Sister Songs | Page 7

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 of thy universe,?Who has no worlds to sigh for, ruling thee,?Ascends his vermeil throne of empery,?One grace alone I seek.?Oh! may this treasure-galleon of my verse,?Fraught with its golden passion, oared with cadent rhyme,?Set with a towering