Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode | Page 9

in heaven at highest one sceptred sun?Regent, on earth here surely without fail?One only, one imperious nightingale.?Dumb was the field, the woodland mute, the lawn?Silent; the hill was tongueless as the vale?Even when the last fair waif of cloud that felt?Its heart beneath the colouring moonrays melt,?At high midnoon of midnight half withdrawn,?Bared all the sudden deep divine moondawn.?Then, unsaluted by her twin-born tune,?That latter timeless morning of the moon?Rose past its hour of moonrise; clouds gave way?To the old reconquering ray,?But no song answering made it more than day;?No cry of song by night?Shot fire into the cloud-constraining light.?One only, one ?olian island heard?Thrill, but through no bird's throat,?In one strange manlike maiden's godlike note,?The song of all these as a single bird.?Till the sea's portal was as funeral gate?For that sole singer in all time's ageless date?Singled and signed for so triumphal fate,?All nightingales but one in all the world?All her sweet life were silent; only then,?When her life's wing of womanhood was furled,?Their cry, this cry of thine was heard again,?As of me now, of any born of men.?Through sleepless clear spring nights filled full of thee,?Rekindled here, thy ruling song has thrilled?The deep dark air and subtle tender sea?And breathless hearts with one bright sound fulfilled.?Or at midnoon to me?Swimming, and birds about my happier head?Skimming, one smooth soft way by water and air,?To these my bright born brethren and to me?Hath not the clear wind borne or seemed to bear?A song wherein all earth and heaven and sea?Were molten in one music made of thee?To enforce us, O our sister of the shore,?Look once in heart back landward and adore??For songless were we sea-mews, yet had we?More joy than all things joyful of thee--more,?Haply, than all things happiest; nay, save thee,?In thy strong rapture of imperious joy?Too high for heart of sea-borne bird or boy,?What living things were happiest if not we??But knowing not love nor change nor wrath nor wrong,?No more we knew of song.
Song, and the secrets of it, and their might,?What blessings curse it and what curses bless,?I know them since my spirit had first in sight,?Clear as thy song's words or the live sun's light,?The small dark body's Lesbian loveliness?That held the fire eternal; eye and ear?Were as a god's to see, a god's to hear,?Through all his hours of daily and nightly chime,?The sundering of the two-edged spear of time:?The spear that pierces even the sevenfold shields?Of mightiest Memory, mother of all songs made,?And wastes all songs as roseleaves kissed and frayed?As here the harvest of the foam-flowered fields;?But thine the spear may waste not that he wields?Since first the God whose soul is man's live breath,?The sun whose face hath our sun's face for shade,?Put all the light of life and love and death?Too strong for life, but not for love too strong,?Where pain makes peace with pleasure in thy song,?And in thine heart, where love and song make strife,?Fire everlasting of eternal life.
THE GARDEN OF CYMODOCE
Sea, and bright wind, and heaven of ardent air,?More dear than all things earth-born; O to me?Mother more dear than love's own longing, sea,?More than love's eyes are, fair,?Be with my spirit of song as wings to bear,?As fire to feel and breathe and brighten; be?A spirit of sense more deep of deity,?A light of love, if love may be, more strong?In me than very song.?For song I have loved with second love, but thee,?Thee first, thee, mother; ere my songs had breath,?That love of loves, whose bondage makes man free,?Was in me strong as death.?And seeing no slave may love thee, no, not one?That loves not freedom more,?And more for thy sake loves her, and for hers?Thee; or that hates not, on whate'er thy shore?Or what thy wave soever, all things done?Of man beneath the sun?In his despite and thine, to cross and curse?Your light and song that as with lamp and verse?Guide safe the strength of our sphered universe,?Thy breath it was, thou knowest, and none but thine,?That taught me love of one thing more divine.
Ah, yet my youth was old [_Str._ 1. Its first years dead and cold?As last year's autumn's gold,?And all my spirit of singing sick and sad and sere,
Or ever I might behold?The fairest of thy fold?Engirt, enringed, enrolled,?In all thy flower-sweet flock of islands dear and near.
Yet in my heart I deemed [_Str._ 2. The fairest things, meseemed,?Truth, dreaming, ever dreamed,?Had made mine eyes already like a god's to see:
Of all sea-things that were?Clothed on with water and air,?That none could live more fair?Than thy sweet love long since had shown for love to me.
I knew not, mother of mine, [_Ant._ 1. That one birth more divine?Than all births else of thine?That hang like flowers or jewels on thy deep soft breast
Was left for me to