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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Sister Songs, by Francis Thompson
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: Sister Songs
+       An Offering to Two Sisters
+
+
+Author: Francis Thompson
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 1, 2015  [eBook #1731]
+[This file was first posted on November 4, 1998]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SISTER SONGS***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1908 Burns and Oates edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+                          [Picture: Book cover]
+
+
+
+
+
+                               SISTER SONGS
+                       _An Offering to Two Sisters_
+
+
+                                   _BY_
+                             FRANCIS THOMPSON
+
+                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]
+
+                              BURNS & OATES
+                            28, ORCHARD STREET
+                             LONDON, W.: 1908
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+THIS poem, though new in the sense of being now for the first time
+printed, was written some four years ago, about the same date as the
+_Hound of Heaven_ in my former volume.
+
+One image in the _Proem_ was an unconscious plagiarism from the beautiful
+image in Mr. Patmore’s _St. Valentine’s Day_:—
+
+    “O baby Spring,
+    That flutter’st sudden ’neath the breast of Earth,
+    A month before the birth!”
+
+Finding I could not disengage it without injury to the passage in which
+it is embedded, I have preferred to leave it, with this acknowledgment to
+a Poet rich enough to lend to the poor.
+
+                                                         FRANCIS THOMPSON.
+
+1895.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                   _To_
+                   Monica and Madeline (Sylvia) Meynell
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+SISTER SONGS
+An Offering to Two Sisters
+
+
+The Proem
+
+
+   SHREWD winds and shrill—were these the speech of May?
+      A ragged, slag-grey sky—invested so,
+      Mary’s spoilt nursling! wert thou wont to go?
+         Or _thou_, Sun-god and song-god, say
+   Could singer pipe one tiniest linnet-lay,
+      While Song did turn away his face from song?
+            Or who could be
+      In spirit or in body hale for long,—
+         Old Æsculap’s best Master!—lacking thee?
+            At length, then, thou art here!
+            On the earth’s lethèd ear
+      Thy voice of light rings out exultant, strong;
+   Through dreams she stirs and murmurs at that summons dear:
+         From its red leash my heart strains tamelessly,
+   For Spring leaps in the womb of the young year!
+         Nay, was it not brought forth before,
+            And we waited, to behold it,
+            Till the sun’s hand should unfold it,
+         What the year’s young bosom bore?
+   Even so; it came, nor knew we that it came,
+            In the sun’s eclipse.
+         Yet the birds have plighted vows,
+   And from the branches pipe each other’s name;
+         Yet the season all the boughs
+         Has kindled to the finger-tips,—
+   Mark yonder, how the long laburnum drips
+   Its jocund spilth of fire, its honey of wild flame!
+   Yea, and myself put on swift quickening,
+   And answer to the presence of a sudden Spring.
+   From cloud-zoned pinnacles of the secret spirit
+      Song falls precipitant in dizzying streams;
+   And, like a mountain-hold when war-shouts stir it,
+   The mind’s recessèd fastness casts to light
+   Its gleaming multitudes, that from every height
+      Unfurl the flaming of a thousand dreams.
+   Now therefore, thou who bring’st the year to birth,
+      Who guid’st the bare and dabbled feet of May;
+   Sweet stem to that rose Christ, who from the earth
+   Suck’st our poor prayers, conveying them to Him;
+      Be aidant, tender Lady, to my lay!
+      Of thy two maidens somewhat must I say,
+   Ere shadowy twilight lashes, drooping, dim
+               Day’s dreamy eyes from us;
+               Ere eve has struck and furled
+   The beamy-textured tent transpicuous,
+      Of webbèd coerule wrought and woven calms,
+         Whence has paced forth the lambent-footed sun.
+   And Thou disclose my flower of song upcurled,
+         Who from Thy fair irradiant palms
+      Scatterest all love and loveliness as alms;
+               Yea, Holy One,
+   Who coin’st Thyself to beauty for the world!
+
+   _Then_, _Spring’s little children_, _your lauds do ye upraise_
+   _To Sylvia_, _O Sylvia_, _her sweet_, _feat ways_!
+      _Your lovesome labours lay away_,
+      _And trick you out in holiday_,
+               _For syllabling to Sylvia_;
+   _And all you birds on branches_, _lave your mouths with May_,
+      _To bear with me this burthen_,
+               _For singing to Sylvia_.
+
+
+
+Part the First
+
+
+   THE leaves dance, the leaves sing,
+   The leaves dance in the breath of the Spring.
+            I bid them dance,
+               I bid them sing,
+            For the limpid glance
+               Of my ladyling;
+   For the gift to the Spring of a dewier spring,
+   For God’s good grace of this ladyling!
+   I know in the lane, by the hedgerow track,
+      The long, broad grasses underneath
+   Are warted with rain like a toad’s knobbed back;
+      But here May weareth a rainless wreath.
+   In the new-sucked milk of the sun’s bosom
+   Is dabbled the mouth of the daisy-blossom;
+      The smouldering rosebud chars through its sheath;
+   The lily stirs her snowy limbs,
+            Ere she swims
+   Naked up through her cloven green,
+   Like the wave-born Lady of Love Hellene;
+   And the scattered snowdrop exquisite
+            Twinkles and gleams,
+      As if the showers of the sunny beams
+   Were splashed from the earth in drops of light.
+            Everything
+            That is child of Spring
+      Casts its bud or blossoming
+   Upon the stream of my delight.
+
+   _Their voices_, _that scents are_, _now let them upraise_
+   _To Sylvia_, _O Sylvia_, _her sweet_, _feat ways_!
+      _Their lovely mother them array_,
+      _And prank them out in holiday_,
+               _For syllabling to Sylvia_;
+   _And all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May_,
+      _To bear with me this burthen_,
+         _For singing to Sylvia_.
+
+
+2.
+
+
+   While thus I stood in mazes bound
+      Of vernal sorcery,
+   I heard a dainty dubious sound,
+      As of goodly melody;
+   Which first was faint as if in swound,
+      Then burst so suddenly
+   In warring concord all around,
+      That, whence this thing might be,
+                  To see
+   The very marrow longed in me!
+      It seemed of air, it seemed of ground,
+         And never any witchery
+      Drawn from pipe, or reed, or string,
+      Made such dulcet ravishing.
+      ’Twas like no earthly instrument,
+      Yet had something of them all
+      In its rise, and in its fall;
+   As if in one sweet consort there were blent
+      Those archetypes celestial
+   Which our endeavouring instruments recall.
+      So heavenly flutes made murmurous plain
+      To heavenly viols, that again
+      —Aching with music—wailed back pain;
+      Regals release their notes, which rise
+      Welling, like tears from heart to eyes;
+      And the harp thrills with thronging sighs.
+      Horns in mellow flattering
+      Parley with the cithern-string:—
+      Hark!—the floating, long-drawn note
+      Woos the throbbing cithern-string!
+
+   _Their pretty_, _pretty prating those citherns sure upraise_
+   _For homage unto Sylvia_, _her sweet_, _feat ways_:
+      _Those flutes do flute their vowelled lay_,
+      _Their lovely languid language say_,
+         _For lisping to Sylvia_;
+   _Those viols’ lissom bowings break the heart of May_,
+      _And harps harp their burthen_,
+         _For singing to Sylvia_.
+
+
+3.
+
+
+      Now at that music and that mirth
+      Rose, as ’twere, veils from earth;
+            And I spied
+            How beside
+      Bud, bell, bloom, an elf
+      Stood, or was the flower itself
+            ’Mid radiant air
+            All the fair
+      Frequence swayed in irised wavers.
+      Some against the gleaming rims
+      Their bosoms prest
+      Of the kingcups, to the brims
+      Filled with sun, and their white limbs
+      Bathèd in those golden lavers;
+      Some on the brown, glowing breast
+      Of that Indian maid, the pansy,
+      (Through its tenuous veils confest
+      Of swathing light), in a quaint fancy
+      Tied her knot of yellow favours;
+      Others dared open draw
+      Snapdragon’s dreadful jaw:
+      Some, just sprung from out the soil,
+      Sleeked and shook their rumpled fans
+         Dropt with sheen
+            Of moony green;
+      Others, not yet extricate,
+      On their hands leaned their weight,
+      And writhed them free with mickle toil,
+      Still folded in their veiny vans:
+      And all with an unsought accord
+      Sang together from the sward;
+      Whence had come, and from sprites
+      Yet unseen, those delights,
+      As of tempered musics blent,
+      Which had given me such content.
+      For haply our best instrument,
+      Pipe or cithern, stopped or strung,
+      Mimics but some spirit tongue.
+
+   _Their amiable voices_, _I bid them upraise_
+   _To Sylvia_, _O Sylvia_, _her sweet_, _feat ways_;
+      _Their lovesome labours laid away_,
+      _To linger out this holiday_
+            _In syllabling to Sylvia_;
+   _While all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May_,
+   _To bear with me this burthen_,
+         _For singing to Sylvia_.
+
+
+4.
+
+
+      Next I saw, wonder-whist,
+      How from the atmosphere a mist,
+      So it seemed, slow uprist;
+      And, looking from those elfin swarms,
+            I was ’ware
+            How the air
+      Was all populous with forms
+      Of the Hours, floating down,
+      Like Nereids through a watery town.
+      Some, with languors of waved arms,
+      Fluctuous oared their flexile way;
+      Some were borne half resupine
+   On the aërial hyaline,
+   Their fluid limbs and rare array
+   Flickering on the wind, as quivers
+   Trailing weed in running rivers;
+   And others, in far prospect seen,
+   Newly loosed on this terrene,
+      Shot in piercing swiftness came,
+      With hair a-stream like pale and goblin flame.
+      As crystálline ice in water,
+      Lay in air each faint daughter;
+      Inseparate (or but separate dim)
+      Circumfused wind from wind-like vest,
+      Wind-like vest from wind-like limb.
+      But outward from each lucid breast,
+      When some passion left its haunt,
+      Radiate surge of colour came,
+      Diffusing blush-wise, palpitant,
+      Dying all the filmy frame.
+      With some sweet tenderness they would
+   Turn to an amber-clear and glossy gold;
+      Or a fine sorrow, lovely to behold,
+   Would sweep them as the sun and wind’s joined flood
+      Sweeps a greening-sapphire sea;
+      Or they would glow enamouredly
+   Illustrious sanguine, like a grape of blood;
+   Or with mantling poetry
+   Curd to the tincture which the opal hath,
+   Like rainbows thawing in a moonbeam bath.
+   So paled they, flushed they, swam they, sang melodiously.
+
+   _Their chanting_, _soon fading_, _let them_, _too_, _upraise_
+   _For homage unto Sylvia_, _her sweet_, _feat ways_;
+      _Weave with suave float their wavèd way_,
+      _And colours take of holiday_,
+            _For syllabling to Sylvia_;
+   _And all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May_,
+      _To bear with me this burthen_,
+            _For singing to Sylvia_.
+
+
+5.
+
+
+      Then, through those translucencies,
+      As grew my senses clearer clear,
+      Did I see, and did I hear,
+      How under an elm’s canopy
+      Wheeled a flight of Dryades
+      Murmuring measured melody.
+      Gyre in gyre their treading was,
+      Wheeling with an adverse flight,
+      In twi-circle o’er the grass,
+      These to left, and those to right;
+               All the band
+      Linkèd by each other’s hand;
+      Decked in raiment stainèd as
+      The blue-helmèd aconite.
+      And they advance with flutter, with grace,
+               To the dance
+      Moving on with a dainty pace,
+      As blossoms mince it on river swells.
+      Over their heads their cymbals shine,
+      Round each ankle gleams a twine
+               Of twinkling bells—
+      Tune twirled golden from their cells.
+      Every step was a tinkling sound,
+      As they glanced in their dancing-ground,
+      Clouds in cluster with such a sailing
+      Float o’er the light of the wasting moon,
+      As the cloud of their gliding veiling
+      Swung in the sway of the dancing-tune.
+      There was the clash of their cymbals clanging,
+      Ringing of swinging bells clinging their feet;
+      And the clang on wing it seemed a-hanging,
+      Hovering round their dancing so fleet.—
+      I stirred, I rustled more than meet;
+      Whereat they broke to the left and right,
+      With eddying robes like aconite
+               Blue of helm;
+      And I beheld to the foot o’ the elm.
+
+   _They have not tripped those dances_, _betrayed to my gaze_,
+   _To glad the heart of Sylvia_, _beholding of their maze_;
+      _Through barky walls have slid away_,
+      _And tricked them in their holiday_,
+         _For other than for Sylvia_;
+   _While all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May_,
+      _And bear with me this burthen_,
+         _For singing to Sylvia_.
+
+
+6.
+
+
+      Where its umbrage was enrooted,
+            Sat white-suited,
+      Sat green-amiced, and bare-footed,
+         Spring amid her minstrelsy;
+      There she sat amid her ladies,
+            Where the shade is
+      Sheen as Enna mead ere Hades’
+         Gloom fell thwart Persephone.
+      Dewy buds were interstrown
+      Through her tresses hanging down,
+            And her feet
+            Were most sweet,
+      Tinged like sea-stars, rosied brown.
+   A throng of children like to flowers were sown
+   About the grass beside, or clomb her knee:
+   I looked who were that favoured company.
+            And one there stood
+            Against the beamy flood
+   Of sinking day, which, pouring its abundance,
+   Sublimed the illuminous and volute redundance
+   Of locks that, half dissolving, floated round her face;
+            As see I might
+      Far off a lily-cluster poised in sun
+         Dispread its gracile curls of light
+      I knew what chosen child was there in place!
+      I knew there might no brows be, save of one,
+      With such Hesperian fulgence compassèd,
+   Which in her moving seemed to wheel about her head.
+
+   _O Spring’s little children_, _more loud your lauds upraise_,
+   _For this is even Sylvia_, _with her sweet_, _feat ways_!
+      _Your lovesome labours lay away_,
+      _And prank you out in holiday_,
+            _For syllabling to Sylvia_;
+   _And all you birds on branches_, _lave your mouths with May_,
+         _To bear with me this burthen_
+            _For singing to Sylvia_!
+
+
+7.
+
+
+   Spring, goddess, is it thou, desirèd long?
+   And art thou girded round with this young train?—
+   If ever I did do thee ease in song,
+   Now of thy grace let me one meed obtain,
+            And list thou to one plain.
+            Oh, keep still in thy train
+   After the years when others therefrom fade,
+         This tiny, well-belovèd maid!
+   To whom the gate of my heart’s fortalice,
+            With all which in it is,
+   And the shy self who doth therein immew him
+   ’Gainst what loud leagurers battailously woo him,
+            I, bribèd traitor to him,
+            Set open for one kiss.
+
+   _Then suffer_, _Spring_, _thy children_, _that lauds they should
+   upraise_
+   _To Sylvia_, _this Sylvia_, _her sweet_, _feat ways_;
+      _Their lovely labours lay away_,
+      _And trick them out in holiday_,
+            _For syllabling to Sylvia_;
+   _And that all birds on branches lave their mouths with May_,
+      _To bear with me this burthen_,
+            _For singing to Sylvia_.
+
+
+8.
+
+
+               A kiss? for a child’s kiss?
+               Aye, goddess, even for this.
+      Once, bright Sylviola! in days not far,
+   Once—in that nightmare-time which still doth haunt
+   My dreams, a grim, unbidden visitant—
+               Forlorn, and faint, and stark,
+   I had endured through watches of the dark
+      The abashless inquisition of each star,
+   Yea, was the outcast mark
+            Of all those heavenly passers’ scrutiny;
+            Stood bound and helplessly
+   For Time to shoot his barbèd minutes at me;
+   Suffered the trampling hoof of every hour
+            In night’s slow-wheelèd car;
+      Until the tardy dawn dragged me at length
+      From under those dread wheels; and, bled of strength,
+         I waited the inevitable last.
+            Then there came past
+   A child; like thee, a spring-flower; but a flower
+   Fallen from the budded coronal of Spring,
+   And through the city-streets blown withering.
+   She passed,—O brave, sad, lovingest, tender thing!—
+   And of her own scant pittance did she give,
+            That I might eat and live:
+   Then fled, a swift and trackless fugitive.
+            Therefore I kissed in thee
+   The heart of Childhood, so divine for me;
+         And her, through what sore ways,
+         And what unchildish days,
+   Borne from me now, as then, a trackless fugitive.
+         Therefore I kissed in thee
+         Her, child! and innocency,
+   And spring, and all things that have gone from me,
+         And that shall never be;
+   All vanished hopes, and all most hopeless bliss,
+         Came with thee to my kiss.
+   And ah! so long myself had strayed afar
+   From child, and woman, and the boon earth’s green,
+   And all wherewith life’s face is fair beseen;
+         Journeying its journey bare
+   Five suns, except of the all-kissing sun
+            Unkissed of one;
+            Almost I had forgot
+            The healing harms,
+   And whitest witchery, a-lurk in that
+   Authentic cestus of two girdling arms:
+         And I remembered not
+      The subtle sanctities which dart
+   From childish lips’ unvalued precious brush,
+   Nor how it makes the sudden lilies push
+      Between the loosening fibres of the heart.
+            Then, that thy little kiss
+            Should be to me all this,
+   Let workaday wisdom blink sage lids thereat;
+   Which towers a flight three hedgerows high, poor bat!
+      And straightway charts me out the empyreal air.
+   Its chart I wing not by, its canon of worth
+   Scorn not, nor reck though mine should breed it mirth:
+   And howso thou and I may be disjoint,
+   Yet still my falcon spirit makes her point
+            Over the covert where
+   Thou, sweetest quarry, hast put in from her!
+
+   (_Soul_, _hush these sad numbers_, _too sad to upraise_
+   _In hymning bright Sylvia_, _unlearn’d in such ways_!
+      _Our mournful moods lay we away_,
+      _And prank our thoughts in holiday_,
+            _For syllabling to Sylvia_;
+   _When all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May_,
+      _To bear with us this burthen_,
+            _For singing to Sylvia_!)
+
+
+9.
+
+
+   Then thus Spring, bounteous lady, made reply:
+   “O lover of me and all my progeny,
+            For grace to you
+   I take her ever to my retinue.
+   Over thy form, dear child, alas! my art
+   Cannot prevail; but mine immortalising
+            Touch I lay upon thy heart.
