The Unknown Eros | Page 2

reproof of my despondency,?My Mentor; and thus I:
O, season strange for song!?And yet some timely power persuades my lips.?Is't England's parting soul that nerves my tongue,?As other Kingdoms, nearing their eclipse,?Have, in their latest bards, uplifted strong?The voice that was their voice in earlier days??Is it her sudden, loud and piercing cry,?The note which those that seem too weak to sigh?Will sometimes utter just before they die?
Lo, weary of the greatness of her ways,?There lies my Land, with hasty pulse and hard,?Her ancient beauty marr'd,?And, in her cold and aimless roving sight,?Horror of light;?Sole vigour left in her last lethargy,?Save when, at bidding of some dreadful breath,?The rising death?Rolls up with force;?And then the furiously gibbering corse?Shakes, panglessly convuls'd, and sightless stares,?Whilst one Physician pours in rousing wines,?One anodynes,?And one declares?That nothing ails it but the pains of growth.
My last look loth?Is taken; and I turn, with the relief?Of knowing that my life-long hope and grief?Are surely vain,?To that unshapen time to come, when She,?A dim, heroic Nation long since dead,?The foulness of her agony forgot,?Shall all benignly shed?Through ages vast?The ghostly grace of her transfigured past?Over the present, harass'd and forlorn,?Of nations yet unborn;?And this shall be the lot?Of those who, in the bird-voice and the blast?Of her omniloquent tongue,?Have truly sung?Or greatly said,?To shew as one?With those who have best done,?And be as rays,?Thro' the still altering world, around her changeless head.
Therefore no 'plaint be mine?Of listeners none,?No hope of render'd use or proud reward,?In hasty times and hard;?But chants as of a lonely thrush's throat?At latest eve,?That does in each calm note?Both joy and grieve;?Notes few and strong and fine,?Gilt with sweet day's decline,?And sad with promise of a different sun.
'Mid the loud concert harsh?Of this fog-folded marsh,?To me, else dumb,?Uranian Clearness, come!?Give me to breathe in peace and in surprise?The light-thrill'd ether of your rarest skies,?Till inmost absolution start?The welling in the grateful eyes,?The heaving in the heart.?Winnow with sighs?And wash away?With tears the dust and stain of clay,?Till all the Song be Thine, as beautiful as Morn,?Bedeck'd with shining clouds of scorn;?And Thou, Inspirer, deign to brood?O'er the delighted words, and call them Very Good.?This grant, Clear Spirit; and grant that I remain?Content to ask unlikely gifts in vain.
BOOK I.
I. SAINT VALENTINE'S DAY.
Well dost thou, Love, thy solemn Feast to hold?In vestal February;?Not rather choosing out some rosy day?From the rich coronet of the coming May,?When all things meet to marry!
O, quick, praevernal Power?That signall'st punctual through the sleepy mould?The Snowdrop's time to flower,?Fair as the rash oath of virginity?Which is first-love's first cry;?O, Baby Spring,?That flutter'st sudden 'neath the breast of Earth?A month before the birth;?Whence is the peaceful poignancy,?The joy contrite,?Sadder than sorrow, sweeter than delight,?That burthens now the breath of everything,?Though each one sighs as if to each alone?The cherish'd pang were known??At dusk of dawn, on his dark spray apart,?With it the Blackbird breaks the young Day's heart;?In evening's hush?About it talks the heavenly-minded Thrush;?The hill with like remorse?Smiles to the Sun's smile in his westering course;?The fisher's drooping skiff?In yonder sheltering bay;?The choughs that call about the shining cliff;?The children, noisy in the setting ray;?Own the sweet season, each thing as it may;?Thoughts of strange kindness and forgotten peace?In me increase;?And tears arise?Within my happy, happy Mistress' eyes,?And, lo, her lips, averted from my kiss,?Ask from Love's bounty, ah, much more than bliss!
Is't the sequester'd and exceeding sweet?Of dear Desire electing his defeat??Is't the waked Earth now to yon purpling cope?Uttering first-love's first cry,?Vainly renouncing, with a Seraph's sigh,?Love's natural hope??Fair-meaning Earth, foredoom'd to perjury!?Behold, all-amorous May,?With roses heap'd upon her laughing brows,?Avoids thee of thy vows!?Were it for thee, with her warm bosom near,?To abide the sharpness of the Seraph's sphere??Forget thy foolish words;?Go to her summons gay,?Thy heart with dead, wing'd Innocencies fill'd,?Ev'n as a nest with birds?After the old ones by the hawk are kill'd.
Well dost thou, Love, to celebrate?The noon of thy soft ecstasy,?Or e'er it be too late,?Or e'er the Snowdrop die!
II. WIND AND WAVE.
The wedded light and heat,?Winnowing the witless space,?Without a let,?What are they till they beat?Against the sleepy sod, and there beget?Perchance the violet!?Is the One found,?Amongst a wilderness of as happy grace,?To make Heaven's bound;?So that in Her?All which it hath of sensitively good?Is sought and understood?After the narrow mode the mighty Heavens prefer??She, as a little breeze?Following still Night,?Ripples the spirit's cold, deep seas?Into delight;?But, in a while,?The immeasurable smile?Is broke by fresher airs to flashes blent?With darkling discontent;?And all the subtle zephyr hurries gay,?And all the heaving ocean heaves one way,?'Tward the void sky-line and an unguess'd weal;?Until the vanward billows feel?The agitating shallows, and divine the goal,?And to foam roll,?And spread and stray?And traverse wildly, like delighted hands,?The fair and feckless sands;?And so the whole?Unfathomable and immense?Triumphing tide