Volume I Part 24 (1/2)
She looked up quickly to the sky And spake: ”The moon's regality Will hear no praise; She is as I.
”She is in heaven, and I on earth; This is my kingdom: I come forth To crown all poets to their worth.”
He brake in with a voice that mourned; ”To their worth, lady? They are scorned By men they sing for, till inurned.
”To their worth? Beauty in the mind Leaves the hearth cold, and love-refined Ambitions make the world unkind.
”The boor who ploughs the daisy down, The chief whose mortgage of renown, Fixed upon graves, has bought a crown--
”Both these are happier, more approved Than poets!--why should I be moved In saying, both are more beloved?”
”The south can judge not of the north,”
She resumed calmly; ”I come forth To crown all poets to their worth.
”Yea, verily, to anoint them all With blessed oils which surely shall Smell sweeter as the ages fall.”
”As sweet,” the poet said, and rung A low sad laugh, ”as flowers are, sprung Out of their graves when they die young;
”As sweet as window-eglantine, Some bough of which, as they decline, The hired nurse gathers at their sign:
”As sweet, in short, as perfumed shroud Which the gay Roman maidens sewed For English Keats, singing aloud.”
The lady answered, ”Yea, as sweet!
The things thou namest being complete In fragrance, as I measure it.
”Since sweet the death-clothes and the knell Of him who having lived, dies well; And wholly sweet the asphodel
”Stirred softly by that foot of his, When he treads brave on all that is, Into the world of souls, from this.
”Since sweet the tears, dropped at the door Of tearless Death, and even before: Sweet, consecrated evermore.
”What, dost thou judge it a strange thing That poets, crowned for vanquis.h.i.+ng, Should bear some dust from out the ring?
”Come on with me, come on with me, And learn in coming: let me free Thy spirit into verity.”
She ceased: her palfrey's paces sent No separate noises as she went; 'Twas a bee's hum, a little spent.
And while the poet seemed to tread Along the drowsy noise so made, The forest heaved up overhead
Its billowy foliage through the air, And the calm stars did far and spare O'erswim the ma.s.ses everywhere
Save when the overtopping pines Did bar their tremulous light with lines All fixed and black. Now the moon s.h.i.+nes
A broader glory. You may see The trees grow rarer presently; The air blows up more fresh and free:
Until they come from dark to light, And from the forest to the sight Of the large heaven-heart, bare with night,
A fiery throb in every star, Those burning arteries that are The conduits of G.o.d's life afar,--
A wild brown moorland underneath, And four pools breaking up the heath With white low gleamings, blank as death.