+            Thy soul’s fair shape
+   In my unfading mantle’s green I drape,
+   And thy white mind shall rest by my devising
+      A Gideon-fleece amid life’s dusty drouth.
+   If Even burst yon globèd yellow grape
+   (Which is the sun to mortals’ sealèd sight)
+            Against her stainèd mouth;
+            Or if white-handed light
+   Draw thee yet dripping from the quiet pools,
+            Still lucencies and cools,
+   Of sleep, which all night mirror constellate dreams;
+   Like to the sign which led the Israelite,
+            Thy soul, through day or dark,
+   A visible brightness on the chosen ark
+         Of thy sweet body and pure,
+               Shall it assure,
+   With auspice large and tutelary gleams,
+   Appointed solemn courts, and covenanted streams.”
+
+   _Cease_, _Spring’s little children_, _now cease your lauds to raise_;
+   _That dream is past_, _and Sylvia_, _with her sweet_, _feat ways_.
+      _Our lovèd labour_, _laid away_,
+      _Is smoothly ended_; _said our say_,
+            _Our syllable to Sylvia_.
+   _Make sweet_, _you birds on branches_! _make sweet your mouths with
+   May_!
+      _But borne is this burthen_,
+               _Sung unto Sylvia_.
+
+
+
+Part the Second
+
+
+   AND now, thou elder nursling of the nest;
+         Ere all the intertangled west
+            Be one magnificence
+   Of multitudinous blossoms that o’errun
+   The flaming brazen bowl o’ the burnished sun
+            Which they do flower from,
+   How shall I ’stablish _thy_ memorial?
+   Nay, how or with what countenance shall I come
+            To plead in my defence
+            For loving thee at all?
+   I who can scarcely speak my fellows’ speech,
+   Love their love, or mine own love to them teach;
+   A bastard barred from their inheritance,
+      Who seem, in this dim shape’s uneasy nook,
+   Some sun-flower’s spirit which by luckless chance
+      Has mournfully its tenement mistook;
+   When it were better in its right abode,
+   Heartless and happy lackeying its god.
+   How com’st thou, little tender thing of white,
+   Whose very touch full scantly me beseems,
+   How com’st thou resting on my vaporous dreams,
+      Kindling a wraith there of earth’s vernal green?
+            Even so as I have seen,
+      In night’s aërial sea with no wind blust’rous,
+   A ribbèd tract of cloudy malachite
+            Curve a shored crescent wide;
+   And on its slope marge shelving to the night
+      The stranded moon lay quivering like a lustrous
+         Medusa newly washed up from the tide,
+   Lay in an oozy pool of its own deliquious light.
+
+   Yet hear how my excuses may prevail,
+      Nor, tender white orb, be thou opposite!
+   Life and life’s beauty only hold their revels
+   In the abysmal ocean’s luminous levels.
+            There, like the phantasms of a poet pale,
+   The exquisite marvels sail:
+   Clarified silver; greens and azures frail
+   As if the colours sighed themselves away,
+   And blent in supersubtile interplay
+      As if they swooned into each other’s arms;
+            Repured vermilion,
+            Like ear-tips ’gainst the sun;
+   And beings that, under night’s swart pinion,
+   Make every wave upon the harbour-bars
+            A beaten yolk of stars.
+   But where day’s glance turns baffled from the deeps,
+            Die out those lovely swarms;
+   And in the immense profound no creature glides or creeps.
+
+   Love and love’s beauty only hold their revels
+   In life’s familiar, penetrable levels:
+            What of its ocean-floor?
+            I dwell there evermore.
+            From almost earliest youth
+            I raised the lids o’ the truth,
+   And forced her bend on me her shrinking sight;
+   Ever I knew me Beauty’s eremite,
+      In antre of this lowly body set.
+         Girt with a thirsty solitude of soul.
+            Nathless I not forget
+   How I have, even as the anchorite,
+      I too, imperishing essences that console.
+   Under my ruined passions, fallen and sere,
+      The wild dreams stir like little radiant girls,
+   Whom in the moulted plumage of the year
+      Their comrades sweet have buried to the curls.
+   Yet, though their dedicated amorist,
+   How often do I bid my visions hist,
+      Deaf to them, pleading all their piteous fills;
+   Who weep, as weep the maidens of the mist
+      Clinging the necks of the unheeding hills:
+   And their tears wash them lovelier than before,
+   That from grief’s self our sad delight grows more,
+   Fair are the soul’s uncrispèd calms, indeed,
+      Endiapered with many a spiritual form
+            Of blosmy-tinctured weed;
+   But scarce itself is conscious of the store
+      Suckled by it, and only after storm
+   Casts up its loosened thoughts upon the shore.
+         To this end my deeps are stirred;
+         And I deem well why life unshared
+         Was ordainèd me of yore.
+         In pairing-time, we know, the bird
+         Kindles to its deepmost splendour,
+         And the tender
+         Voice is tenderest in its throat;
+         Were its love, for ever nigh it,
+         Never by it,
+         It might keep a vernal note,
+         The crocean and amethystine
+               In their pristine
+            Lustre linger on its coat.
+         Therefore must my song-bower lone be,
+               That my tone be
+            Fresh with dewy pain alway;
+         She, who scorns my dearest care ta’en,
+               An uncertain
+            Shadow of the sprite of May.
+         And is my song sweet, as they say?
+   ’Tis sweet for one whose voice has no reply,
+               Save silence’s sad cry:
+   And are its plumes a burning bright array?
+   They burn for an unincarnated eye
+   A bubble, charioteered by the inward breath
+      Which, ardorous for its own invisible lure,
+   Urges me glittering to aërial death,
+      I am rapt towards that bodiless paramour;
+   Blindly the uncomprehended tyranny
+      Obeying of my heart’s impetuous might.
+         The earth and all its planetary kin,
+   Starry buds tangled in the whirling hair
+   That flames round the Phoebean wassailer,
+      Speed no more ignorant, more predestined flight,
+         Than I, _her_ viewless tresses netted in.
+   As some most beautiful one, with lovely taunting,
+   Her eyes of guileless guile o’ercanopies,
+            Does her hid visage bow,
+   And miserly your covetous gaze allow,
+            By inchmeal, coy degrees,
+            Saying—“Can you see me now?”
+   Yet from the mouth’s reflex you guess the wanting
+            Smile of the coming eyes
+   In all their upturned grievous witcheries,
+            Before that sunbreak rise;
+   And each still hidden feature view within
+   Your mind, as eager scrutinies detail
+   The moon’s young rondure through the shamefast veil
+         Drawn to her gleaming chin:
+               After this wise,
+   From the enticing smile of earth and skies
+   I dream my unknown Fair’s refusèd gaze;
+   And guessingly her love’s close traits devise,
+         Which she with subtile coquetries
+   Through little human glimpses slow displays,
+            Cozening my mateless days
+            By sick, intolerable delays.
+   And so I keep mine uncompanioned ways;
+   And so my touch, to golden poesies
+   Turning love’s bread, is bought at hunger’s price.
+   So,—in the inextinguishable wars
+   Which roll song’s Orient on the sullen night
+   Whose ragged banners in their own despite
+   Take on the tinges of the hated light,—
+   So Sultan Phoebus has his Janizars.
+   But if mine unappeasèd cicatrices
+            Might get them lawful ease;
+   Were any gentle passion hallowed me,
+      Who must none other breath of passion feel
+      Save such as winnows to the fledgèd heel
+         The tremulous Paradisal plumages;
+         The conscious sacramental trees
+               Which ever be
+               Shaken celestially,
+   Consentient with enamoured wings, might know my love for thee.
+   Yet is there more, whereat none guesseth, love!
+      Upon the ending of my deadly night
+   (Whereof thou hast not the surmise, and slight
+   Is all that any mortal knows thereof),
+      Thou wert to me that earnest of day’s light,
+   When, like the back of a gold-mailèd saurian
+      Heaving its slow length from Nilotic slime,
+   The first long gleaming fissure runs Aurorian
+      Athwart the yet dun firmament of prime.
+   Stretched on the margin of the cruel sea
+            Whence they had rescued me,
+      With faint and painful pulses was I lying;
+            Not yet discerning well
+   If I had ’scaped, or were an icicle,
+            Whose thawing is its dying.
+   Like one who sweats before a despot’s gate,
+   Summoned by some presaging scroll of fate,
+   And knows not whether kiss or dagger wait;
+   And all so sickened is his countenance,
+   The courtiers buzz, “Lo, doomed!” and look at him askance:—
+            At Fate’s dread portal then
+            Even so stood I, I ken,
+   Even so stood I, between a joy and fear,
+   And said to mine own heart, “Now if the end be here!”
+
+         They say, Earth’s beauty seems completest
+            To them that on their death-beds rest;
+         Gentle lady! she smiles sweetest
+            Just ere she clasp us to her breast.
+   And I,—now _my_ Earth’s countenance grew bright,
+   Did she but smile me towards that nuptial-night?
+   But whileas on such dubious bed I lay,
+                  One unforgotten day,
+         As a sick child waking sees
+            Wide-eyed daisies
+         Gazing on it from its hand,
+         Slipped there for its dear amazes;
+         So between thy father’s knees
+            I saw _thee_ stand,
+            And through my hazes
+   Of pain and fear thine eyes’ young wonder shone.
+   Then, as flies scatter from a carrion,
+      Or rooks in spreading gyres like broken smoke
+      Wheel, when some sound their quietude has broke,
+   Fled, at thy countenance, all that doubting spawn:
+         The heart which I had questioned spoke,
+   A cry impetuous from its depths was drawn,—
+   “I take the omen of this face of dawn!”
+   And with the omen to my heart cam’st thou.
+            Even with a spray of tears
+   That one light draft was fixed there for the years.
+
+            And now?—
+   The hours I tread ooze memories of thee, Sweet!
+         Beneath my casual feet.
+         With rainfall as the lea,
+            The day is drenched with thee;
+         In little exquisite surprises
+   Bubbling deliciousness of thee arises
+               From sudden places,
+         Under the common traces
+   Of my most lethargied and customed paces.
+
+         As an Arab journeyeth
+         Through a sand of Ayaman,
+         Lean Thirst, lolling its cracked tongue,
+         Lagging by his side along;
+         And a rusty-wingèd Death
+         Grating its low flight before,
+         Casting ribbèd shadows o’er
+         The blank desert, blank and tan:
+   He lifts by hap toward where the morning’s roots are
+               His weary stare,—
+      Sees, although they plashless mutes are,
+         Set in a silver air
+      Fountains of gelid shoots are,
+         Making the daylight fairest fair;
+      Sees the palm and tamarind
+   Tangle the tresses of a phantom wind;—
+   A sight like innocence when one has sinned!
+   A green and maiden freshness smiling there,
+            While with unblinking glare
+   The tawny-hided desert crouches watching her.
+
+               ’Tis a vision:
+         Yet the greeneries Elysian
+         He has known in tracts afar;
+         Thus the enamouring fountains flow,
+         Those the very palms that grow,
+   By rare-gummed Sava, or Herbalimar.—
+
+         Such a watered dream has tarried
+         Trembling on my desert arid;
+               Even so
+            Its lovely gleamings
+               Seemings show
+            Of things not seemings;
+               And I gaze,
+         Knowing that, beyond my ways,
+               Verily
+            All these _are_, for these are she.
+         Eve no gentlier lays her cooling cheek
+         On the burning brow of the sick earth,
+            Sick with death, and sick with birth,
+      Aeon to aeon, in secular fever twirled,
+            Than thy shadow soothes this weak
+            And distempered being of mine.
+   In all I work, my hand includeth thine;
+            Thou rushest down in every stream
+   Whose passion frets my spirit’s deepening gorge;
+   Unhood’st mine eyas-heart, and fliest my dream;
+            Thou swing’st the hammers of my forge;
+   As the innocent moon, that nothing does but shine,
+   Moves all the labouring surges of the world.
+      Pierce where thou wilt the springing thought in me,
+   And there thy pictured countenance lies enfurled,
+      As in the cut fern lies the imaged tree.
+         This poor song that sings of thee,
+      This fragile song, is but a curled
+         Shell outgathered from thy sea,
+      And murmurous still of its nativity.
+               Princess of Smiles!
+   Sorceress of most unlawful-lawful wiles!
+         Cunning pit for gazers’ senses,
+         Overstrewn with innocences!
+         Purities gleam white like statues
+         In the fair lakes of thine eyes,
+         And I watch the sparkles that use
+               There to rise,
+               Knowing these
+         Are bubbles from the calyces
+         Of the lovely thoughts that breathe
+   Paving, like water-flowers, thy spirit’s floor beneath.
+
+               O thou most dear!
+   Who art thy sex’s complex harmony
+         God-set more facilely;
+         To thee may love draw near
+         Without one blame or fear,
+   Unchidden save by his humility:
+   Thou Perseus’ Shield! wherein I view secure
+   The mirrored Woman’s fateful-fair allure!
+   Whom Heaven still leaves a twofold dignity,
+   As girlhood gentle, and as boyhood free;
+   With whom no most diaphanous webs enwind
+   The barèd limbs of the rebukeless mind.
+   Wild Dryad! all unconscious of thy tree,
+               With which indissolubly
+   The tyrannous time shall one day make thee whole;
+   Whose frank arms pass unfretted through its bole:
+         Who wear’st thy femineity
+   Light as entrailèd blossoms, that shalt find
+   It erelong silver shackles unto thee.
+   Thou whose young sex is yet but in thy soul;—
+         As hoarded in the vine
+   Hang the gold skins of undelirious wine,
+   As air sleeps, till it toss its limbs in breeze:—
+      In whom the mystery which lures and sunders,
+         Grapples and thrusts apart; endears, estranges;
+   —The dragon to its own Hesperides—
+      Is gated under slow-revolving changes,
+   Manifold doors of heavy-hingèd years.
+      So once, ere Heaven’s eyes were filled with wonders
+         To see Laughter rise from Tears,
+         Lay in beauty not yet mighty,
+            Conchèd in translucencies,
+         The antenatal Aphrodite,
+   Caved magically under magic seas;
+   Caved dreamlessly beneath the dreamful seas.
+
+            “Whose sex is in thy soul!”
+            What think we of thy soul?
+         Which has no parts, and cannot grow,
+         Unfurled not from an embryo;
+   Born of full stature, lineal to control;
+      And yet a pigmy’s yoke must undergo.
+   Yet must keep pace and tarry, patient, kind,
+   With its unwilling scholar, the dull, tardy mind;
+   Must be obsequious to the body’s powers,
+   Whose low hands mete its paths, set ope and close its ways;
+         Must do obeisance to the days,
+   And wait the little pleasure of the hours;
+      Yea, ripe for kingship, yet must be
+   Captive in statuted minority!
+   So is all power fulfilled, as soul in thee.
+   So still the ruler by the ruled takes rule,
+   And wisdom weaves itself i’ the loom o’ the fool.
+   The splendent sun no splendour can display,
+   Till on gross things he dash his broken ray,
+   From cloud and tree and flower re-tossed in prismy spray.
+   Did not obstruction’s vessel hem it in,
+   Force were not force, would spill itself in vain
+   We know the Titan by his champèd chain.
+   Stay is heat’s cradle, it is rocked therein,
+   And by check’s hand is burnished into light;
+   If hate were none, would love burn lowlier bright?
+   God’s Fair were guessed scarce but for opposite sin;
+   Yea, and His Mercy, I do think it well,
+   Is flashed back from the brazen gates of Hell.
+            The heavens decree
+   All power fulfil itself as soul in thee.
+   For supreme Spirit subject was to clay,
+      And Law from its own servants learned a law,
+   And Light besought a lamp unto its way,
+            And Awe was reined in awe,
+         At one small house of Nazareth;
+            And Golgotha
+   Saw Breath to breathlessness resign its breath,
+   And Life do homage for its crown to death.
+
+   So is all power, as soul in thee increased!
+      But, knowing this, in knowledge’s despite
+      I fret against the law severe that stains
+            Thy spirit with eclipse;
+      When—as a nymph’s carven head sweet water drips,
+      For others oozing so the cool delight
+      Which cannot steep her stiffened mouth of stone—
+   Thy nescient lips repeat maternal strains.
+                  Memnonian lips!
+   Smitten with singing from thy mother’s east,
+      And murmurous with music not their own:
+      Nay, the lips flexile, while the mind alone
+            A passionless statue stands.
+            Oh, pardon, innocent one!
+         Pardon at thine unconscious hands!
+   “Murmurous with music not their own,” I say?
+   And in that saying how do I missay,
+            When from the common sands
+   Of poorest common speech of common day
+   Thine accents sift the golden musics out!
+         And ah, we poets, I misdoubt,
+            Are little more than thou!
+   We speak a lesson taught we know not how,
+         And what it is that from us flows
+   The hearer better than the utterer knows.
+
+            Thou canst foreshape thy word;
+            The poet is not lord
+         Of the next syllable may come
+         With the returning pendulum;
+         And what he plans to-day in song,
+   To-morrow sings it in another tongue.
+         Where the last leaf fell from his bough,
+         He knows not if a leaf shall grow,
+         Where he sows he doth not reap,
+         He reapeth where he did not sow;
+         He sleeps, and dreams forsake his sleep
+         To meet him on his waking way.
+   Vision will mate him not by law and vow:
+         Disguised in life’s most hodden-grey,
+   By the most beaten road of everyday
+   She waits him, unsuspected and unknown.
+               The hardest pang whereon
+   He lays his mutinous head may be a Jacob’s stone.
+   In the most iron crag his foot can tread
+               A Dream may strew her bed,
+         And suddenly his limbs entwine,
+   And draw him down through rock as sea-nymphs might through brine.
+   But, unlike those feigned temptress-ladies who
+   In guerdon of a night the lover slew,
+   When the embrace has failed, the rapture fled,
+   Not he, not he, the wild sweet witch is dead!
+               And, though he cherisheth
+   The babe most strangely born from out her death,
+   Some tender trick of her it hath, maybe,—
+                     It is not she!
+
+   Yet, even as the air is rumorous of fray
+      Before the first shafts of the sun’s onslaught
+         From gloom’s black harness splinter,
+         And Summer move on Winter
+   With the trumpet of the March, and the pennon of the May;
+         As gesture outstrips thought;
+   So, haply, toyer with ethereal strings!
+   Are thy blind repetitions of high things
+   The murmurous gnats whose aimless hoverings
+         Reveal song’s summer in the air;
+   The outstretched hand, which cannot thought declare,
+            Yet is thought’s harbinger.
