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."
