Volume Iii Part 19 (1/2)

And stabs of her delicious note, That is as heavenly light to hearing, heard Through shelter leaves, the laughter from her throat, We answer as the midnight's morning's bird.

She laughs, she wakens gleeful cries; In her delicious laughter part revealed; Yet mother is she more of moans and sighs, For longings unappeased and wounds unhealed.

Yet would she bless, it is her task to bless: Yon folded couples, pa.s.sing under shade, Are her rich harvest; bidden caress, caress, Consume the fruit in bloom; not disobeyed.

We dolorous complainers had a dream, Wrought on the vacant air from inner fire, We saw stand bare of her celestial beam The glorious G.o.ddess, and we dared desire.

Thereat are shown reproachful eyes, and lips Of upward curl to meanings half obscure; And glancing where a wood-nymph lightly skips She nods: at once that creature wears her lure.

Blush of our being between birth and death: Sob of our ripened blood for its next breath: Her wily semblance nought of her denies; Seems it the G.o.ddess runs, the G.o.ddess hies, The generous G.o.ddess yields. And she can arm Her dwarfed and twisted with her secret charm; Benevolent as Earth to feed her own.

Fully shall they be fed, if they beseech.

But scorn she has for them that walk alone; Blanched men, starved women, whom no arts can pleach.

The men as chief of criminals she disdains, And holds the reason in perceptive thought.

More pitiable, like rivers lacking rains, Kissing cold stones, the women shrink for drought.

Those faceless discords, out of nature strayed, Rank of the putrefaction ere decayed, In impious singles bear the th.o.r.n.y wreaths: Their lives are where harmonious Pleasure breathes For couples crowned with flowers that burn in dew.

Comes there a tremor of night's forest horn Across her garden from the insaner crew, She darkens to malignity of scorn.

A s.h.i.+ver courses through her garden-grounds: Grunt of the tusky boar, the baying hounds, The hunter's shouts, are heard afar, and bring Dead on her heart her crimsoned flower of Spring.

These, the irreverent of Life's design, Division between natural and divine Would cast; these vaunting barrenness for best, In veins of gathered strength Life's tide arrest; And these because the roses flood their cheeks, Vow them in nature wise as when Love speaks.

With them is war; and well the G.o.ddess knows What undermines the race who mount the rose; How the ripe moment, lodged in slumberous hours, Enkindled by persuasion overpowers: Why weak as are her frailer trailing weeds, The strong when Beauty gleams o'er Nature's needs, And timely guile unguarded finds them lie.

They who her sway withstand a sea defy, At every point of juncture must be proof; Nor look for mercy from the incessant surge Her forces mixed of craft and pa.s.sion urge For the one whelming wave to spring aloof.

She, tenderness, is pitiless to them Resisting in her G.o.dhead nature's truth.

No flower their face shall be, but writhen stem; Their youth a frost, their age the dirge for youth.

These miserably disinclined, The lamentably unembraced, Insult the Pleasures Earth designed To people and beflower the waste.

Wherefore the Pleasures pa.s.s them by: For death they live, in life they die.

Her head the G.o.ddess from them turns, As from grey mounds of ashes in bronze urns.

She views her quivering couples unconsoled, And of her beauty mirror they become, Like orchard blossoms, apple, pear and plum, Free of the cloud, beneath the flood of gold.

Crowned with wreaths that burn in dew, Her couples whirl, sun-satiated, Athirst for shade, they sigh, they wed, They play the music made of two: Oldest of earth, earth's youngest till earth's end: Cunninger than the numbered strings, For melodies, for harmonies, For mastered discords, and the things Not vocable, whose mysteries Are inmost Love's, Life's reach of Life extend.

Is it an anguish overflowing shame And the tongue's pudency confides to her, With eyes of embers, breath of incense myrrh, The woman's marrow in some dear youth's name, Then is the G.o.ddess tenderness Maternal, and she has a sister's tones Benign to soothe intemperate distress, Divide despair from hope, and sighs from moans.

Her gentleness imparts exhaling ease To those of her milk-bearer votaries As warm of bosom-earth as she; of the source Direct; erratic but in heart's excess; Being mortal and ill-matched for Love's great force; Like green leaves caught with flames by his impress.

And pray they under skies less overcast, That swiftly may her star of eve descend, Her l.u.s.trous morning star fly not too fast, To lengthen blissful night will she befriend.

Unfailing her reply to woman's voice In supplication instant. Is it man's, She hears, approves his words, her garden scans, And him: the flowers are various, he has choice.

Perchance his wound is deep; she listens long; Enjoys what music fills the plaintive song; And marks how he, who would be hawk at poise Above the bird, his plaintive song enjoys.

She reads him when his humbled manhood weeps To her invoked: distraction is implored.

A smile, and he is up on G.o.dlike leaps Above, with his bright G.o.ddess owned the adored.

His tales of her declare she condescends; Can share his fires, not always goads and rends: Moreover, quits a throne, and must enclose A queenlier gem than woman's wayside rose.

She bends, he quickens; she breathes low, he springs Enraptured; low she laughs, his woes disperse; Aloud she laughs and sweeps his varied strings.

'Tis taught him how for touch of mournful verse Rarely the music made of two ascends, And Beauty's Queen some other way is won.

Or it may solve the riddle, that she lends Herself to all, and yields herself to none, Save heavenliest: though claims by men are raised In hot a.s.surance under shade of doubt: And numerous are the images bepraised As Beauty's Queen, should pa.s.sion head the rout.

Be sure the ruddy hue is Love's: to woo Love's Fountain we must mount the ruddy hue.

That is her garden's precept, seen where s.h.i.+nes Her blood-flower, and its unsought neighbour pines.

Daughter of light, the joyful light, She bids her couples face full East, Reflecting radiance, even when from her feast Their outstretched arms brown deserts disunite, The lion-haunted thickets hold apart.

In love the ruddy hue declares great heart; High confidence in her whose aid is lent To lovers lifting the tuned instrument, Not one of rippled strings and funeral tone.