+   These strains the way for thine own strains prepare;
+   We feel the music moist upon this breeze,
+   And hope the congregating poesies.
+         Sundered yet by thee from us
+         Wait, with wild eyes luminous,
+   All thy wingèd things that are to be;
+   They flit against thee, Gate of Ivory!
+   They clamour on the portress Destiny,—
+   “Set her wide, so we may issue through!
+   Our vans are quick for that they have to do!”
+         Suffer still your young desire;
+   Your plumes but bicker at the tips with fire,
+   Tarry their kindling; they will beat the higher.
+   And thou, bright girl, not long shalt thou repeat
+   Idly the music from thy mother caught;
+            Not vainly has she wrought,
+   Not vainly from the cloudward-jetting turret
+   Of her aërial mind, for thy weak feet,
+   Let down the silken ladder of her thought.
+      She bare thee with a double pain,
+         Of the body and the spirit;
+      Thou thy fleshly weeds hast ta’en,
+         Thy diviner weeds inherit!
+   The precious streams which through thy 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 ringèd 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 retirèd
+         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 accursèd 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,
+      Àscends 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 press of fantasies,
+            Drop safely down the time,
+      Leaving mine islèd self behind it far
+   Soon to be sunken in the abysm of seas,
+   (As down the years the splendour voyages
+      From some long ruined and night-submergèd star),
+   And in thy subject sovereign’s havening heart
+   Anchor the freightage of its virgin ore;
+            Adding its wasteful more
+   To his own overflowing treasury.
+   So through his river mine shall reach thy sea,
+            Bearing its confluent part;
+            In his pulse mine shall thrill;
+   And the quick heart shall quicken from the heart that’s still.
+
+   Ah! help, my Dæmon that hast served me well!
+      Not at this last, oh, do not me disgrace!
+      I faint, I sicken, darkens all my sight,
+      As, poised upon this unprevisioned height,
+            I lift into its place
+   The utmost aery traceried pinnacle.
+   So; it is builded, the high tenement,
+            —God grant—to mine intent!
+   Most like a palace of the Occident,
+         Up-thrusting, toppling maze on maze,
+                  Its mounded blaze,
+   And washèd by the sunset’s rosy waves,
+   Whose sea drinks rarer hue from those rare walls it laves.
+         Yet wail, my spirits, wail!
+   So few therein to enter shall prevail!
+   Scarce fewer could win way, if their desire
+   A dragon baulked, with involuted spire,
+   And writhen snout spattered with yeasty fire.
+   For at the elfin portal hangs a horn
+         Which none can wind aright
+         Save the appointed knight
+   Whose lids the fay-wings brushed when he was born.
+         All others stray forlorn,
+   Or glimpsing, through the blazoned windows scrolled
+   Receding labyrinths lessening tortuously
+         In half obscurity;
+   With mystic images, inhuman, cold,
+         That flameless torches hold.
+      But who can wind that horn of might
+   (The horn of dead Heliades) aright,—
+               Straight
+   Open for him shall roll the conscious gate;
+   And light leap up from all the torches there,
+   And life leap up in every torchbearer,
+   And the stone faces kindle in the glow,
+   And into the blank eyes the irids grow,
+   And through the dawning irids ambushed meanings show.
+            Illumined this wise on,
+   He threads securely the far intricacies,
+      With brede from Heaven’s wrought vesture overstrewn;
+   Swift Tellus’ purfled tunic, girt upon
+   With the blown chlamys of her fluttering seas;
+         And the freaked kirtle of the pearlèd moon:
+   Until he gain the structure’s core, where stands—
+               A toil of magic hands—
+   The unbodied spirit of the sorcerer,
+                  Most strangely rare,
+         As is a vision remembered in the noon;
+   Unbodied, yet to mortal seeing clear,
+   Like sighs exhaled in eager atmosphere.
+   From human haps and mutabilities
+   It rests exempt, beneath the edifice
+            To which itself gave rise;
+   Sustaining centre to the bubble of stone
+   Which, breathed from it, exists by it alone.
+      Yea, ere Saturnian earth her child consumes,
+   And I lie down with outworn ossuaries,
+   Ere death’s grim tongue anticipates the tomb’s
+            _Siste viator_, in this storied urn
+            My living heart is laid to throb and burn,
+      Till end be ended, and till ceasing cease.
+
+   And thou by whom this strain hath parentage;
+      Wantoner between the yet untreacherous claws
+      Of newly-whelped existence! ere he pause,
+   What gift to thee can yield the archimage?
+            For coming seasons’ frets
+            What aids, what amulets,
+            What softenings, or what brightenings?
+   As Thunder writhes the lash of his long lightnings
+      About the growling heads of the brute main
+      Foaming at mouth, until it wallow again
+      In the scooped oozes of its bed of pain;
+   So all the gnashing jaws, the leaping heads
+   Of hungry menaces, and of ravening dreads,
+                  Of pangs
+   Twitch-lipped, with quivering nostrils and immitigate fangs,
+   I scourge beneath the torment of my charms
+   That their repentless nature fear to work thee harms.
+   And as yon Apollonian harp-player,
+            Yon wandering psalterist of the sky,
+   With flickering strings which scatter melody,
+   The silver-stolèd damsels of the sea,
+            Or lake, or fount, or stream,
+      Enchants from their ancestral heaven of waters
+   To Naiad it through the unfrothing air;
+         My song enchants so out of undulous dream
+      The glimmering shapes of its dim-tressèd daughters,
+   And missions each to be thy minister.
+                  Saying; “O ye,
+   The organ-stops of being’s harmony;
+   The blushes on existence’s pale face,
+            Lending it sudden grace;
+   Without whom we should but guess Heaven’s worth
+   By blank negations of this sordid earth,
+         (So haply to the blind may light
+   Be but gloom’s undetermined opposite);
+   Ye who are thus as the refracting air
+   Whereby we see Heaven’s sun before it rise
+   Above the dull line of our mortal skies;
+   As breathing on the strainèd ear that sighs
+   From comrades viewless unto strainèd eyes,
+   Soothing our terrors in the lampless night;
+   Ye who can make this world where all is deeming
+   What world ye list, being arbiters of seeming;
+   Attend upon her ways, benignant powers!
+   Unroll ye life a carpet for her feet,
+   And cast ye down before them blossomy hours,
+   Until her going shall be clogged with sweet!
+   All dear emotions whose new-bathèd hair,
+   Still streaming from the soul, in love’s warm air
+   Smokes with a mist of tender fantasies;
+               All these,
+   And all the heart’s wild growths which, swiftly bright,
+   Spring up the crimson agarics of a night,
+   No pain in withering, yet a joy arisen;
+   And all thin shapes more exquisitely rare,
+               More subtly fair,
+   Than these weak ministering words have spell to prison
+   Within the magic circle of this rhyme;
+   And all the fays who in our creedless clime
+               Have sadly ceased
+   Bearing to other children childhood’s proper feast;
+   Whose robes are fluent crystal, crocus-hued,
+         Whose wings are wind a-fire, whose mantles wrought
+            From spray that falling rainbows shake
+         These, ye familiars to my wizard thought,
+         Make things of journal custom unto her;
+               With lucent feet imbrued,
+         If young Day tread, a glorious vintager,
+   The wine-press of the purple-foamèd 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, spherèd, 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 fashionèd,
+         And framèd feateously;—
+   For whom I have your frail limbs fashionèd
+   With how great shamefastness and how great dread,
+   Knowing you frail, but not if you be fair,
+         Though framèd 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 abasèd 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 witherèd.
+   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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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Sister Songs, by Francis Thompson
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: Sister Songs
+       An Offering to Two Sisters
+
+
+Author: Francis Thompson
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 1, 2015  [eBook #1731]
+[This file was first posted on November 4, 1998]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SISTER SONGS***
+</pre>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1908 Burns and Oates edition by David
+Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/coverb.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Book cover"
+title=
+"Book cover"
+ src="images/covers.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h1><span class="smcap">Sister Songs</span><br />
+<i>An Offering to Two Sisters</i></h1>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>BY</i><br />
+FRANCIS THOMPSON</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/tpb.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Decorative graphic"
+title=
+"Decorative graphic"
+ src="images/tps.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">BURNS &amp; OATES<br />
+28, ORCHARD STREET<br />
+LONDON, W.: 1908</p>
+<h2><a name="pageiii"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+iii</span>PREFACE</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">This</span> poem, though new in the sense
+of being now for the first time printed, was written some four
+years ago, about the same date as the <i>Hound of Heaven</i> in
+my former volume.</p>
+<p>One image in the <i>Proem</i> was an unconscious plagiarism
+from the beautiful image in Mr. Patmore&rsquo;s <i>St.
+Valentine&rsquo;s Day</i>:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;O baby Spring,<br />
+That flutter&rsquo;st sudden &rsquo;neath the breast of Earth,<br
+/>
+A month before the birth!&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Finding I could not disengage it without injury to the passage
+in which it is embedded, I have preferred to leave it, with this
+acknowledgment to a Poet rich enough to lend to the poor.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">FRANCIS THOMPSON.</p>
+<p>1895.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><a name="pagev"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. v</span><i>To</i><br />
+Monica and Madeline (Sylvia) Meynell</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<h2><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 1</span>SISTER
+SONGS<br />
+An Offering to Two Sisters</h2>
+<h3>The Proem</h3>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Shrewd</span> winds and
+shrill&mdash;were these the speech of May?<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A ragged, slag-grey sky&mdash;invested so,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Mary&rsquo;s spoilt nursling! wert thou wont to
+go?<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Or <i>thou</i>, Sun-god and
+song-god, say<br />
+Could singer pipe one tiniest linnet-lay,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; While Song did turn away his face from song?<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Or who could
+be<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; In spirit or in body hale for long,&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Old &AElig;sculap&rsquo;s best
+Master!&mdash;lacking thee?<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a
+name="page2"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 2</span>At length,
+then, thou art here!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; On the
+earth&rsquo;s leth&egrave;d ear<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Thy voice of light rings out exultant, strong;<br />
+Through dreams she stirs and murmurs at that summons dear:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; From its red leash my heart
+strains tamelessly,<br />
+For Spring leaps in the womb of the young year!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Nay, was it not brought forth
+before,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And we waited,
+to behold it,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Till the
+sun&rsquo;s hand should unfold it,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; What the year&rsquo;s young bosom
+bore?<br />
+Even so; it came, nor knew we that it came,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In the
+sun&rsquo;s eclipse.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Yet the birds have plighted
+vows,<br />
+And from the branches pipe each other&rsquo;s name;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Yet the season all the boughs<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Has kindled to the
+finger-tips,&mdash;<br />
+Mark yonder, how the long laburnum drips<br />
+Its jocund spilth of fire, its honey of wild flame!<br />
+Yea, and myself put on swift quickening,<br />
+And answer to the presence of a sudden Spring.<br />
+From cloud-zoned pinnacles of the secret spirit<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <a name="page3"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+3</span>Song falls precipitant in dizzying streams;<br />
+And, like a mountain-hold when war-shouts stir it,<br />
+The mind&rsquo;s recess&egrave;d fastness casts to light<br />
+Its gleaming multitudes, that from every height<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Unfurl the flaming of a thousand dreams.<br />
+Now therefore, thou who bring&rsquo;st the year to birth,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Who guid&rsquo;st the bare and dabbled feet of
+May;<br />
+Sweet stem to that rose Christ, who from the earth<br />
+Suck&rsquo;st our poor prayers, conveying them to Him;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Be aidant, tender Lady, to my lay!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of thy two maidens somewhat must I say,<br />
+Ere shadowy twilight lashes, drooping, dim<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Day&rsquo;s dreamy eyes from us;<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Ere eve has struck and furled<br />
+The beamy-textured tent transpicuous,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of webb&egrave;d coerule wrought and woven calms,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Whence has paced forth the
+lambent-footed sun.<br />
+And Thou disclose my flower of song upcurled,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Who from Thy fair irradiant
+palms<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Scatterest all love and loveliness as alms;<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Yea, Holy One,<br />
+Who coin&rsquo;st Thyself to beauty for the world!</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page4"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+4</span><i>Then</i>, <i>Spring&rsquo;s little children</i>,
+<i>your lauds do ye upraise</i><br />
+<i>To Sylvia</i>, <i>O Sylvia</i>, <i>her sweet</i>, <i>feat
+ways</i>!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Your lovesome labours lay away</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>And trick you out in holiday</i>,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+<i>For syllabling to Sylvia</i>;<br />
+<i>And all you birds on branches</i>, <i>lave your mouths with
+May</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>To bear with me this burthen</i>,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+<i>For singing to Sylvia</i>.</p>
+<h3><a name="page5"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 5</span>Part the
+First</h3>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> leaves dance,
+the leaves sing,<br />
+The leaves dance in the breath of the Spring.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I bid them
+dance,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+I bid them sing,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For the limpid
+glance<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Of my ladyling;<br />
+For the gift to the Spring of a dewier spring,<br />
+For God&rsquo;s good grace of this ladyling!<br />
+I know in the lane, by the hedgerow track,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The long, broad grasses underneath<br />
+Are warted with rain like a toad&rsquo;s knobbed back;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; But here May weareth a rainless wreath.<br />
+In the new-sucked milk of the sun&rsquo;s bosom<br />
+Is dabbled the mouth of the daisy-blossom;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The smouldering rosebud chars through its sheath;<br
+/>
+The lily stirs her snowy limbs,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a
+name="page6"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 6</span>Ere she
+swims<br />
+Naked up through her cloven green,<br />
+Like the wave-born Lady of Love Hellene;<br />
+And the scattered snowdrop exquisite<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Twinkles and
+gleams,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; As if the showers of the sunny beams<br />
+Were splashed from the earth in drops of light.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Everything<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; That is child of
+Spring<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Casts its bud or blossoming<br />
+Upon the stream of my delight.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><i>Their voices</i>, <i>that scents are</i>,
+<i>now let them upraise</i><br />
+<i>To Sylvia</i>, <i>O Sylvia</i>, <i>her sweet</i>, <i>feat
+ways</i>!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Their lovely mother them array</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>And prank them out in holiday</i>,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+<i>For syllabling to Sylvia</i>;<br />
+<i>And all the birds on branches lave their mouths with
+May</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>To bear with me this burthen</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>For singing to Sylvia</i>.</p>
+<h4><a name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 7</span>2.</h4>
+<p class="poetry">While thus I stood in mazes bound<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of vernal sorcery,<br />
+I heard a dainty dubious sound,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; As of goodly melody;<br />
+Which first was faint as if in swound,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Then burst so suddenly<br />
+In warring concord all around,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; That, whence this thing might be,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+To see<br />
+The very marrow longed in me!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; It seemed of air, it seemed of ground,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And never any witchery<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Drawn from pipe, or reed, or string,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Made such dulcet ravishing.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &rsquo;Twas like no earthly instrument,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Yet had something of them all<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; In its rise, and in its fall;<br />
+As if in one sweet consort there were blent<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Those archetypes celestial<br />
+Which our endeavouring instruments recall.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <a name="page8"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+8</span>So heavenly flutes made murmurous plain<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To heavenly viols, that again<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &mdash;Aching with music&mdash;wailed back pain;<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Regals release their notes, which rise<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Welling, like tears from heart to eyes;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And the harp thrills with thronging sighs.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Horns in mellow flattering<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Parley with the cithern-string:&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Hark!&mdash;the floating, long-drawn note<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Woos the throbbing cithern-string!</p>
+<p class="poetry"><i>Their pretty</i>, <i>pretty prating those
+citherns sure upraise</i><br />
+<i>For homage unto Sylvia</i>, <i>her sweet</i>, <i>feat
+ways</i>:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Those flutes do flute their vowelled lay</i>,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Their lovely languid language say</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>For lisping to Sylvia</i>;<br
+/>
+<i>Those viols&rsquo; lissom bowings break the heart of
+May</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>And harps harp their burthen</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>For singing to Sylvia</i>.</p>
+<h4>3.</h4>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Now at that music and that
+mirth<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Rose, as &rsquo;twere, veils from earth;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a
+name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 9</span>And I spied<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; How beside<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Bud, bell, bloom, an elf<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Stood, or was the flower itself<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &rsquo;Mid
+radiant air<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; All the fair<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Frequence swayed in irised wavers.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Some against the gleaming rims<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Their bosoms prest<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of the kingcups, to the brims<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Filled with sun, and their white limbs<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Bath&egrave;d in those golden lavers;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Some on the brown, glowing breast<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of that Indian maid, the pansy,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; (Through its tenuous veils confest<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of swathing light), in a quaint fancy<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Tied her knot of yellow favours;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Others dared open draw<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Snapdragon&rsquo;s dreadful jaw:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Some, just sprung from out the soil,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Sleeked and shook their rumpled fans<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Dropt with sheen<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a
+name="page10"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 10</span>Of moony
+green;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Others, not yet extricate,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; On their hands leaned their weight,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And writhed them free with mickle toil,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Still folded in their veiny vans:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And all with an unsought accord<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Sang together from the sward;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Whence had come, and from sprites<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Yet unseen, those delights,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; As of tempered musics blent,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Which had given me such content.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; For haply our best instrument,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Pipe or cithern, stopped or strung,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Mimics but some spirit tongue.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><i>Their amiable voices</i>, <i>I bid them
+upraise</i><br />
+<i>To Sylvia</i>, <i>O Sylvia</i>, <i>her sweet</i>, <i>feat
+ways</i>;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Their lovesome labours laid away</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>To linger out this holiday</i><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>In syllabling
+to Sylvia</i>;<br />
+<i>While all the birds on branches lave their mouths with
+May</i>,<br />
+<a name="page11"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 11</span><i>To bear
+with me this burthen</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>For singing to Sylvia</i>.</p>
+<h4>4.</h4>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Next I saw, wonder-whist,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; How from the atmosphere a mist,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; So it seemed, slow uprist;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And, looking from those elfin swarms,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I was
+&rsquo;ware<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; How the air<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Was all populous with forms<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of the Hours, floating down,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Like Nereids through a watery town.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Some, with languors of waved arms,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Fluctuous oared their flexile way;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Some were borne half resupine<br />
+On the a&euml;rial hyaline,<br />
+Their fluid limbs and rare array<br />
+Flickering on the wind, as quivers<br />
+Trailing weed in running rivers;<br />
+And others, in far prospect seen,<br />
+Newly loosed on this terrene,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <a name="page12"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+12</span>Shot in piercing swiftness came,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; With hair a-stream like pale and goblin flame.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; As cryst&aacute;lline ice in water,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Lay in air each faint daughter;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Inseparate (or but separate dim)<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Circumfused wind from wind-like vest,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Wind-like vest from wind-like limb.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; But outward from each lucid breast,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; When some passion left its haunt,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Radiate surge of colour came,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Diffusing blush-wise, palpitant,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Dying all the filmy frame.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; With some sweet tenderness they would<br />
