The Unknown Eros | Page 2

and throng'd sparkles bright That,
named and number'd right
In sweet, transpicuous words, shall glow
alway
With Love's three-stranded ray,
Red wrath, compassion
golden, lazuline delight.'
Thus, in 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