and stark,?I had endured through watches of the dark?The abashless inquisition of each star,?Yea, was the outcast mark?Of all those heavenly passers' scrutiny;?Stood bound and helplessly?For Time to shoot his barbed minutes at me;?Suffered the trampling hoof of every hour?In night's slow-wheeled car;?Until the tardy dawn dragged me at length?From under those dread wheels; and, bled of strength,?I waited the inevitable last.?Then there came past?A child; like thee, a spring-flower; but a flower?Fallen from the budded coronal of Spring,?And through the city-streets blown withering.?She passed,--O brave, sad, lovingest, tender thing! -?And of her own scant pittance did she give,?That I might eat and live:?Then fled, a swift and trackless fugitive.?Therefore I kissed in thee?The heart of Childhood, so divine for me;?And her, through what sore ways,?And what unchildish days,?Borne from me now, as then, a trackless fugitive.?Therefore I kissed in thee?Her, child! and innocency,?And spring, and all things that have gone from me,?And that shall never be;?All vanished hopes, and all most hopeless bliss,?Came with thee to my kiss.?And ah! so long myself had strayed afar?From child, and woman, and the boon earth's green,?And all wherewith life's face is fair beseen;?Journeying its journey bare?Five suns, except of the all-kissing sun?Unkissed of one;?Almost I had forgot?The healing harms,?And whitest witchery, a-lurk in that?Authentic cestus of two girdling arms:?And I remembered not?The subtle sanctities which dart?From childish lips' unvalued precious brush,?Nor how it makes the sudden lilies push?Between the loosening fibres of the heart.?Then, that thy little kiss?Should be to me all this,?Let workaday wisdom blink sage lids thereat;?Which towers a flight three hedgerows high, poor bat!?And straightway charts me out the empyreal air.?Its chart I wing not by, its canon of worth?Scorn not, nor reck though mine should breed it mirth:?And howso thou and I may be disjoint,?Yet still my falcon spirit makes her point?Over the covert where?Thou, sweetest quarry, hast put in from her!
(Soul, hush these sad numbers, too sad to upraise?In hymning bright Sylvia, unlearn'd in such ways!?Our mournful moods lay we away,?And prank our thoughts in holiday,?For syllabling to Sylvia;?When all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May,?To bear with us this burthen,?For singing to Sylvia!)
9.
Then thus Spring, bounteous lady, made reply:?O lover of me and all my progeny,?For grace to you?I take her ever to my retinue.?Over thy form, dear child, alas! my art?Cannot prevail; but mine immortalising?Touch I lay upon thy heart.?Thy soul's fair shape?In my unfading mantle's green I drape,?And thy white mind shall rest by my devising?A Gideon-fleece amid life's dusty drouth.?If Even burst yon globed yellow grape?(Which is the sun to mortals' sealed sight)?Against her stained mouth;?Or if white-handed light?Draw thee yet dripping from the quiet pools,?Still lucencies and cools,?Of sleep, which all night mirror constellate dreams;?Like to the sign which led the Israelite,?Thy soul, through day or dark,?A visible brightness on the chosen ark?Of thy sweet body and pure,?Shall it assure,?With auspice large and tutelary gleams,?Appointed solemn courts, and covenanted streams."
Cease, Spring's little children, now cease your lauds to raise; That dream is past, and Sylvia, with her sweet, feat ways.?Our loved labour, laid away,?Is smoothly ended; said our say,?Our syllable to Sylvia.?Make sweet, you birds on branches! make sweet your mouths with May!?But borne is this burthen,?Sung unto Sylvia.
PART THE SECOND
And now, thou elder nursling of the nest;?Ere all the intertangled west?Be one magnificence?Of multitudinous blossoms that o'errun?The flaming brazen bowl o' the burnished sun?Which they do flower from,?How shall I 'stablish THY memorial??Nay,