+Turn to an amber-clear and glossy gold;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Or a fine sorrow, lovely to behold,<br />
+Would sweep them as the sun and wind&rsquo;s joined flood<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Sweeps a greening-sapphire sea;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Or they would glow enamouredly<br />
+Illustrious sanguine, like a grape of blood;<br />
+Or with mantling poetry<br />
+Curd to the tincture which the opal hath,<br />
+Like rainbows thawing in a moonbeam bath.<br />
+<a name="page13"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 13</span>So paled
+they, flushed they, swam they, sang melodiously.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><i>Their chanting</i>, <i>soon fading</i>,
+<i>let them</i>, <i>too</i>, <i>upraise</i><br />
+<i>For homage unto Sylvia</i>, <i>her sweet</i>, <i>feat
+ways</i>;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Weave with suave float their wav&egrave;d
+way</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>And colours take of holiday</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>For
+syllabling to Sylvia</i>;<br />
+<i>And all the birds on branches lave their mouths with
+May</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>To bear with me this burthen</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>For singing
+to Sylvia</i>.</p>
+<h4>5.</h4>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Then, through those
+translucencies,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; As grew my senses clearer clear,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Did I see, and did I hear,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; How under an elm&rsquo;s canopy<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Wheeled a flight of Dryades<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Murmuring measured melody.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Gyre in gyre their treading was,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Wheeling with an adverse flight,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; In twi-circle o&rsquo;er the grass,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <a name="page14"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+14</span>These to left, and those to right;<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+All the band<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Link&egrave;d by each other&rsquo;s hand;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Decked in raiment stain&egrave;d as<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The blue-helm&egrave;d aconite.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And they advance with flutter, with grace,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+To the dance<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Moving on with a dainty pace,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; As blossoms mince it on river swells.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Over their heads their cymbals shine,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Round each ankle gleams a twine<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Of twinkling bells&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Tune twirled golden from their cells.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Every step was a tinkling sound,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; As they glanced in their dancing-ground,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Clouds in cluster with such a sailing<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Float o&rsquo;er the light of the wasting moon,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; As the cloud of their gliding veiling<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Swung in the sway of the dancing-tune.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; There was the clash of their cymbals clanging,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Ringing of swinging bells clinging their feet;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And the clang on wing it seemed a-hanging,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <a name="page15"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+15</span>Hovering round their dancing so fleet.&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I stirred, I rustled more than meet;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Whereat they broke to the left and right,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; With eddying robes like aconite<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Blue of helm;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And I beheld to the foot o&rsquo; the elm.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><i>They have not tripped those dances</i>,
+<i>betrayed to my gaze</i>,<br />
+<i>To glad the heart of Sylvia</i>, <i>beholding of their
+maze</i>;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Through barky walls have slid away</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>And tricked them in their holiday</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>For other than for
+Sylvia</i>;<br />
+<i>While all the birds on branches lave their mouths with
+May</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>And bear with me this burthen</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>For singing to Sylvia</i>.</p>
+<h4>6.</h4>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where its umbrage was
+enrooted,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sat
+white-suited,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Sat green-amiced, and bare-footed,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Spring amid her minstrelsy;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; There she sat amid her ladies,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a
+name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 16</span>Where the
+shade is<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Sheen as Enna mead ere Hades&rsquo;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Gloom fell thwart Persephone.<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Dewy buds were interstrown<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Through her tresses hanging down,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And her feet<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Were most
+sweet,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Tinged like sea-stars, rosied brown.<br />
+A throng of children like to flowers were sown<br />
+About the grass beside, or clomb her knee:<br />
+I looked who were that favoured company.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And one there
+stood<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Against the
+beamy flood<br />
+Of sinking day, which, pouring its abundance,<br />
+Sublimed the illuminous and volute redundance<br />
+Of locks that, half dissolving, floated round her face;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As see I
+might<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Far off a lily-cluster poised in sun<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Dispread its gracile curls of
+light<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I knew what chosen child was there in place!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I knew there might no brows be, save of one,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; With such Hesperian fulgence compass&egrave;d,<br />
+<a name="page17"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 17</span>Which in
+her moving seemed to wheel about her head.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><i>O Spring&rsquo;s little children</i>,
+<i>more loud your lauds upraise</i>,<br />
+<i>For this is even Sylvia</i>, <i>with her sweet</i>, <i>feat
+ways</i>!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Your lovesome labours lay away</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>And prank you out in holiday</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>For
+syllabling to Sylvia</i>;<br />
+<i>And all you birds on branches</i>, <i>lave your mouths with
+May</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>To bear with me this
+burthen</i><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>For singing
+to Sylvia</i>!</p>
+<h4>7.</h4>
+<p class="poetry">Spring, goddess, is it thou, desir&egrave;d
+long?<br />
+And art thou girded round with this young train?&mdash;<br />
+If ever I did do thee ease in song,<br />
+Now of thy grace let me one meed obtain,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And list thou to
+one plain.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Oh, keep still
+in thy train<br />
+After the years when others therefrom fade,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This tiny, well-belov&egrave;d
+maid!<br />
+To whom the gate of my heart&rsquo;s fortalice,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; With all which
+in it is,<br />
+<a name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 18</span>And the
+shy self who doth therein immew him<br />
+&rsquo;Gainst what loud leagurers battailously woo him,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I, brib&egrave;d
+traitor to him,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Set open for one
+kiss.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><i>Then suffer</i>, <i>Spring</i>, <i>thy
+children</i>, <i>that lauds they should upraise</i><br />
+<i>To Sylvia</i>, <i>this Sylvia</i>, <i>her sweet</i>, <i>feat
+ways</i>;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Their lovely labours lay away</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>And trick them out in holiday</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>For
+syllabling to Sylvia</i>;<br />
+<i>And that all birds on branches lave their mouths with
+May</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>To bear with me this burthen</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>For singing
+to Sylvia</i>.</p>
+<h4>8.</h4>
+<p
+class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A
+kiss? for a child&rsquo;s kiss?<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Aye, goddess, even for this.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Once, bright Sylviola! in days not far,<br />
+Once&mdash;in that nightmare-time which still doth haunt<br />
+My dreams, a grim, unbidden visitant&mdash;<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Forlorn, and faint, and stark,<br />
+<a name="page19"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 19</span>I had
+endured through watches of the dark<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The abashless inquisition of each star,<br />
+Yea, was the outcast mark<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Of all those
+heavenly passers&rsquo; scrutiny;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Stood bound and
+helplessly<br />
+For Time to shoot his barb&egrave;d minutes at me;<br />
+Suffered the trampling hoof of every hour<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In night&rsquo;s
+slow-wheel&egrave;d car;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Until the tardy dawn dragged me at length<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; From under those dread wheels; and, bled of
+strength,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I waited the inevitable last.<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Then there came
+past<br />
+A child; like thee, a spring-flower; but a flower<br />
+Fallen from the budded coronal of Spring,<br />
+And through the city-streets blown withering.<br />
+She passed,&mdash;O brave, sad, lovingest, tender
+thing!&mdash;<br />
+And of her own scant pittance did she give,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; That I might eat
+and live:<br />
+Then fled, a swift and trackless fugitive.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Therefore I
+kissed in thee<br />
+The heart of Childhood, so divine for me;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a name="page20"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 20</span>And her, through what sore ways,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And what unchildish days,<br />
+Borne from me now, as then, a trackless fugitive.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Therefore I kissed in thee<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Her, child! and innocency,<br />
+And spring, and all things that have gone from me,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And that shall never be;<br />
+All vanished hopes, and all most hopeless bliss,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Came with thee to my kiss.<br />
+And ah! so long myself had strayed afar<br />
+From child, and woman, and the boon earth&rsquo;s green,<br />
+And all wherewith life&rsquo;s face is fair beseen;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Journeying its journey bare<br />
+Five suns, except of the all-kissing sun<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Unkissed of
+one;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Almost I had
+forgot<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The healing
+harms,<br />
+And whitest witchery, a-lurk in that<br />
+Authentic cestus of two girdling arms:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And I remembered not<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The subtle sanctities which dart<br />
+From childish lips&rsquo; unvalued precious brush,<br />
+<a name="page21"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 21</span>Nor how it
+makes the sudden lilies push<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Between the loosening fibres of the heart.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Then, that thy
+little kiss<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Should be to me
+all this,<br />
+Let workaday wisdom blink sage lids thereat;<br />
+Which towers a flight three hedgerows high, poor bat!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And straightway charts me out the empyreal air.<br
+/>
+Its chart I wing not by, its canon of worth<br />
+Scorn not, nor reck though mine should breed it mirth:<br />
+And howso thou and I may be disjoint,<br />
+Yet still my falcon spirit makes her point<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Over the covert
+where<br />
+Thou, sweetest quarry, hast put in from her!</p>
+<p class="poetry">(<i>Soul</i>, <i>hush these sad numbers</i>,
+<i>too sad to upraise</i><br />
+<i>In hymning bright Sylvia</i>, <i>unlearn&rsquo;d in such
+ways</i>!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Our mournful moods lay we away</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>And prank our thoughts in holiday</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>For
+syllabling to Sylvia</i>;<br />
+<i>When all the birds on branches lave their mouths with
+May</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>To bear with us this burthen</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>For singing
+to Sylvia</i>!)</p>
+<h4><a name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+22</span>9.</h4>
+<p class="poetry">Then thus Spring, bounteous lady, made
+reply:<br />
+&ldquo;O lover of me and all my progeny,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For grace to
+you<br />
+I take her ever to my retinue.<br />
+Over thy form, dear child, alas! my art<br />
+Cannot prevail; but mine immortalising<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Touch I lay upon
+thy heart.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thy soul&rsquo;s
+fair shape<br />
+In my unfading mantle&rsquo;s green I drape,<br />
+And thy white mind shall rest by my devising<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A Gideon-fleece amid life&rsquo;s dusty drouth.<br
+/>
+If Even burst yon glob&egrave;d yellow grape<br />
+(Which is the sun to mortals&rsquo; seal&egrave;d sight)<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Against her
+stain&egrave;d mouth;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Or if
+white-handed light<br />
+Draw thee yet dripping from the quiet pools,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Still lucencies
+and cools,<br />
+Of sleep, which all night mirror constellate dreams;<br />
+Like to the sign which led the Israelite,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thy soul,
+through day or dark,<br />
+A visible brightness on the chosen ark<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a name="page23"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 23</span>Of thy sweet body and pure,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Shall it assure,<br />
+With auspice large and tutelary gleams,<br />
+Appointed solemn courts, and covenanted streams.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry"><i>Cease</i>, <i>Spring&rsquo;s little
+children</i>, <i>now cease your lauds to raise</i>;<br />
+<i>That dream is past</i>, <i>and Sylvia</i>, <i>with her
+sweet</i>, <i>feat ways</i>.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Our lov&egrave;d labour</i>, <i>laid away</i>,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Is smoothly ended</i>; <i>said our say</i>,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Our syllable
+to Sylvia</i>.<br />
+<i>Make sweet</i>, <i>you birds on branches</i>! <i>make sweet
+your mouths with May</i>!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>But borne is this burthen</i>,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+<i>Sung unto Sylvia</i>.</p>
+<h3><a name="page24"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 24</span>Part
+the Second</h3>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">And</span> now, thou elder
+nursling of the nest;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Ere all the intertangled west<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Be one
+magnificence<br />
+Of multitudinous blossoms that o&rsquo;errun<br />
+The flaming brazen bowl o&rsquo; the burnished sun<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Which they do
+flower from,<br />
+How shall I &rsquo;stablish <i>thy</i> memorial?<br />
+Nay, how or with what countenance shall I come<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To plead in my
+defence<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For loving thee
+at all?<br />
+I who can scarcely speak my fellows&rsquo; speech,<br />
+Love their love, or mine own love to them teach;<br />
+A bastard barred from their inheritance,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Who seem, in this dim shape&rsquo;s uneasy nook,<br
+/>
+Some sun-flower&rsquo;s spirit which by luckless chance<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Has mournfully its tenement mistook;<br />
+<a name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 25</span>When it
+were better in its right abode,<br />
+Heartless and happy lackeying its god.<br />
+How com&rsquo;st thou, little tender thing of white,<br />
+Whose very touch full scantly me beseems,<br />
+How com&rsquo;st thou resting on my vaporous dreams,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Kindling a wraith there of earth&rsquo;s vernal
+green?<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Even so as I
+have seen,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; In night&rsquo;s a&euml;rial sea with no wind
+blust&rsquo;rous,<br />
+A ribb&egrave;d tract of cloudy malachite<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Curve a shored
+crescent wide;<br />
+And on its slope marge shelving to the night<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The stranded moon lay quivering like a lustrous<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Medusa newly washed up from the
+tide,<br />
+Lay in an oozy pool of its own deliquious light.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Yet hear how my excuses may prevail,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Nor, tender white orb, be thou opposite!<br />
+Life and life&rsquo;s beauty only hold their revels<br />
+In the abysmal ocean&rsquo;s luminous levels.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; There, like the
+phantasms of a poet pale,<br />
+The exquisite marvels sail:<br />
+Clarified silver; greens and azures frail<br />
+<a name="page26"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 26</span>As if the
+colours sighed themselves away,<br />
+And blent in supersubtile interplay<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; As if they swooned into each other&rsquo;s arms;<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Repured
+vermilion,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Like ear-tips
+&rsquo;gainst the sun;<br />
+And beings that, under night&rsquo;s swart pinion,<br />
+Make every wave upon the harbour-bars<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A beaten yolk of
+stars.<br />
+But where day&rsquo;s glance turns baffled from the deeps,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Die out those
+lovely swarms;<br />
+And in the immense profound no creature glides or creeps.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Love and love&rsquo;s beauty only hold their
+revels<br />
+In life&rsquo;s familiar, penetrable levels:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; What of its
+ocean-floor?<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I dwell there
+evermore.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; From almost
+earliest youth<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I raised the
+lids o&rsquo; the truth,<br />
+And forced her bend on me her shrinking sight;<br />
+Ever I knew me Beauty&rsquo;s eremite,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; In antre of this lowly body set.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a name="page27"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 27</span>Girt with a thirsty solitude of
+soul.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Nathless I not
+forget<br />
+How I have, even as the anchorite,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I too, imperishing essences that console.<br />
+Under my ruined passions, fallen and sere,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The wild dreams stir like little radiant girls,<br
+/>
+Whom in the moulted plumage of the year<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Their comrades sweet have buried to the curls.<br />
+Yet, though their dedicated amorist,<br />
+How often do I bid my visions hist,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Deaf to them, pleading all their piteous fills;<br
+/>
+Who weep, as weep the maidens of the mist<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Clinging the necks of the unheeding hills:<br />
+And their tears wash them lovelier than before,<br />
+That from grief&rsquo;s self our sad delight grows more,<br />
+Fair are the soul&rsquo;s uncrisp&egrave;d calms, indeed,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Endiapered with many a spiritual form<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Of
+blosmy-tinctured weed;<br />
+But scarce itself is conscious of the store<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Suckled by it, and only after storm<br />
+Casts up its loosened thoughts upon the shore.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To this end my deeps are
+stirred;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a name="page28"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 28</span>And I deem well why life unshared<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Was ordain&egrave;d me of yore.<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In pairing-time, we know, the
+bird<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Kindles to its deepmost
+splendour,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And the tender<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Voice is tenderest in its
+throat;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Were its love, for ever nigh
+it,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Never by it,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It might keep a vernal note,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The crocean and amethystine<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+In their pristine<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Lustre linger on
+its coat.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Therefore must my song-bower lone
+be,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+That my tone be<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Fresh with dewy
+pain alway;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; She, who scorns my dearest care
+ta&rsquo;en,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+An uncertain<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Shadow of the
+sprite of May.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And is my song sweet, as they
+say?<br />
+&rsquo;Tis sweet for one whose voice has no reply,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Save silence&rsquo;s sad cry:<br />
+And are its plumes a burning bright array?<br />
+<a name="page29"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 29</span>They burn
+for an unincarnated eye<br />
+A bubble, charioteered by the inward breath<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Which, ardorous for its own invisible lure,<br />
+Urges me glittering to a&euml;rial death,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I am rapt towards that bodiless paramour;<br />
+Blindly the uncomprehended tyranny<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Obeying of my heart&rsquo;s impetuous might.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The earth and all its planetary
+kin,<br />
+Starry buds tangled in the whirling hair<br />
+That flames round the Phoebean wassailer,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Speed no more ignorant, more predestined flight,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Than I, <i>her</i> viewless
+tresses netted in.<br />
+As some most beautiful one, with lovely taunting,<br />
+Her eyes of guileless guile o&rsquo;ercanopies,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Does her hid
+visage bow,<br />
+And miserly your covetous gaze allow,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; By inchmeal, coy
+degrees,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Saying&mdash;&ldquo;Can you see me now?&rdquo;<br />
+Yet from the mouth&rsquo;s reflex you guess the wanting<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Smile of the
+coming eyes<br />
+In all their upturned grievous witcheries,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Before that
+sunbreak rise;<br />
+<a name="page30"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 30</span>And each
