Part 3 (1/2)

And He will smile, that children's tongue Has not changed since Thou wast young!

From ”Sister Songs”

A CHILD'S KISS

Where its umbrage[A] 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 gra.s.s 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-cl.u.s.ter 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 compa.s.sed, 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!_

Spring, G.o.ddess, 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 leaguerers battailously woo him, I, bribed traitor to him, Set open for one kiss.

A kiss? for a child's kiss?

Aye, G.o.ddess, 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 pa.s.sers' 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 pa.s.sed,--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 sanct.i.ties 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 me 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!_

[A] The umbrage of an elm-tree, described earlier in the _Sister Songs_ from which this and the six succeeding poems are detached.

POET AND ANCHORITE

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.

Natheless I not forget How I have, even as the anchorite, I too, imperis.h.i.+ng essences that console.

Under my ruined pa.s.sions, 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.