Part 4 (2/2)
_Now pa.s.s your ways, fair bird, and pa.s.s your ways, If you will; I have you through the days.
And 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!_
Love in Dian's Lap
BEFORE HER PORTRAIT IN YOUTH
As lovers, banished from their lady's face, And hopeless of her grace, Fas.h.i.+on a ghostly sweetness in its place, Fondly adore Some stealth-won cast attire she wore, A kerchief, or a glove: And at the lover's beck Into the glove there fleets the hand, Or at impetuous command Up from the kerchief floats the virgin neck:
So I, in very lowlihead of love,-- Too shyly reverencing To let one thought's light footfall smooth Tread near the living, consecrated thing,-- Treasure me thy cast youth.
This outworn vesture, tenantless of thee, Hath yet my knee, For that, with show and semblance fair Of the past Her Who once the beautiful, discarded raiment bare, It cheateth me.
As gale to gale drifts breath Of blossoms' death, So dropping down the years from hour to hour This dead youth's scent is wafted me to-day: I sit, and from the fragrance dream the flower.
So, then, she looked (I say); And so her front sunk down Heavy beneath the poet's iron crown: On her mouth museful sweet-- (Even as the twin lips meet) Did thought and sadness greet: Sighs In those mournful eyes So put on visibilities; As viewless ether turns, in deep on deep, to dyes.
Thus, long ago, She kept her meditative paces slow Through maiden meads, with waved shadow and gleam Of locks half-lifted on the winds of dream, Till love up-caught her to his chariot's glow.
Yet, voluntary, happier Proserpine, This drooping flower of youth thou lettest fall I, faring in the c.o.c.kshut-light, astray, Find on my 'lated way, And stoop, and gather for memorial, And lay it on my bosom, and make it mine.
To this, the all of love the stars allow me, I dedicate and vow me.
I reach back through the days A trothed hand to the dead the last trump shall not raise.
The water-wraith that cries From those eternal sorrows of thy pictured eyes Entwines and draws me down their soundless intricacies!
TO A POET BREAKING SILENCE
Too wearily had we and song Been left to look and left to long, Yea, song and we to long and look, Since thine acquainted feet forsook The mountain where the Muses hymn For Sinai and the Seraphim.
Now in both the mountains' s.h.i.+ne Dress thy countenance, twice divine!
From Moses and the Muses draw The Tables of thy double Law!
His rod-born fount and Castaly Let the one rock bring forth for thee, Renewing so from either spring The songs which both thy countries sing: Or we shall fear lest, heavened thus long, Thou should'st forget thy native song, And mar thy mortal melodies With broken stammer of the skies.
Ah! let the sweet birds of the Lord With earth's waters make accord; Teach how the crucifix may be Carven from the laurel-tree, Fruit of the Hesperides Burnish take on Eden-trees, The Muses' sacred grove be wet With the red dew of Olivet, And Sappho lay her burning brows In white Cecilia's lap of snows!
I think thy girlhood's watchers must Have took thy folded songs on trust, And felt them, as one feels the stir Of still lightnings in the hair, When conscious hush expects the cloud To speak the golden secret loud Which tacit air is privy to; Flasked in the grape the wine they knew, Ere thy poet-mouth was able For its first young starry babble.
Keep'st thou not yet that subtle grace?
Yea, in this silent inters.p.a.ce, G.o.d sets His poems in thy face!
The loom which mortal verse affords, Out of weak and mortal words, Wovest thou thy singing-weed in, To a rune of thy far Eden.
Vain are all disguises! Ah, Heavenly _incognita_!
Thy mien bewrayeth through that wrong The great Uranian House of Song!
As the vintages of earth Taste of the sun that riped their birth, We know what never-cadent Sun Thy lamped cl.u.s.ters throbbed upon, What plumed feet the winepress trod; Thy wine is flavorous of G.o.d.
Whatever singing-robe thou wear Has the paradisal air; And some gold feather it has kept Shows what Floor it lately swept.
A CARRIER SONG
Since you have waned from us, Fairest of women, I am a darkened cage Song cannot hymn in.
My songs have followed you, Like birds the summer; Ah! bring them back to me, Swiftly, dear comer!
_Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals!_
<script>