+still hidden feature view within<br />
+Your mind, as eager scrutinies detail<br />
+The moon&rsquo;s young rondure through the shamefast veil<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Drawn to her gleaming chin:<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+After this wise,<br />
+From the enticing smile of earth and skies<br />
+I dream my unknown Fair&rsquo;s refus&egrave;d gaze;<br />
+And guessingly her love&rsquo;s close traits devise,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Which she with subtile
+coquetries<br />
+Through little human glimpses slow displays,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Cozening my
+mateless days<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; By sick,
+intolerable delays.<br />
+And so I keep mine uncompanioned ways;<br />
+And so my touch, to golden poesies<br />
+Turning love&rsquo;s bread, is bought at hunger&rsquo;s price.<br
+/>
+So,&mdash;in the inextinguishable wars<br />
+Which roll song&rsquo;s Orient on the sullen night<br />
+Whose ragged banners in their own despite<br />
+Take on the tinges of the hated light,&mdash;<br />
+So Sultan Phoebus has his Janizars.<br />
+<a name="page31"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 31</span>But if
+mine unappeas&egrave;d cicatrices<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Might get them
+lawful ease;<br />
+Were any gentle passion hallowed me,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Who must none other breath of passion feel<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Save such as winnows to the fledg&egrave;d heel<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The tremulous Paradisal
+plumages;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The conscious sacramental trees<br
+/>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Which ever be<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Shaken celestially,<br />
+Consentient with enamoured wings, might know my love for thee.<br
+/>
+Yet is there more, whereat none guesseth, love!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Upon the ending of my deadly night<br />
+(Whereof thou hast not the surmise, and slight<br />
+Is all that any mortal knows thereof),<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Thou wert to me that earnest of day&rsquo;s
+light,<br />
+When, like the back of a gold-mail&egrave;d saurian<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Heaving its slow length from Nilotic slime,<br />
+The first long gleaming fissure runs Aurorian<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Athwart the yet dun firmament of prime.<br />
+Stretched on the margin of the cruel sea<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Whence they had
+rescued me,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; With faint and painful pulses was I lying;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a
+name="page32"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 32</span>Not yet
+discerning well<br />
+If I had &rsquo;scaped, or were an icicle,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Whose thawing is
+its dying.<br />
+Like one who sweats before a despot&rsquo;s gate,<br />
+Summoned by some presaging scroll of fate,<br />
+And knows not whether kiss or dagger wait;<br />
+And all so sickened is his countenance,<br />
+The courtiers buzz, &ldquo;Lo, doomed!&rdquo; and look at him
+askance:&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; At Fate&rsquo;s
+dread portal then<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Even so stood I,
+I ken,<br />
+Even so stood I, between a joy and fear,<br />
+And said to mine own heart, &ldquo;Now if the end be
+here!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They say,
+Earth&rsquo;s beauty seems completest<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To them that on
+their death-beds rest;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Gentle lady! she smiles
+sweetest<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Just ere she
+clasp us to her breast.<br />
+And I,&mdash;now <i>my</i> Earth&rsquo;s countenance grew
+bright,<br />
+Did she but smile me towards that nuptial-night?<br />
+But whileas on such dubious bed I lay,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+One unforgotten day,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As a sick child waking sees<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a
+name="page33"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 33</span>Wide-eyed
+daisies<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Gazing on it from its hand,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Slipped there for its dear
+amazes;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; So between thy father&rsquo;s
+knees<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I saw
+<i>thee</i> stand,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And through my
+hazes<br />
+Of pain and fear thine eyes&rsquo; young wonder shone.<br />
+Then, as flies scatter from a carrion,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Or rooks in spreading gyres like broken smoke<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Wheel, when some sound their quietude has broke,<br
+/>
+Fled, at thy countenance, all that doubting spawn:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The heart which I had questioned
+spoke,<br />
+A cry impetuous from its depths was drawn,&mdash;<br />
+&ldquo;I take the omen of this face of dawn!&rdquo;<br />
+And with the omen to my heart cam&rsquo;st thou.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Even with a
+spray of tears<br />
+That one light draft was fixed there for the years.</p>
+<p
+class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And
+now?&mdash;<br />
+The hours I tread ooze memories of thee, Sweet!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Beneath my casual feet.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; With rainfall as the lea,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a
+name="page34"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 34</span>The day is
+drenched with thee;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In little exquisite surprises<br
+/>
+Bubbling deliciousness of thee arises<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+From sudden places,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Under the common traces<br />
+Of my most lethargied and customed paces.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As an Arab
+journeyeth<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Through a sand of Ayaman,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Lean Thirst, lolling its cracked
+tongue,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Lagging by his side along;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And a rusty-wing&egrave;d Death<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Grating its low flight before,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Casting ribb&egrave;d shadows
+o&rsquo;er<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The blank desert, blank and
+tan:<br />
+He lifts by hap toward where the morning&rsquo;s roots are<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+His weary stare,&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Sees, although they plashless mutes are,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Set in a silver air<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Fountains of gelid shoots are,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Making the daylight fairest
+fair;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Sees the palm and tamarind<br />
+<a name="page35"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 35</span>Tangle the
+tresses of a phantom wind;&mdash;<br />
+A sight like innocence when one has sinned!<br />
+A green and maiden freshness smiling there,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; While with
+unblinking glare<br />
+The tawny-hided desert crouches watching her.</p>
+<p
+class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&rsquo;Tis
+a vision:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Yet the greeneries Elysian<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; He has known in tracts afar;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thus the enamouring fountains
+flow,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Those the very palms that grow,<br
+/>
+By rare-gummed Sava, or Herbalimar.&mdash;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Such a
+watered dream has tarried<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Trembling on my desert arid;<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Even so<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Its lovely
+gleamings<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Seemings show<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Of things not
+seemings;<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+And I gaze,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Knowing that, beyond my ways,<br
+/>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Verily<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a
+name="page36"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 36</span>All these
+<i>are</i>, for these are she.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Eve no gentlier lays her cooling
+cheek<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; On the burning brow of the sick
+earth,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sick with death,
+and sick with birth,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Aeon to aeon, in secular fever twirled,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Than thy shadow
+soothes this weak<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And distempered
+being of mine.<br />
+In all I work, my hand includeth thine;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thou rushest
+down in every stream<br />
+Whose passion frets my spirit&rsquo;s deepening gorge;<br />
+Unhood&rsquo;st mine eyas-heart, and fliest my dream;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thou
+swing&rsquo;st the hammers of my forge;<br />
+As the innocent moon, that nothing does but shine,<br />
+Moves all the labouring surges of the world.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Pierce where thou wilt the springing thought in
+me,<br />
+And there thy pictured countenance lies enfurled,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; As in the cut fern lies the imaged tree.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This poor song that sings of
+thee,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; This fragile song, is but a curled<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Shell outgathered from thy sea,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And murmurous still of its nativity.<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+<a name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 37</span>Princess
+of Smiles!<br />
+Sorceress of most unlawful-lawful wiles!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Cunning pit for gazers&rsquo;
+senses,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Overstrewn with innocences!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Purities gleam white like
+statues<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In the fair lakes of thine
+eyes,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And I watch the sparkles that
+use<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+There to rise,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Knowing these<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Are bubbles from the calyces<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Of the lovely thoughts that
+breathe<br />
+Paving, like water-flowers, thy spirit&rsquo;s floor beneath.</p>
+<p
+class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O
+thou most dear!<br />
+Who art thy sex&rsquo;s complex harmony<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; God-set more facilely;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To thee may love draw near<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Without one blame or fear,<br />
+Unchidden save by his humility:<br />
+Thou Perseus&rsquo; Shield! wherein I view secure<br />
+The mirrored Woman&rsquo;s fateful-fair allure!<br />
+Whom Heaven still leaves a twofold dignity,<br />
+<a name="page38"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 38</span>As
+girlhood gentle, and as boyhood free;<br />
+With whom no most diaphanous webs enwind<br />
+The bar&egrave;d limbs of the rebukeless mind.<br />
+Wild Dryad! all unconscious of thy tree,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+With which indissolubly<br />
+The tyrannous time shall one day make thee whole;<br />
+Whose frank arms pass unfretted through its bole:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Who wear&rsquo;st thy femineity<br
+/>
+Light as entrail&egrave;d blossoms, that shalt find<br />
+It erelong silver shackles unto thee.<br />
+Thou whose young sex is yet but in thy soul;&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As hoarded in the vine<br />
+Hang the gold skins of undelirious wine,<br />
+As air sleeps, till it toss its limbs in breeze:&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; In whom the mystery which lures and sunders,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Grapples and thrusts apart;
+endears, estranges;<br />
+&mdash;The dragon to its own Hesperides&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Is gated under slow-revolving changes,<br />
+Manifold doors of heavy-hing&egrave;d years.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; So once, ere Heaven&rsquo;s eyes were filled with
+wonders<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To see Laughter rise from
+Tears,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a name="page39"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 39</span>Lay in beauty not yet mighty,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Conch&egrave;d
+in translucencies,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The antenatal Aphrodite,<br />
+Caved magically under magic seas;<br />
+Caved dreamlessly beneath the dreamful seas.</p>
+<p
+class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;Whose
+sex is in thy soul!&rdquo;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; What think we of
+thy soul?<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Which has no parts, and cannot
+grow,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Unfurled not from an embryo;<br />
+Born of full stature, lineal to control;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And yet a pigmy&rsquo;s yoke must undergo.<br />
+Yet must keep pace and tarry, patient, kind,<br />
+With its unwilling scholar, the dull, tardy mind;<br />
+Must be obsequious to the body&rsquo;s powers,<br />
+Whose low hands mete its paths, set ope and close its ways;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Must do obeisance to the days,<br
+/>
+And wait the little pleasure of the hours;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Yea, ripe for kingship, yet must be<br />
+Captive in statuted minority!<br />
+So is all power fulfilled, as soul in thee.<br />
+<a name="page40"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 40</span>So still
+the ruler by the ruled takes rule,<br />
+And wisdom weaves itself i&rsquo; the loom o&rsquo; the fool.<br
+/>
+The splendent sun no splendour can display,<br />
+Till on gross things he dash his broken ray,<br />
+From cloud and tree and flower re-tossed in prismy spray.<br />
+Did not obstruction&rsquo;s vessel hem it in,<br />
+Force were not force, would spill itself in vain<br />
+We know the Titan by his champ&egrave;d chain.<br />
+Stay is heat&rsquo;s cradle, it is rocked therein,<br />
+And by check&rsquo;s hand is burnished into light;<br />
+If hate were none, would love burn lowlier bright?<br />
+God&rsquo;s Fair were guessed scarce but for opposite sin;<br />
+Yea, and His Mercy, I do think it well,<br />
+Is flashed back from the brazen gates of Hell.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The heavens
+decree<br />
+All power fulfil itself as soul in thee.<br />
+For supreme Spirit subject was to clay,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And Law from its own servants learned a law,<br />
+And Light besought a lamp unto its way,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And Awe was
+reined in awe,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; At one small house of Nazareth;<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a
+name="page41"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 41</span>And
+Golgotha<br />
+Saw Breath to breathlessness resign its breath,<br />
+And Life do homage for its crown to death.</p>
+<p class="poetry">So is all power, as soul in thee increased!<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; But, knowing this, in knowledge&rsquo;s despite<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I fret against the law severe that stains<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thy spirit with
+eclipse;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; When&mdash;as a nymph&rsquo;s carven head sweet
+water drips,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; For others oozing so the cool delight<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Which cannot steep her stiffened mouth of
+stone&mdash;<br />
+Thy nescient lips repeat maternal strains.<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Memnonian lips!<br />
+Smitten with singing from thy mother&rsquo;s east,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And murmurous with music not their own:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Nay, the lips flexile, while the mind alone<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A passionless
+statue stands.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Oh, pardon,
+innocent one!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Pardon at thine unconscious
+hands!<br />
+&ldquo;Murmurous with music not their own,&rdquo; I say?<br />
+And in that saying how do I missay,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a
+name="page42"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 42</span>When from the
+common sands<br />
+Of poorest common speech of common day<br />
+Thine accents sift the golden musics out!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And ah, we poets, I misdoubt,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Are little more
+than thou!<br />
+We speak a lesson taught we know not how,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And what it is that from us
+flows<br />
+The hearer better than the utterer knows.</p>
+<p
+class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thou
+canst foreshape thy word;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The poet is not
+lord<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Of the next syllable may come<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; With the returning pendulum;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And what he plans to-day in
+song,<br />
+To-morrow sings it in another tongue.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Where the last leaf fell from his
+bough,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; He knows not if a leaf shall
+grow,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Where he sows he doth not reap,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; He reapeth where he did not
+sow;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; He sleeps, and dreams forsake his
+sleep<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To meet him on his waking way.<br
+/>
+Vision will mate him not by law and vow:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a name="page43"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 43</span>Disguised in life&rsquo;s most
+hodden-grey,<br />
+By the most beaten road of everyday<br />
+She waits him, unsuspected and unknown.<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+The hardest pang whereon<br />
+He lays his mutinous head may be a Jacob&rsquo;s stone.<br />
+In the most iron crag his foot can tread<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+A Dream may strew her bed,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And suddenly his limbs entwine,<br
+/>
+And draw him down through rock as sea-nymphs might through
+brine.<br />
+But, unlike those feigned temptress-ladies who<br />
+In guerdon of a night the lover slew,<br />
+When the embrace has failed, the rapture fled,<br />
+Not he, not he, the wild sweet witch is dead!<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+And, though he cherisheth<br />
+The babe most strangely born from out her death,<br />
+Some tender trick of her it hath, maybe,&mdash;<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+It is not she!</p>
+<p class="poetry">Yet, even as the air is rumorous of fray<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Before the first shafts of the sun&rsquo;s
+onslaught<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; From gloom&rsquo;s black harness
+splinter,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a name="page44"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 44</span>And Summer move on Winter<br />
+With the trumpet of the March, and the pennon of the May;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As gesture outstrips thought;<br
+/>
+So, haply, toyer with ethereal strings!<br />
+Are thy blind repetitions of high things<br />
+The murmurous gnats whose aimless hoverings<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Reveal song&rsquo;s summer in the
+air;<br />
+The outstretched hand, which cannot thought declare,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Yet is
+thought&rsquo;s harbinger.<br />
+These strains the way for thine own strains prepare;<br />
+We feel the music moist upon this breeze,<br />
+And hope the congregating poesies.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sundered yet by thee from us<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Wait, with wild eyes luminous,<br
+/>
+All thy wing&egrave;d things that are to be;<br />
+They flit against thee, Gate of Ivory!<br />
+They clamour on the portress Destiny,&mdash;<br />
+&ldquo;Set her wide, so we may issue through!<br />
+Our vans are quick for that they have to do!&rdquo;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Suffer still your young desire;<br
+/>
+Your plumes but bicker at the tips with fire,<br />
+<a name="page45"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 45</span>Tarry
+their kindling; they will beat the higher.<br />
+And thou, bright girl, not long shalt thou repeat<br />
+Idly the music from thy mother caught;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Not vainly has
+she wrought,<br />
+Not vainly from the cloudward-jetting turret<br />
+Of her a&euml;rial mind, for thy weak feet,<br />
+Let down the silken ladder of her thought.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; She bare thee with a double pain,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Of the body and the spirit;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Thou thy fleshly weeds hast ta&rsquo;en,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thy diviner weeds inherit!<br />
+The precious streams which through thy young lips roll<br />
+Shall leave their lovely delta in thy soul:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Where sprites of so essential kind<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Set their paces,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Surely they shall leave behind<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+The green traces<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of their sportance in the mind,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And thou shalt, ere we well may know it,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Turn that
+daintiness, a poet,&mdash;<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Elfin-ring<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Where sweet
+fancies foot and sing.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a name="page46"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 46</span>So it may be, so it <i>shall</i>
+be,&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Oh, take the prophecy from me!<br
+/>
+What if the old fastidious sculptor, Time,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This crescent marvel of his
+hands<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Carveth all too painfully,<br />
+And I who prophesy shall never see?<br />
+What if the niche of its predestined rhyme,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Its aching niche, too long expectant stands?<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Yet shall he after sore delays<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; On some exultant day of days<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The white enshrouding childhood
+raise<br />
+From thy fair spirit, finished for our gaze;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; While we (but &rsquo;mongst that
+happy &ldquo;we&rdquo;<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+The prophet cannot be!)<br />
+While we behold with no astonishments,<br />
+With that serene fulfilment of delight<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Wherewith we view the sight<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; When the stars pitch the golden
+tents<br />
+Of their high campment on the plains of night.<br />
+Why should amazement be our satellite?<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+What wonder in such things?<br />
+If angels have hereditary wings,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <a name="page47"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+47</span>If not by Salic law is handed down<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+The poet&rsquo;s crown,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To thee, born in the purple of the throne,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The laurel must
+belong:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thou, in thy
+mother&rsquo;s right<br />
+Descendant of Castalian-chrismed kings&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; O Princess of the Blood of
+Song!</p>
+<p class="poetry">Peace; too impetuously have I been winging<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Toward vaporous heights which beckon and beguile<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I sink back, saddened to my inmost
+mind;<br />
+Even as I list a-dream that mother singing<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The poesy of sweet tone, and sadden, while<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Her voice is cast in troubled wake
+behind<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The keel of her keen spirit.&nbsp;
+Thou art enshrined<br />
+In a too primal innocence for this eye&mdash;<br />
+Intent on such untempered radiancy&mdash;<br />
+Not to be pained; my clay can scarce endure<br />
