Sister Songs | Page 2

vowelled lay,?Their lovely languid language say,?For lisping to Sylvia;?Those viols' lissom bowings break the heart of May,?And harps harp their burthen,?For singing to Sylvia.
3.
Now at that music and that mirth?Rose, as 'twere, veils from earth;?And I spied?How beside?Bud, bell, bloom, an elf?Stood, or was the flower itself?'Mid radiant air?All the fair?Frequence swayed in irised wavers.?Some against the gleaming rims?Their bosoms prest?Of the kingcups, to the brims?Filled with sun, and their white limbs?Bathed in those golden lavers;?Some on the brown, glowing breast?Of that Indian maid, the pansy,?(Through its tenuous veils confest?Of swathing light), in a quaint fancy?Tied her knot of yellow favours;?Others dared open draw?Snapdragon's dreadful jaw:?Some, just sprung from out the soil,?Sleeked and shook their rumpled fans?Dropt with sheen?Of moony green;?Others, not yet extricate,?On their hands leaned their weight,?And writhed them free with mickle toil,?Still folded in their veiny vans:?And all with an unsought accord?Sang together from the sward;?Whence had come, and from sprites?Yet unseen, those delights,?As of tempered musics blent,?Which had given me such content.?For haply our best instrument,?Pipe or cithern, stopped or strung,?Mimics but some spirit tongue.
Their amiable voices, I bid them upraise?To Sylvia, O Sylvia, her sweet, feat ways;?Their lovesome labours laid away,?To linger out this holiday?In syllabling to Sylvia;?While all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May, To bear with me this burthen,?For singing to Sylvia.
4.
Next I saw, wonder-whist,?How from the atmosphere a mist,?So it seemed, slow uprist;?And, looking from those elfin swarms,?I was 'ware?How the air?Was all populous with forms?Of the Hours, floating down,?Like Nereids through a watery town.?Some, with languors of waved arms,?Fluctuous oared their flexile way;?Some were borne half resupine?On the aerial hyaline,?Their fluid limbs and rare array?Flickering on the wind, as quivers?Trailing weed in running rivers;?And others, in far prospect seen,?Newly loosed on this terrene,?Shot in piercing swiftness came,?With hair a-stream like pale and goblin flame.?As crystelline ice in water,?Lay in air each faint daughter;?Inseparate (or but separate dim)?Circumfused wind from wind-like vest,?Wind-like vest from wind-like limb.?But outward from each lucid breast,?When some passion left its haunt,?Radiate surge of colour came,?Diffusing blush-wise, palpitant,?Dying all the filmy frame.?With some sweet tenderness they would?Turn to an amber-clear and glossy gold;?Or a fine sorrow, lovely to behold,?Would sweep them as the sun and wind's joined flood?Sweeps a greening-sapphire sea;?Or they would glow enamouredly?Illustrious sanguine, like a grape of blood;?Or with mantling poetry?Curd to the tincture which the opal hath,?Like rainbows thawing in a moonbeam bath.?So paled they, flushed they, swam they, sang melodiously.
Their chanting, soon fading, let them, too, upraise?For homage unto Sylvia, her sweet, feat ways;?Weave with suave float their waved way,?And colours take of holiday,?For syllabling to Sylvia;?And all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May,?To bear with me this burthen,?For singing to Sylvia.
5.
Then, through those translucencies,?As grew my senses clearer clear,?Did I see, and did I hear,?How under an elm's canopy?Wheeled a flight of Dryades?Murmuring measured melody.?Gyre in gyre their treading was,?Wheeling with an adverse flight,?In twi-circle o'er the grass,?These to left, and those to right;?All the band?Linked by each other's hand;?Decked in raiment stained as?The blue-helmed aconite.?And they advance with flutter, with grace,?To the dance?Moving on with a dainty pace,?As blossoms mince it on river swells.?Over their heads their cymbals shine,?Round each ankle gleams a twine?Of twinkling bells -?Tune twirled golden from their cells.?Every step was a tinkling sound,?As they glanced in their dancing-ground,?Clouds in cluster with such a sailing?Float o'er the light of the wasting moon,?As the cloud of their gliding veiling?Swung in the sway of the dancing-tune.?There was the clash of their cymbals clanging,?Ringing of swinging bells clinging their feet;?And the clang on wing it seemed a-hanging,?Hovering round their dancing so fleet. -?I stirred, I rustled more than meet;?Whereat they broke to the left and right,?With eddying robes like aconite?Blue of helm;?And I beheld to the foot o' the elm.
They have not tripped those dances, betrayed to my gaze,?To glad the heart of Sylvia, beholding of their maze;?Through barky walls have slid away,?And tricked them in their holiday,?For other than for Sylvia;?While all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May, And bear with me this burthen,?For singing to Sylvia.
6.
Where its umbrage was enrooted,?Sat white-suited,?Sat green-amiced, and bare-footed,?Spring amid her minstrelsy;?There she sat amid her ladies,?Where the shade is?Sheen as Enna mead ere Hades'?Gloom fell thwart Persephone.?Dewy buds were interstrown?Through her tresses hanging down,?And her feet?Were most sweet,?Tinged like sea-stars, rosied brown.?A throng of children like to flowers were sown?About the grass beside, or clomb her knee:?I looked who were that favoured company.?And one there stood?Against the beamy flood?Of sinking day, which, pouring its abundance,?Sublimed the illuminous and volute redundance?Of locks that, half dissolving, floated round her face;?As see I might?Far off a lily-cluster poised in sun?Dispread its gracile curls of light?I knew what chosen child was there in place!?I knew there might no