Sister Songs | Page 9

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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