+Ungrieved the effluence near of essences so pure.<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Therefore, little, tender maiden,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Never be thou overshaden<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+With a mind whose canopy<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a name="page48"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 48</span>Would shut out the sky from thee;<br
+/>
+Whose tangled branches intercept Heaven&rsquo;s light:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I will not feed my unpastured
+heart<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; On thee, green pleasaunce as thou
+art,<br />
+To lessen by one flower thy happy daisies white.<br />
+The water-rat is earth-hued like the runlet<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Whereon he swims; and how in me should lurk<br />
+Thoughts apt to neighbour thine, thou creature sunlit?<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; If through long
+fret and irk<br />
+Thine eyes within their browed recesses were<br />
+Worn caves where thought lay couchant in its lair;<br />
+Wert thou a spark among dank leaves, ah ruth!<br />
+With age in all thy veins, while all thy heart was youth;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Our contact might run smooth.<br
+/>
+But life&rsquo;s Eoan dews still moist thy ring&egrave;d hair;<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Dian&rsquo;s chill finger-tips<br
+/>
+Thaw if at night they happen on thy lips;<br />
+The flying fringes of the sun&rsquo;s cloak frush<br />
+The fragile leaves which on those warm lips blush;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And joy only lurks
+retir&egrave;d<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In the dim gloaming of thine
+irid.<br />
+<a name="page49"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 49</span>Then since
+my love drags this poor shadow, me,<br />
+And one without the other may not be,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; From both I
+guard thee free.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It still is much, yes, it is
+much,<br />
+Only&mdash;my dream!&mdash;to love my love of thee;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And it is much, yes, it is
+much,<br />
+In hands which thou hast touched to feel thy touch<br />
+In voices which have mingled with thine own<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To hear a double
+tone.<br />
+As anguish, for supreme expression prest,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Borrows its saddest tongue from
+jest,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thou hast of absence so create<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A presence more importunate;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And thy voice pleads its sweetest
+suit<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+When it is mute.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I thank the once accurs&egrave;d
+star<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Which did me teach<br />
+To make of Silence my familiar,<br />
+Who hath the rich reversion of thy speech,<br />
+Since the most charming sounds thy thought can wear,<br />
+Cast off, fall to that pale attendant&rsquo;s share;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And thank the gift which made my
+mind<br />
+<a name="page50"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 50</span>A
+shadow-world, wherethrough the shadows wind<br />
+Of all the loved and lovely of my kind.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Like a
+maiden Saxon, folden,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As she flits, in
+moon-drenched mist;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Whose curls streaming
+flaxen-golden,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; By the misted
+moonbeams kist,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Dispread their filmy floating
+silk<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Like honey
+steeped in milk:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; So, vague goldenness remote,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Through my thoughts I watch thee
+float.<br />
+When the snake summer casts her blazoned skin<br />
+We find it at the turn of autumn&rsquo;s path,<br />
+And think it summer that rewinded hath,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Joying therein;<br />
+And this enamouring slough of thee, mine elf,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I take it for thyself;<br />
+Content.&nbsp; Content?&nbsp; Yea, title it content.<br />
+The very loves that belt thee must prevent<br />
+My love, I know, with their legitimacy:<br />
+As the metallic vapours, that are swept<br />
+Athwart the sun, in his light intercept<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+<a name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 51</span>The very
+hues<br />
+Which <i>their</i> conflagrant elements effuse.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But, my love, my heart, my
+fair,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; That only I should see thee
+rare,<br />
+Or tent to the hid core thy rarity,&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; This were a mournfulness more piercing far<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Than that those other loves my own must bar,<br />
+Or thine for others leave thee none for me.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But on a
+day whereof I think,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; One shall dip his hand to drink<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In that still water of thy
+soul,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And its imaged tremors race<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Over thy joy-troubled face,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As the intervolved reflections
+roll<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; From a shaken fountain&rsquo;s
+brink,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; With swift light wrinkling its
+alcove.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; From the hovering wing of Love<br
+/>
+The warm stain shall flit roseal on thy cheek,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Then, sweet blushet! whenas he,<br
+/>
+The destined paramount of thy universe,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Who has no worlds to sigh for, ruling thee,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <a name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+52</span>&Agrave;scends his vermeil throne of empery,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; One grace alone
+I seek.<br />
+Oh! may this treasure-galleon of my verse,<br />
+Fraught with its golden passion, oared with cadent rhyme,<br />
+Set with a towering press of fantasies,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Drop safely down
+the time,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Leaving mine isl&egrave;d self behind it far<br />
+Soon to be sunken in the abysm of seas,<br />
+(As down the years the splendour voyages<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; From some long ruined and night-submerg&egrave;d
+star),<br />
+And in thy subject sovereign&rsquo;s havening heart<br />
+Anchor the freightage of its virgin ore;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Adding its
+wasteful more<br />
+To his own overflowing treasury.<br />
+So through his river mine shall reach thy sea,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Bearing its
+confluent part;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In his pulse
+mine shall thrill;<br />
+And the quick heart shall quicken from the heart that&rsquo;s
+still.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Ah! help, my D&aelig;mon that hast served me
+well!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <a name="page53"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+53</span>Not at this last, oh, do not me disgrace!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I faint, I sicken, darkens all my sight,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; As, poised upon this unprevisioned height,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I lift into its
+place<br />
+The utmost aery traceried pinnacle.<br />
+So; it is builded, the high tenement,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &mdash;God
+grant&mdash;to mine intent!<br />
+Most like a palace of the Occident,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Up-thrusting, toppling maze on
+maze,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Its mounded blaze,<br />
+And wash&egrave;d by the sunset&rsquo;s rosy waves,<br />
+Whose sea drinks rarer hue from those rare walls it laves.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Yet wail, my spirits, wail!<br />
+So few therein to enter shall prevail!<br />
+Scarce fewer could win way, if their desire<br />
+A dragon baulked, with involuted spire,<br />
+And writhen snout spattered with yeasty fire.<br />
+For at the elfin portal hangs a horn<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Which none can wind aright<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Save the appointed knight<br />
+Whose lids the fay-wings brushed when he was born.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a name="page54"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 54</span>All others stray forlorn,<br />
+Or glimpsing, through the blazoned windows scrolled<br />
+Receding labyrinths lessening tortuously<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In half obscurity;<br />
+With mystic images, inhuman, cold,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; That flameless torches hold.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; But who can wind that horn of might<br />
+(The horn of dead Heliades) aright,&mdash;<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Straight<br />
+Open for him shall roll the conscious gate;<br />
+And light leap up from all the torches there,<br />
+And life leap up in every torchbearer,<br />
+And the stone faces kindle in the glow,<br />
+And into the blank eyes the irids grow,<br />
+And through the dawning irids ambushed meanings show.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Illumined this
+wise on,<br />
+He threads securely the far intricacies,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; With brede from Heaven&rsquo;s wrought vesture
+overstrewn;<br />
+Swift Tellus&rsquo; purfled tunic, girt upon<br />
+With the blown chlamys of her fluttering seas;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a name="page55"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 55</span>And the freaked kirtle of the
+pearl&egrave;d moon:<br />
+Until he gain the structure&rsquo;s core, where stands&mdash;<br
+/>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+A toil of magic hands&mdash;<br />
+The unbodied spirit of the sorcerer,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Most strangely rare,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As is a vision remembered in the
+noon;<br />
+Unbodied, yet to mortal seeing clear,<br />
+Like sighs exhaled in eager atmosphere.<br />
+From human haps and mutabilities<br />
+It rests exempt, beneath the edifice<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To which itself
+gave rise;<br />
+Sustaining centre to the bubble of stone<br />
+Which, breathed from it, exists by it alone.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Yea, ere Saturnian earth her child consumes,<br />
+And I lie down with outworn ossuaries,<br />
+Ere death&rsquo;s grim tongue anticipates the tomb&rsquo;s<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Siste
+viator</i>, in this storied urn<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; My living heart
+is laid to throb and burn,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Till end be ended, and till ceasing cease.</p>
+<p class="poetry">And thou by whom this strain hath parentage;<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Wantoner between the yet untreacherous claws<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <a name="page56"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+56</span>Of newly-whelped existence! ere he pause,<br />
+What gift to thee can yield the archimage?<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For coming
+seasons&rsquo; frets<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; What aids, what
+amulets,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; What softenings,
+or what brightenings?<br />
+As Thunder writhes the lash of his long lightnings<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; About the growling heads of the brute main<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Foaming at mouth, until it wallow again<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; In the scooped oozes of its bed of pain;<br />
+So all the gnashing jaws, the leaping heads<br />
+Of hungry menaces, and of ravening dreads,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Of pangs<br />
+Twitch-lipped, with quivering nostrils and immitigate fangs,<br
+/>
+I scourge beneath the torment of my charms<br />
+That their repentless nature fear to work thee harms.<br />
+And as yon Apollonian harp-player,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Yon wandering
+psalterist of the sky,<br />
+With flickering strings which scatter melody,<br />
+The silver-stol&egrave;d damsels of the sea,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Or lake, or
+fount, or stream,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Enchants from their ancestral heaven of waters<br />
+<a name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 57</span>To Naiad
+it through the unfrothing air;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; My song enchants so out of
+undulous dream<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The glimmering shapes of its dim-tress&egrave;d
+daughters,<br />
+And missions each to be thy minister.<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Saying; &ldquo;O ye,<br />
+The organ-stops of being&rsquo;s harmony;<br />
+The blushes on existence&rsquo;s pale face,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Lending it
+sudden grace;<br />
+Without whom we should but guess Heaven&rsquo;s worth<br />
+By blank negations of this sordid earth,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; (So haply to the blind may
+light<br />
+Be but gloom&rsquo;s undetermined opposite);<br />
+Ye who are thus as the refracting air<br />
+Whereby we see Heaven&rsquo;s sun before it rise<br />
+Above the dull line of our mortal skies;<br />
+As breathing on the strain&egrave;d ear that sighs<br />
+From comrades viewless unto strain&egrave;d eyes,<br />
+Soothing our terrors in the lampless night;<br />
+Ye who can make this world where all is deeming<br />
+What world ye list, being arbiters of seeming;<br />
+Attend upon her ways, benignant powers!<br />
+<a name="page58"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 58</span>Unroll ye
+life a carpet for her feet,<br />
+And cast ye down before them blossomy hours,<br />
+Until her going shall be clogged with sweet!<br />
+All dear emotions whose new-bath&egrave;d hair,<br />
+Still streaming from the soul, in love&rsquo;s warm air<br />
+Smokes with a mist of tender fantasies;<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+All these,<br />
+And all the heart&rsquo;s wild growths which, swiftly bright,<br
+/>
+Spring up the crimson agarics of a night,<br />
+No pain in withering, yet a joy arisen;<br />
+And all thin shapes more exquisitely rare,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+More subtly fair,<br />
+Than these weak ministering words have spell to prison<br />
+Within the magic circle of this rhyme;<br />
+And all the fays who in our creedless clime<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Have sadly ceased<br />
+Bearing to other children childhood&rsquo;s proper feast;<br />
+Whose robes are fluent crystal, crocus-hued,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Whose wings are wind a-fire, whose
+mantles wrought<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; From spray that
+falling rainbows shake<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a name="page59"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 59</span>These, ye familiars to my wizard
+thought,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Make things of journal custom unto
+her;<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+With lucent feet imbrued,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; If young Day tread, a glorious
+vintager,<br />
+The wine-press of the purple-foam&egrave;d east;<br />
+Or round the nodding sun, flush-faced and sunken,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+His wild bacchantes drunken<br />
+Reel, with rent woofs a-flaunt, their westering rout.<br />
+&mdash;But lo! at length the day is lingered out,<br />
+At length my Ariel lays his viol by;<br />
+We sing no more to thee, child, he and I;<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+The day is lingered out:<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+In slow wreaths folden<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Around yon
+censer, spher&egrave;d, golden,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Vague Vesper&rsquo;s fumes aspire;<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+And glimmering to eclipse<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+The long laburnum drips<br />
+Its honey of wild flame, its jocund spilth of fire.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Now pass your ways</i>,
+<i>fair bird</i>, <i>and pass your ways</i>,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+<i>If you will</i>;<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+<a name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 60</span><i>I have
+you through the days</i>!<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+<i>A flit or hold you still</i>,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+<i>And perch you where you list</i><br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+<i>On what wrist</i>,&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>You are mine
+through the times</i>!<br />
+<i>I have caught you fast for ever in a tangle of sweet
+rhymes</i>.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>And in your
+young maiden morn</i>,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+<i>You may scorn</i>,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+<i>But you must be</i><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Bound and
+sociate to me</i>;<br />
+<i>With this thread from out the tomb my dead hand shall tether
+thee</i>!</p>
+
+<div class="gapshortline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p class="poetry">Go, sister-songs, to that sweet sister-pair<br
+/>
+For whom I have your frail limbs fashion&egrave;d,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And fram&egrave;d
+feateously;&mdash;<br />
+For whom I have your frail limbs fashion&egrave;d<br />
+With how great shamefastness and how great dread,<br />
+<a name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 61</span>Knowing
+you frail, but not if you be fair,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Though fram&egrave;d
+feateously;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Go unto them from me.<br />
+Go from my shadow to their sunshine sight,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Made for all sights&rsquo;
+delight;<br />
+Go like twin swans that oar the surgy storms<br />
+To bate with pennoned snows in candent air:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Nigh with abas&egrave;d head,<br
+/>
+Yourselves linked sisterly, that sister-pair,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And go in presence there;<br />
+Saying&mdash;&ldquo;Your young eyes cannot see our forms,<br />
+Nor read the yearning of our looks aright;<br />
+But time shall trail the veilings from our hair,<br />
+And cleanse your seeing with his euphrasy,<br />
+(Yea, even your bright seeing make more bright,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Which is all sights&rsquo;
+delight),<br />
+And ye shall know us for what things we be.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Whilom, within a poet&rsquo;s calyxed
+heart,<br />
+A dewy love we trembled all apart;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Whence it took rise<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Beneath your radiant eyes,<br />
+<a name="page62"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 62</span>Which
+misted it to music.&nbsp; We must long,<br />
+A floating haze of silver subtile song,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Await love-laden<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Above each maiden<br />
+The appointed hour that o&rsquo;er the hearts of you&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As vapours into dew<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Unweave, whence they were
+wove,&mdash;<br />
+Shall turn our loosening musics back to love.&rdquo;</p>
+<h2><a name="page63"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+63</span>Inscription</h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">When</span> the last stir
+of bubbling melodies<br />
+Broke as my chants sank underneath the wave<br />
+Of dulcitude, but sank again to rise<br />
+Where man&rsquo;s embaying mind those waters lave,<br />
+(For music hath its Oceanides<br />
+Flexuously floating through their parent seas,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And such are these),<br />
+I saw a vision&mdash;or may it be<br />
+The effluence of a dear desired reality?<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I saw two spirits high,&mdash;<br
+/>
+Two spirits, dim within the silver smoke<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Which is for ever woke<br />
+By snowing lights of fountained Poesy.<br />
+Two shapes they were familiar as love;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; They were those souls, whereof<br
+/>
+One twines from finest gracious daily things,<br />
+Strong, constant, noticeless, as are heart-strings<br />
+<a name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 64</span>The golden
+cage wherein this song-bird sings;<br />
+And the other&rsquo;s sun gives hue to all my flowers,<br />
+Which else pale flowers of Tartarus would grow,<br />
+Where ghosts watch ghosts of blooms in ghostly bowers;&mdash;<br
+/>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+For we do know<br />
+The hidden player by his harmonies,<br />
+And by my thoughts I know what still hands thrill the keys.</p>
+<p class="poetry">And to these twain&mdash;as from the
+mind&rsquo;s abysses<br />
+All thoughts draw toward the awakening heart&rsquo;s sweet
+kisses,<br />
+With proffer of their wreathen fantasies,&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Even so to
+these<br />
+I saw how many brought their garlands fair,<br />
+Whether of song, or simple love, they were,&mdash;<br />
+Of simple love, that makes best garlands fair.<br />
+But one I marked who lingered still behind,<br />
+As for such souls no seemly gift had he:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; He was not of their strain,<br />
+Nor worthy of so bright beings to entertain,<br />
+<a name="page65"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 65</span>Nor fit
+compeer for such high company.<br />
+Yet was he, surely, born to them in mind,<br />
+Their youngest nursling of the spirit&rsquo;s kind.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Last stole this one,<br />
+With timid glance, of watching eyes adread,<br />
+And dropped his frightened flower when all were gone;<br />
+And where the frail flower fell, it wither&egrave;d.<br />
+But yet methought those high souls smiled thereon;<br />
+As when a child, upstraining at your knees<br />
+Some fond and fancied nothings, says, &ldquo;I give you
+these!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SISTER SONGS***</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Sister Songs, by Francis Thompson
+#3 in our series by Francis Thompson
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+Sister Songs
+
+by Francis Thompson
+
+May, 1999  [Etext #1731]
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Sister Songs, by Francis Thompson
+******This file should be named ssngs10.txt or ssngs10.zip******
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+This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+from the 1908 Burns and Oates edition.
+
+
+
+
+
+Sister Songs
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+
+This poem, though new in the sense of being now for the first time
+printed, was written some four years ago, about the same date as
+the Hound of Heaven in my former volume.
+
+One image in the Proem was an unconscious plagiarism from the
+beautiful image in Mr. Patmore's St. Valentine's Day:-
+
+
+"O baby Spring,
+That flutter'st sudden 'neath the breast of Earth,
+A month before the birth!"
+
+
+Finding I could not disengage it without injury to the passage in
+which it is embedded, I have preferred to leave it, with this
+acknowledgment to a Poet rich enough to lend to the poor.
+
+FRANCIS THOMPSON,
+1895
+
+
+
+SISTER SONGS--An Offering to Two Sisters
+
+
+
+THE PROEM
+
+
+
+Shrewd winds and shrill--were these the speech of May?
+A ragged, slag-grey sky--invested so,
+Mary's spoilt nursling! wert thou wont to go?
+Or THOU, Sun-god and song-god, say
+Could singer pipe one tiniest linnet-lay,
+While Song did turn away his face from song?
+Or who could be
+In spirit or in body hale for long, -
+Old AEsculap's best Master!--lacking thee?
+At length, then, thou art here!
+On the earth's lethed ear
+Thy voice of light rings out exultant, strong;
+Through dreams she stirs and murmurs at that summons dear:
+From its red leash my heart strains tamelessly,
+For Spring leaps in the womb of the young year!
+Nay, was it not brought forth before,
+And we waited, to behold it,
+Till the sun's hand should unfold it,
+What the year's young bosom bore?
+Even so; it came, nor knew we that it came,
+In the sun's eclipse.
+Yet the birds have plighted vows,
+And from the branches pipe each other's name;
+Yet the season all the boughs
+Has kindled to the finger-tips, -
+Mark yonder, how the long laburnum drips
+Its jocund spilth of fire, its honey of wild flame!
+Yea, and myself put on swift quickening,
+And answer to the presence of a sudden Spring.
+From cloud-zoned pinnacles of the secret spirit
+Song falls precipitant in dizzying streams;
+And, like a mountain-hold when war-shouts stir it,
+The mind's recessed fastness casts to light
+Its gleaming multitudes, that from every height
+Unfurl the flaming of a thousand dreams.
+Now therefore, thou who bring'st the year to birth,
+Who guid'st the bare and dabbled feet of May;
+Sweet stem to that rose Christ, who from the earth
+Suck'st our poor prayers, conveying them to Him;
+Be aidant, tender Lady, to my lay!
+Of thy two maidens somewhat must I say,
+Ere shadowy twilight lashes, drooping, dim
+Day's dreamy eyes from us;
+Ere eve has struck and furled
+The beamy-textured tent transpicuous,
+Of webbed coerule wrought and woven calms,
+Whence has paced forth the lambent-footed sun.
+And Thou disclose my flower of song upcurled,
+Who from Thy fair irradiant palms
+Scatterest all love and loveliness as alms;
+Yea, Holy One,
+Who coin'st Thyself to beauty for the world!
+
+Then, Spring's little children, your lauds do ye upraise
+To Sylvia, O Sylvia, her sweet, feat ways!
+Your lovesome labours lay away,
+And trick you out in holiday,
+For syllabling to Sylvia;
+And all you birds on branches, lave your mouths with May,
+To bear with me this burthen,
+For singing to Sylvia.
+
+
+PART THE FIRST
+
+
+The leaves dance, the leaves sing,
+The leaves dance in the breath of the Spring.
+I bid them dance,
+I bid them sing,
+For the limpid glance
+Of my ladyling;
+For the gift to the Spring of a dewier spring,
+For God's good grace of this ladyling!
+I know in the lane, by the hedgerow track,
+The long, broad grasses underneath
+Are warted with rain like a toad's knobbed back;
+But here May weareth a rainless wreath.
+In the new-sucked milk of the sun's bosom
+Is dabbled the mouth of the daisy-blossom;
+The smouldering rosebud chars through its sheath;
+The lily stirs her snowy limbs,
+Ere she swims
+Naked up through her cloven green,
+Like the wave-born Lady of Love Hellene;
+And the scattered snowdrop exquisite
+Twinkles and gleams,
+As if the showers of the sunny beams
+Were splashed from the earth in drops of light.
+Everything
+That is child of Spring
+Casts its bud or blossoming
+Upon the stream of my delight.
+
+Their voices, that scents are, now let them upraise
+To Sylvia, O Sylvia, her sweet, feat ways!
+Their lovely mother them array,
+And prank them out in holiday,
+For syllabling to Sylvia;
+And all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May,
+To bear with me this burthen,
+For singing to Sylvia.
+
+2.
+
+While thus I stood in mazes bound
+Of vernal sorcery,
+I heard a dainty dubious sound,
+As of goodly melody;
+Which first was faint as if in swound,
+Then burst so suddenly
+In warring concord all around,
+That, whence this thing might be,
+To see
+The very marrow longed in me!
+It seemed of air, it seemed of ground,
+And never any witchery
+Drawn from pipe, or reed, or string,
+Made such dulcet ravishing.
+'Twas like no earthly instrument,
+Yet had something of them all
+In its rise, and in its fall;
+As if in one sweet consort there were blent
+Those archetypes celestial
+Which our endeavouring instruments recall.
+So heavenly flutes made murmurous plain
+To heavenly viols, that again
+- Aching with music--wailed back pain;
+Regals release their notes, which rise
+Welling, like tears from heart to eyes;
+And the harp thrills with thronging sighs.
+Horns in mellow flattering
+Parley with the cithern-string:-
+Hark!--the floating, long-drawn note
+Woos the throbbing cithern-string!
+
+Their pretty, pretty prating those citherns sure upraise
+For homage unto Sylvia, her sweet, feat ways:
+Those flutes do flute their vowelled lay,
+Their lovely languid language say,
+For lisping to Sylvia;
+Those viols' lissom bowings break the heart of May,
+And harps harp their burthen,
+For singing to Sylvia.
+
+3.
+
+Now at that music and that mirth
+Rose, as 'twere, veils from earth;
+And I spied
+How beside
+Bud, bell, bloom, an elf
+Stood, or was the flower itself
+'Mid radiant air
+All the fair
+Frequence swayed in irised wavers.
+Some against the gleaming rims
+Their bosoms prest
+Of the kingcups, to the brims
+Filled with sun, and their white limbs
+Bathed in those golden lavers;
+Some on the brown, glowing breast
+Of that Indian maid, the pansy,
+(Through its tenuous veils confest
+Of swathing light), in a quaint fancy
+Tied her knot of yellow favours;
+Others dared open draw
+Snapdragon's dreadful jaw:
+Some, just sprung from out the soil,
+Sleeked and shook their rumpled fans
+Dropt with sheen
+Of moony green;
+Others, not yet extricate,
+On their hands leaned their weight,
+And writhed them free with mickle toil,
+Still folded in their veiny vans:
+And all with an unsought accord
+Sang together from the sward;
+Whence had come, and from sprites
+Yet unseen, those delights,
+As of tempered musics blent,
+Which had given me such content.
+For haply our best instrument,
+Pipe or cithern, stopped or strung,
+Mimics but some spirit tongue.
+
+Their amiable voices, I bid them upraise
+To Sylvia, O Sylvia, her sweet, feat ways;
+Their lovesome labours laid away,
+To linger out this holiday
+In syllabling to Sylvia;
+While all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May,
+To bear with me this burthen,
+For singing to Sylvia.
+
+4.
+
+Next I saw, wonder-whist,
+How from the atmosphere a mist,
+So it seemed, slow uprist;
+And, looking from those elfin swarms,
+I was 'ware
+How the air
+Was all populous with forms
+Of the Hours, floating down,
+Like Nereids through a watery town.
+Some, with languors of waved arms,
+Fluctuous oared their flexile way;
+Some were borne half resupine
+On the aerial hyaline,
+Their fluid limbs and rare array
+Flickering on the wind, as quivers
+Trailing weed in running rivers;
+And others, in far prospect seen,
+Newly loosed on this terrene,
+Shot in piercing swiftness came,
+With hair a-stream like pale and goblin flame.
+As crystelline ice in water,
+Lay in air each faint daughter;
+Inseparate (or but separate dim)
+Circumfused wind from wind-like vest,
+Wind-like vest from wind-like limb.
+But outward from each lucid breast,
+When some passion left its haunt,
+Radiate surge of colour came,
+Diffusing blush-wise, palpitant,
+Dying all the filmy frame.
+With some sweet tenderness they would
+Turn to an amber-clear and glossy gold;
+Or a fine sorrow, lovely to behold,
+Would sweep them as the sun and wind's joined flood
+Sweeps a greening-sapphire sea;
+Or they would glow enamouredly
+Illustrious sanguine, like a grape of blood;
+Or with mantling poetry
+Curd to the tincture which the opal hath,
+Like rainbows thawing in a moonbeam bath.
+So paled they, flushed they, swam they, sang melodiously.
+
+Their chanting, soon fading, let them, too, upraise
+For homage unto Sylvia, her sweet, feat ways;
+Weave with suave float their waved way,
+And colours take of holiday,
+For syllabling to Sylvia;
+And all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May,
+To bear with me this burthen,
+For singing to Sylvia.
+
+5.
+
+Then, through those translucencies,
+As grew my senses clearer clear,
+Did I see, and did I hear,
+How under an elm's canopy
+Wheeled a flight of Dryades
+Murmuring measured melody.
+Gyre in gyre their treading was,
+Wheeling with an adverse flight,
+In twi-circle o'er the grass,
+These to left, and those to right;
+All the band
+Linked by each other's hand;
+Decked in raiment stained as
+The blue-helmed aconite.
+And they advance with flutter, with grace,
+To the dance
+Moving on with a dainty pace,
+As blossoms mince it on river swells.
+Over their heads their cymbals shine,
+Round each ankle gleams a twine
+Of twinkling bells -
+Tune twirled golden from their cells.
+Every step was a tinkling sound,
+As they glanced in their dancing-ground,
+Clouds in cluster with such a sailing
+Float o'er the light of the wasting moon,
+As the cloud of their gliding veiling
+Swung in the sway of the dancing-tune.
+There was the clash of their cymbals clanging,
+Ringing of swinging bells clinging their feet;
+And the clang on wing it seemed a-hanging,
+Hovering round their dancing so fleet. -
+I stirred, I rustled more than meet;
+Whereat they broke to the left and right,
+With eddying robes like aconite
+Blue of helm;
+And I beheld to the foot o' the elm.
+
+They have not tripped those dances, betrayed to my gaze,
+To glad the heart of Sylvia, beholding of their maze;
+Through barky walls have slid away,
+And tricked them in their holiday,
+For other than for Sylvia;
+While all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May,
+And bear with me this burthen,
+For singing to Sylvia.
+
+6.
+
+Where its umbrage was enrooted,
+Sat white-suited,
+Sat green-amiced, and bare-footed,
+Spring amid her minstrelsy;
+There she sat amid her ladies,
+Where the shade is
+Sheen as Enna mead ere Hades'
+Gloom fell thwart Persephone.
+Dewy buds were interstrown
+Through her tresses hanging down,
+And her feet
+Were most sweet,
+Tinged like sea-stars, rosied brown.
+A throng of children like to flowers were sown
+About the grass beside, or clomb her knee:
+I looked who were that favoured company.
+And one there stood
+Against the beamy flood
+Of sinking day, which, pouring its abundance,
+Sublimed the illuminous and volute redundance
+Of locks that, half dissolving, floated round her face;
+As see I might
+Far off a lily-cluster poised in sun
+Dispread its gracile curls of light
+I knew what chosen child was there in place!
+I knew there might no brows be, save of one,
+With such Hesperian fulgence compassed,
+Which in her moving seemed to wheel about her head.
+
+O Spring's little children, more loud your lauds upraise,
+For this is even Sylvia, with her sweet, feat ways!
+Your lovesome labours lay away,
+And prank you out in holiday,
+For syllabling to Sylvia;
+And all you birds on branches, lave your mouths with May,
+To bear with me this burthen
+For singing to Sylvia!
+
+7.
+
+Spring, goddess, is it thou, desired long?
+And art thou girded round with this young train? -
+If ever I did do thee ease in song,
+Now of thy grace let me one meed obtain,
+And list thou to one plain.
+Oh, keep still in thy train
+After the years when others therefrom fade,
+This tiny, well-beloved maid!
+To whom the gate of my heart's fortalice,
+With all which in it is,
+And the shy self who doth therein immew him
+'Gainst what loud leagurers battailously woo him,
+I, bribed traitor to him,
+Set open for one kiss.
+
+Then suffer, Spring, thy children, that lauds they should upraise
+To Sylvia, this Sylvia, her sweet, feat ways;
+Their lovely labours lay away,
+And trick them out in holiday,
+For syllabling to Sylvia;
+And that all birds on branches lave their mouths with May,
+To bear with me this burthen,
+For singing to Sylvia.
+
+8.
+
+A kiss? for a child's kiss?
+Aye, goddess, even for this.
+Once, bright Sylviola! in days not far,
+Once--in that nightmare-time which still doth haunt
+My dreams, a grim, unbidden visitant -
+Forlorn, and faint, and stark,
+I had endured through watches of the dark
+The abashless inquisition of each star,
+Yea, was the outcast mark
+Of all those heavenly passers' scrutiny;
+Stood bound and helplessly
+For Time to shoot his barbed minutes at me;
+Suffered the trampling hoof of every hour
+In night's slow-wheeled car;
+Until the tardy dawn dragged me at length
+From under those dread wheels; and, bled of strength,
+I waited the inevitable last.
+Then there came past
+A child; like thee, a spring-flower; but a flower
+Fallen from the budded coronal of Spring,
+And through the city-streets blown withering.
+She passed,--O brave, sad, lovingest, tender thing! -
+And of her own scant pittance did she give,
+That I might eat and live:
+Then fled, a swift and trackless fugitive.
+Therefore I kissed in thee
+The heart of Childhood, so divine for me;
+And her, through what sore ways,
+And what unchildish days,
+Borne from me now, as then, a trackless fugitive.
+Therefore I kissed in thee
+Her, child! and innocency,
+And spring, and all things that have gone from me,
+And that shall never be;
+All vanished hopes, and all most hopeless bliss,
+Came with thee to my kiss.
+And ah! so long myself had strayed afar
+From child, and woman, and the boon earth's green,
+And all wherewith life's face is fair beseen;
+Journeying its journey bare
+Five suns, except of the all-kissing sun
+Unkissed of one;
+Almost I had forgot
+The healing harms,
+And whitest witchery, a-lurk in that
+Authentic cestus of two girdling arms:
+And I remembered not
+The subtle sanctities which dart
+From childish lips' unvalued precious brush,
+Nor how it makes the sudden lilies push
+Between the loosening fibres of the heart.
+Then, that thy little kiss
+Should be to me all this,
+Let workaday wisdom blink sage lids thereat;
+Which towers a flight three hedgerows high, poor bat!
+And straightway charts me out the empyreal air.
+Its chart I wing not by, its canon of worth
+Scorn not, nor reck though mine should breed it mirth:
+And howso thou and I may be disjoint,
+Yet still my falcon spirit makes her point
+Over the covert where
+Thou, sweetest quarry, hast put in from her!
+
+(Soul, hush these sad numbers, too sad to upraise
+In hymning bright Sylvia, unlearn'd in such ways!
+Our mournful moods lay we away,
+And prank our thoughts in holiday,
+For syllabling to Sylvia;
+When all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May,
+To bear with us this burthen,
+For singing to Sylvia!)
+
+9.
+
+Then thus Spring, bounteous lady, made reply:
+O lover of me and all my progeny,
+For grace to you
+I take her ever to my retinue.
+Over thy form, dear child, alas! my art
+Cannot prevail; but mine immortalising
+Touch I lay upon thy heart.
+Thy soul's fair shape
+In my unfading mantle's green I drape,
+And thy white mind shall rest by my devising
+A Gideon-fleece amid life's dusty drouth.
+If Even burst yon globed yellow grape
+(Which is the sun to mortals' sealed sight)
+Against her stained mouth;
+Or if white-handed light
+Draw thee yet dripping from the quiet pools,
+Still lucencies and cools,
+Of sleep, which all night mirror constellate dreams;
+Like to the sign which led the Israelite,
+Thy soul, through day or dark,
+A visible brightness on the chosen ark
+Of thy sweet body and pure,
+Shall it assure,
+With auspice large and tutelary gleams,
+Appointed solemn courts, and covenanted streams."
+
+Cease, Spring's little children, now cease your lauds to raise;
+That dream is past, and Sylvia, with her sweet, feat ways.
+Our loved labour, laid away,
+Is smoothly ended; said our say,
+Our syllable to Sylvia.
+Make sweet, you birds on branches! make sweet your mouths with
+May!
+But borne is this burthen,
+Sung unto Sylvia.
+
+
+
+PART THE SECOND
+
+
+
+And now, thou elder nursling of the nest;
+Ere all the intertangled west
+Be one magnificence
+Of multitudinous blossoms that o'errun
+The flaming brazen bowl o' the burnished sun
+Which they do flower from,
+How shall I 'stablish THY memorial?
+Nay, how or with what countenance shall I come
+To plead in my defence
+For loving thee at all?
+I who can scarcely speak my fellows' speech,
+Love their love, or mine own love to them teach;
+A bastard barred from their inheritance,
+Who seem, in this dim shape's uneasy nook,
+Some sun-flower's spirit which by luckless chance
+Has mournfully its tenement mistook;
+When it were better in its right abode,
+Heartless and happy lackeying its god.
+How com'st thou, little tender thing of white,
+Whose very touch full scantly me beseems,
+How com'st thou resting on my vaporous dreams,
+Kindling a wraith there of earth's vernal green?
+Even so as I have seen,
+In night's aerial sea with no wind blust'rous,
+A ribbed tract of cloudy malachite
+Curve a shored crescent wide;
+And on its slope marge shelving to the night
+The stranded moon lay quivering like a lustrous
+Medusa newly washed up from the tide,
+Lay in an oozy pool of its own deliquious light.
+
+Yet hear how my excuses may prevail,
+Nor, tender white orb, be thou opposite!
+Life and life's beauty only hold their revels
+In the abysmal ocean's luminous levels.
+There, like the phantasms of a poet pale,
+The exquisite marvels sail:
+Clarified silver; greens and azures frail
+As if the colours sighed themselves away,
+And blent in supersubtile interplay
+As if they swooned into each other's arms;
+Repured vermilion,
+Like ear-tips 'gainst the sun;
+And beings that, under night's swart pinion,
+Make every wave upon the harbour-bars
+A beaten yolk of stars.
+But where day's glance turns baffled from the deeps,
+Die out those lovely swarms;
+And in the immense profound no creature glides or creeps.
+
+Love and love's beauty only hold their revels
+In life's familiar, penetrable levels:
+What of its ocean-floor?
+I dwell there evermore.
+From almost earliest youth
+I raised the lids o' the truth,
+And forced her bend on me her shrinking sight;
+Ever I knew me Beauty's eremite,
+In antre of this lowly body set.
+Girt with a thirsty solitude of soul.
+Nathless I not forget
+How I have, even as the anchorite,
+I too, imperishing essences that console.
+Under my ruined passions, fallen and sere,
+The wild dreams stir like little radiant girls,
+Whom in the moulted plumage of the year
+Their comrades sweet have buried to the curls.
+Yet, though their dedicated amorist,
+How often do I bid my visions hist,
+Deaf to them, pleading all their piteous fills;
+Who weep, as weep the maidens of the mist
+Clinging the necks of the unheeding hills:
+And their tears wash them lovelier than before,
+That from grief's self our sad delight grows more,
+Fair are the soul's uncrisped calms, indeed,
+Endiapered with many a spiritual form
+Of blosmy-tinctured weed;
+But scarce itself is conscious of the store
+Suckled by it, and only after storm
+Casts up its loosened thoughts upon the shore.
+To this end my deeps are stirred;
+And I deem well why life unshared
+Was ordained me of yore.
+In pairing-time, we know, the bird
+Kindles to its deepmost splendour,
+And the tender
+Voice is tenderest in its throat;
+Were its love, for ever nigh it,
+Never by it,
+It might keep a vernal note,
+The crocean and amethystine
+In their pristine
+Lustre linger on its coat.
+Therefore must my song-bower lone be,
+That my tone be
+Fresh with dewy pain alway;
+She, who scorns my dearest care ta'en,
+An uncertain
+Shadow of the sprite of May.
+And is my song sweet, as they say?
+Tis sweet for one whose voice has no reply,
+Save silence's sad cry:
+And are its plumes a burning bright array?
+They burn for an unincarnated eye
+A bubble, charioteered by the inward breath
+Which, ardorous for its own invisible lure,
+Urges me glittering to aerial death,
+I am rapt towards that bodiless paramour;
+Blindly the uncomprehended tyranny
+Obeying of my heart's impetuous might.
+The earth and all its planetary kin,
+Starry buds tangled in the whirling hair
+That flames round the Phoebean wassailer,
+Speed no more ignorant, more predestined flight,
+Than I, HER viewless tresses netted in.
+As some most beautiful one, with lovely taunting,
+Her eyes of guileless guile o'ercanopies,
+Does her hid visage bow,
+And miserly your covetous gaze allow,
+By inchmeal, coy degrees,
+Saying--"Can you see me now?"
+Yet from the mouth's reflex you guess the wanting
+Smile of the coming eyes
+In all their upturned grievous witcheries,
+Before that sunbreak rise;
+And each still hidden feature view within
+Your mind, as eager scrutinies detail
+The moon's young rondure through the shamefast veil
+Drawn to her gleaming chin:
+After this wise,
+From the enticing smile of earth and skies
+I dream my unknown Fair's refused gaze;
+And guessingly her love's close traits devise,
+Which she with subtile coquetries
+Through little human glimpses slow displays,
+Cozening my mateless days
+By sick, intolerable delays.
+And so I keep mine uncompanioned ways;
+And so my touch, to golden poesies
+Turning love's bread, is bought at hunger's price.
+So,--in the inextinguishable wars
+Which roll song's Orient on the sullen night
+Whose ragged banners in their own despite
+Take on the tinges of the hated light, -
+So Sultan Phoebus has his Janizars.
+But if mine unappeased cicatrices
+Might get them lawful ease;
+Were any gentle passion hallowed me,
+Who must none other breath of passion feel
+Save such as winnows to the fledged heel
+The tremulous Paradisal plumages;
+The conscious sacramental trees
+Which ever be
+Shaken celestially,
+Consentient with enamoured wings, might know my love for thee.
+Yet is there more, whereat none guesseth, love!
+Upon the ending of my deadly night
+(Whereof thou hast not the surmise, and slight
+Is all that any mortal knows thereof),
+Thou wert to me that earnest of day's light,
+When, like the back of a gold-mailed saurian
+Heaving its slow length from Nilotic slime,
+The first long gleaming fissure runs Aurorian
+Athwart the yet dun firmament of prime.
+Stretched on the margin of the cruel sea
+Whence they had rescued me,
+With faint and painful pulses was I lying;
+Not yet discerning well
+If I had 'scaped, or were an icicle,
+Whose thawing is its dying.
+Like one who sweats before a despot's gate,
+Summoned by some presaging scroll of fate,
+And knows not whether kiss or dagger wait;
+And all so sickened is his countenance,
+The courtiers buzz, "Lo, doomed!" and look at him askance:-
+At Fate's dread portal then
+Even so stood I, I ken,
+Even so stood I, between a joy and fear,
+And said to mine own heart, "Now if the end be here!"
+
+They say, Earth's beauty seems completest
+To them that on their death-beds rest;
+Gentle lady! she smiles sweetest
+Just ere she clasp us to her breast.
+And I,--now MY Earth's countenance grew bright,
+Did she but smile me towards that nuptial-night?
+But whileas on such dubious bed I lay,
+One unforgotten day,
+As a sick child waking sees
+Wide-eyed daisies
+Gazing on it from its hand,
+Slipped there for its dear amazes;
+So between thy father's knees
+I saw THEE stand,
+And through my hazes
+Of pain and fear thine eyes' young wonder shone.
+Then, as flies scatter from a carrion,
+Or rooks in spreading gyres like broken smoke
+Wheel, when some sound their quietude has broke,
+Fled, at thy countenance, all that doubting spawn:
+The heart which I had questioned spoke,
+A cry impetuous from its depths was drawn, -
+"I take the omen of this face of dawn!"
+And with the omen to my heart cam'st thou.
+Even with a spray of tears
+That one light draft was fixed there for the years.
+
+And now? -
+The hours I tread ooze memories of thee, Sweet!
+Beneath my casual feet.
+With rainfall as the lea,
+The day is drenched with thee;
+In little exquisite surprises
+Bubbling deliciousness of thee arises
+From sudden places,
+Under the common traces
+Of my most lethargied and customed paces.
+
+As an Arab journeyeth
+Through a sand of Ayaman,
+Lean Thirst, lolling its cracked tongue,
+Lagging by his side along;
+And a rusty-winged Death
+Grating its low flight before,
+Casting ribbed shadows o'er
+The blank desert, blank and tan:
+He lifts by hap toward where the morning's roots are
+His weary stare, -
+Sees, although they plashless mutes are,
+Set in a silver air
+Fountains of gelid shoots are,
+Making the daylight fairest fair;
+Sees the palm and tamarind
+Tangle the tresses of a phantom wind; -
+A sight like innocence when one has sinned!
+A green and maiden freshness smiling there,
+While with unblinking glare
+The tawny-hided desert crouches watching her.
+
+'Tis a vision:
+Yet the greeneries Elysian
+He has known in tracts afar;
+Thus the enamouring fountains flow,
+Those the very palms that grow,
+By rare-gummed Sava, or Herbalimar. -
+
+Such a watered dream has tarried
+Trembling on my desert arid;
+Even so
+Its lovely gleamings
+Seemings show
+Of things not seemings;
+And I gaze,
+Knowing that, beyond my ways,
+Verily
+All these ARE, for these are she.
+Eve no gentlier lays her cooling cheek
+On the burning brow of the sick earth,
+Sick with death, and sick with birth,
+Aeon to aeon, in secular fever twirled,
+Than thy shadow soothes this weak
+And distempered being of mine.
+In all I work, my hand includeth thine;
+Thou rushest down in every stream
+Whose passion frets my spirit's deepening gorge;
+Unhood'st mine eyas-heart, and fliest my dream;
+Thou swing'st the hammers of my forge;
+As the innocent moon, that nothing does but shine,
+Moves all the labouring surges of the world.
+Pierce where thou wilt the springing thought in me,
+And there thy pictured countenance lies enfurled,
+As in the cut fern lies the imaged tree.
+This poor song that sings of thee,
+This fragile song, is but a curled
+Shell outgathered from thy sea,
+And murmurous still of its nativity.
+Princess of Smiles!
+Sorceress of most unlawful-lawful wiles!
+Cunning pit for gazers' senses,
+Overstrewn with innocences!
+Purities gleam white like statues
+In the fair lakes of thine eyes,
+And I watch the sparkles that use
+There to rise,
+Knowing these
+Are bubbles from the calyces
+Of the lovely thoughts that breathe
+Paving, like water-flowers, thy spirit's floor beneath.
+
+O thou most dear!
+Who art thy sex's complex harmony
+God-set more facilely;
+To thee may love draw near
+Without one blame or fear,
+Unchidden save by his humility:
+Thou Perseus' Shield! wherein I view secure
+The mirrored Woman's fateful-fair allure!
+Whom Heaven still leaves a twofold dignity,
+As girlhood gentle, and as boyhood free;
+With whom no most diaphanous webs enwind
+The bared limbs of the rebukeless mind.
+Wild Dryad! all unconscious of thy tree,
+With which indissolubly
+The tyrannous time shall one day make thee whole;
+Whose frank arms pass unfretted through its bole:
+Who wear'st thy femineity
+Light as entrailed blossoms, that shalt find
+It erelong silver shackles unto thee.
+Thou whose young sex is yet but in thy soul; -
+As hoarded in the vine
+Hang the gold skins of undelirious wine,
+As air sleeps, till it toss its limbs in breeze:-
+In whom the mystery which lures and sunders,
+Grapples and thrusts apart; endears, estranges;
+- The dragon to its own Hesperides -
+Is gated under slow-revolving changes,
+Manifold doors of heavy-hinged years.
+So once, ere Heaven's eyes were filled with wonders
+To see Laughter rise from Tears,
+Lay in beauty not yet mighty,
+Conched in translucencies,
+The antenatal Aphrodite,
+Caved magically under magic seas;
+Caved dreamlessly beneath the dreamful seas.
+
+"Whose sex is in thy soul!"
+What think we of thy soul?
+Which has no parts, and cannot grow,
+Unfurled not from an embryo;
+Born of full stature, lineal to control;
+And yet a pigmy's yoke must undergo.
+Yet must keep pace and tarry, patient, kind,
+With its unwilling scholar, the dull, tardy mind;
+Must be obsequious to the body's powers,
+Whose low hands mete its paths, set ope and close its ways;
+Must do obeisance to the days,
+And wait the little pleasure of the hours;
+Yea, ripe for kingship, yet must be
+Captive in statuted minority!
+So is all power fulfilled, as soul in thee.
+So still the ruler by the ruled takes rule,
+And wisdom weaves itself i' the loom o' the fool.
+The splendent sun no splendour can display,
+Till on gross things he dash his broken ray,
+From cloud and tree and flower re-tossed in prismy spray.
+Did not obstruction's vessel hem it in,
+Force were not force, would spill itself in vain
+We know the Titan by his champed chain.
+Stay is heat's cradle, it is rocked therein,
+And by check's hand is burnished into light;
+If hate were none, would love burn lowlier bright?
+God's Fair were guessed scarce but for opposite sin;
+Yea, and His Mercy, I do think it well,
+Is flashed back from the brazen gates of Hell.
+The heavens decree
+All power fulfil itself as soul in thee.
+For supreme Spirit subject was to clay,
+And Law from its own servants learned a law,
+And Light besought a lamp unto its way,
+And Awe was reined in awe,
+At one small house of Nazareth;
+And Golgotha
+Saw Breath to breathlessness resign its breath,
+And Life do homage for its crown to death.
+
+So is all power, as soul in thee increased!
+But, knowing this, in knowledge's despite
+I fret against the law severe that stains
+Thy spirit with eclipse;
+When--as a nymph's carven head sweet water drips,
+For others oozing so the cool delight
+Which cannot steep her stiffened mouth of stone -
+Thy nescient lips repeat maternal strains.
+Memnonian lips!
+Smitten with singing from thy mother's east,
+And murmurous with music not their own:
+Nay, the lips flexile, while the mind alone
+A passionless statue stands.
+Oh, pardon, innocent one!
+Pardon at thine unconscious hands!
+"Murmurous with music not their own," I say?
+And in that saying how do I missay,
+When from the common sands
+Of poorest common speech of common day
+Thine accents sift the golden musics out!
+And ah, we poets, I misdoubt,
+Are little more than thou!
+We speak a lesson taught we know not how,
+And what it is that from us flows
+The hearer better than the utterer knows.
+
+Thou canst foreshape thy word;
+The poet is not lord
+Of the next syllable may come
+With the returning pendulum;
+And what he plans to-day in song,
+To-morrow sings it in another tongue.
+Where the last leaf fell from his bough,
+He knows not if a leaf shall grow,
+Where he sows he doth not reap,
+He reapeth where he did not sow;
+He sleeps, and dreams forsake his sleep
+To meet him on his waking way.
+Vision will mate him not by law and vow:
+Disguised in life's most hodden-grey,
+By the most beaten road of everyday
+She waits him, unsuspected and unknown.
+The hardest pang whereon
+He lays his mutinous head may be a Jacob's stone.
+In the most iron crag his foot can tread
+A Dream may strew her bed,
+And suddenly his limbs entwine,
+And draw him down through rock as sea-nymphs might through brine.
+But, unlike those feigned temptress-ladies who
+In guerdon of a night the lover slew,
+When the embrace has failed, the rapture fled,
+Not he, not he, the wild sweet witch is dead!
+And, though he cherisheth
+The babe most strangely born from out her death,
+Some tender trick of her it hath, maybe, -
+It is not she!
+
+Yet, even as the air is rumorous of fray
+Before the first shafts of the sun's onslaught
+From gloom's black harness splinter,
+And Summer move on Winter
+With the trumpet of the March, and the pennon of the May;
+As gesture outstrips thought;
+So, haply, toyer with ethereal strings!
+Are thy blind repetitions of high things
+The murmurous gnats whose aimless hoverings
+Reveal song's summer in the air;
+The outstretched hand, which cannot thought declare,
+Yet is thought's harbinger.
+These strains the way for thine own strains prepare;
+We feel the music moist upon this breeze,
+And hope the congregating poesies.
+Sundered yet by thee from us
+Wait, with wild eyes luminous,
+All thy winged things that are to be;
+They flit against thee, Gate of Ivory!
+They clamour on the portress Destiny, -
+"Set her wide, so we may issue through!
+Our vans are quick for that they have to do
+Suffer still your young desire;
+Your plumes but bicker at the tips with fire,
+Tarry their kindling; they will beat the higher.
+And thou, bright girl, not long shalt thou repeat
+Idly the music from thy mother caught;
+Not vainly has she wrought,
+Not vainly from the cloudward-jetting turret
+Of her aerial mind, for thy weak feet,
+Let down the silken ladder of her thought.
+She bare thee with a double pain,
+Of the body and the spirit;
+Thou thy fleshly weeds hast ta'en,
+Thy diviner weeds inherit!
+The precious streams which through thy 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 press of fantasies,
+Drop safely down the time,
+Leaving mine isled self behind it far
+Soon to be sunken in the abysm of seas,
+(As down the years the splendour voyages
+From some long ruined and night-submerged star),
+And in thy subject sovereign's havening heart
+Anchor the freightage of its virgin ore;
+Adding its wasteful more
+To his own overflowing treasury.
+So through his river mine shall reach thy sea,
+Bearing its confluent part;
+In his pulse mine shall thrill;
+And the quick heart shall quicken from the heart that's still.
+
+Ah! help, my Daemon that hast served me well!
+Not at this last, oh, do not me disgrace!
+I faint, I sicken, darkens all my sight,
+As, poised upon this unprevisioned height,
+I lift into its place
+The utmost aery traceried pinnacle.
+So; it is builded, the high tenement,
+- God grant--to mine intent!
+Most like a palace of the Occident,
+Up-thrusting, toppling maze on maze,
+Its mounded blaze,
+And washed by the sunset's rosy waves,
+Whose sea drinks rarer hue from those rare walls it laves.
+Yet wail, my spirits, wail!
+So few therein to enter shall prevail!
+Scarce fewer could win way, if their desire
+A dragon baulked, with involuted spire,
+And writhen snout spattered with yeasty fire.
+For at the elfin portal hangs a horn
+Which none can wind aright
+Save the appointed knight
+Whose lids the fay-wings brushed when he was born.
+All others stray forlorn,
+Or glimpsing, through the blazoned windows scrolled
+Receding labyrinths lessening tortuously
+In half obscurity;
+With mystic images, inhuman, cold,
+That flameless torches hold.
+But who can wind that horn of might
+(The horn of dead Heliades) aright, -
+Straight
+Open for him shall roll the conscious gate;
+And light leap up from all the torches there,
+And life leap up in every torchbearer,
+And the stone faces kindle in the glow,
+And into the blank eyes the irids grow,
+And through the dawning irids ambushed meanings show.
+Illumined this wise on,
+He threads securely the far intricacies,
+With brede from Heaven's wrought vesture overstrewn;
+Swift Tellus' purfled tunic, girt upon
+With the blown chlamys of her fluttering seas;
+And the freaked kirtle of the pearled moon:
+Until he gain the structure's core, where stands -
+A toil of magic hands -
+The unbodied spirit of the sorcerer,
+Most strangely rare,
+As is a vision remembered in the noon;
+Unbodied, yet to mortal seeing clear,
+Like sighs exhaled in eager atmosphere.
+From human haps and mutabilities
+It rests exempt, beneath the edifice
+To which itself gave rise;
+Sustaining centre to the bubble of stone
+Which, breathed from it, exists by it alone.
+Yea, ere Saturnian earth her child consumes,
+And I lie down with outworn ossuaries,
+Ere death's grim tongue anticipates the tomb's
+Siste viator, in this storied urn
+My living heart is laid to throb and burn,
+Till end be ended, and till ceasing cease.
+
+And thou by whom this strain hath parentage;
+Wantoner between the yet untreacherous claws
+Of newly-whelped existence! ere he pause,
+What gift to thee can yield the archimage?
+For coming seasons' frets
+What aids, what amulets,
+What softenings, or what brightenings?
+As Thunder writhes the lash of his long lightnings
+About the growling heads of the brute main
+Foaming at mouth, until it wallow again
+In the scooped oozes of its bed of pain;
+So all the gnashing jaws, the leaping heads
+Of hungry menaces, and of ravening dreads,
+Of pangs
+Twitch-lipped, with quivering nostrils and immitigate fangs,
+I scourge beneath the torment of my charms
+That their repentless nature fear to work thee harms.
+And as yon Apollonian harp-player,
+Yon wandering psalterist of the sky,
+With flickering strings which scatter melody,
+The silver-stoled damsels of the sea,
+Or lake, or fount, or stream,
+Enchants from their ancestral heaven of waters
+To Naiad it through the unfrothing air;
+My song enchants so out of undulous dream
+The glimmering shapes of its dim-tressed daughters,
+And missions each to be thy minister.
+Saying; "O ye,
+The organ-stops of being's harmony;
+The blushes on existence's pale face,
+Lending it sudden grace;
+Without whom we should but guess Heaven's worth
+By blank negations of this sordid earth,
+(So haply to the blind may light
+Be but gloom's undetermined opposite);
+Ye who are thus as the refracting air
+Whereby we see Heaven's sun before it rise
+Above the dull line of our mortal skies;
+As breathing on the strained ear that sighs
+From comrades viewless unto strained eyes,
+Soothing our terrors in the lampless night;
+Ye who can make this world where all is deeming
+What world ye list, being arbiters of seeming;
+Attend upon her ways, benignant powers!
+Unroll ye life a carpet for her feet,
+And cast ye down before them blossomy hours,
+Until her going shall be clogged with sweet!
+All dear emotions whose new-bathed hair,
+Still streaming from the soul, in love's warm air
+Smokes with a mist of tender fantasies;
+All these,
+And all the heart's wild growths which, swiftly bright,
+Spring up the crimson agarics of a night,
+No pain in withering, yet a joy arisen;
+And all thin shapes more exquisitely rare,
+More subtly fair,
+Than these weak ministering words have spell to prison
+Within the magic circle of this rhyme;
+And all the fays who in our creedless clime
+Have sadly ceased
+Bearing to other children childhood's proper feast;
+Whose robes are fluent crystal, crocus-hued,
+Whose wings are wind a-fire, whose mantles wrought
+From spray that falling rainbows shake
+These, ye familiars to my wizard thought,
+Make things of journal custom unto her;
+With lucent feet imbrued,
+If young Day tread, a 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!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Sister Songs, by Francis Thompson
+
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