Upon the ending of my deadly night (Whereof thou hast not the surmise, and slight Is all that any mortal knows thereof), Thou wert to me that earnest of day's light, When, like the back of a gold-mailed saurian Heaving its slow length from Nilotic slime, The first long gleaming fissure runs Aurorian Athwart the yet dun firmament of prime.
Stretched on the margin of the cruel sea Whence they had rescued me, With faint and painful pulses was I lying;Not yet discerning well If I had 'scaped, or were an icicle, Whose thawing is its dying.
Like one who sweats before a despot's gate, Summoned by some presaging scroll of fate, And knows not whether kiss or dagger wait;And all so sickened is his countenance, The courtiers buzz, "Lo, doomed!" and look at him askance:-At Fate's dread portal then Even so stood I, I ken, Even so stood I, between a joy and fear, And said to mine own heart, "Now if the end be here!"They say, Earth's beauty seems completest To them that on their death-beds rest;Gentle lady! she smiles sweetest Just ere she clasp us to her breast.
And I,--now MY Earth's countenance grew bright, Did she but smile me towards that nuptial-night?
But whileas on such dubious bed I lay, One unforgotten day, As a sick child waking sees Wide-eyed daisies Gazing on it from its hand, Slipped there for its dear amazes;So between thy father's knees I saw THEE stand, And through my hazes Of pain and fear thine eyes' young wonder shone.
Then, as flies scatter from a carrion, Or rooks in spreading gyres like broken smoke Wheel, when some sound their quietude has broke, Fled, at thy countenance, all that doubting spawn:
The heart which I had questioned spoke, A cry impetuous from its depths was drawn, -"I take the omen of this face of dawn!"
And with the omen to my heart cam'st thou.
Even with a spray of tears That one light draft was fixed there for the years.
And now? -
The hours I tread ooze memories of thee, Sweet!
Beneath my casual feet.
With rainfall as the lea, The day is drenched with thee;In little exquisite surprises Bubbling deliciousness of thee arises From sudden places, Under the common traces Of my most lethargied and customed paces.
As an Arab journeyeth Through a sand of Ayaman, Lean Thirst, lolling its cracked tongue, Lagging by his side along;And a rusty-winged Death Grating its low flight before, Casting ribbed shadows o'er The blank desert, blank and tan:
He lifts by hap toward where the morning's roots are His weary stare, -Sees, although they plashless mutes are, Set in a silver air Fountains of gelid shoots are, Making the daylight fairest fair;Sees the palm and tamarind Tangle the tresses of a phantom wind; -A sight like innocence when one has sinned!
A green and maiden freshness smiling there, While with unblinking glare The tawny-hided desert crouches watching her.
'Tis a vision:
Yet the greeneries Elysian He has known in tracts afar;Thus the enamouring fountains flow, Those the very palms that grow, By rare-gummed Sava, or Herbalimar.-Such a watered dream has tarried Trembling on my desert arid;Even so Its lovely gleamings Seemings show Of things not seemings;And I gaze, Knowing that, beyond my ways, Verily All these ARE, for these are she.
Eve no gentlier lays her cooling cheek On the burning brow of the sick earth, Sick with death, and sick with birth, Aeon to aeon, in secular fever twirled, Than thy shadow soothes this weak And distempered being of mine.
In all I work, my hand includeth thine;
Thou rushest down in every stream Whose passion frets my spirit's deepening gorge;Unhood'st mine eyas-heart, and fliest my dream;Thou swing'st the hammers of my forge;
As the innocent moon, that nothing does but shine, Moves all the labouring surges of the world.
Pierce where thou wilt the springing thought in me, And there thy pictured countenance lies enfurled, As in the cut fern lies the imaged tree.
This poor song that sings of thee, This fragile song, is but a curled Shell outgathered from thy sea, And murmurous still of its nativity.
Princess of Smiles!
Sorceress of most unlawful-lawful wiles!
Cunning pit for gazers' senses, Overstrewn with innocences!
Purities gleam white like statues In the fair lakes of thine eyes, And I watch the sparkles that use There to rise, Knowing these Are bubbles from the calyces Of the lovely thoughts that breathe Paving, like water-flowers, thy spirit's floor beneath.
O thou most dear!
Who art thy sex's complex harmony God-set more facilely;To thee may love draw near Without one blame or fear, Unchidden save by his humility:
Thou Perseus' Shield! wherein I view secure The mirrored Woman's fateful-fair allure!
Whom Heaven still leaves a twofold dignity, As girlhood gentle, and as boyhood free;With whom no most diaphanous webs enwind The bared limbs of the rebukeless mind.
Wild Dryad! all unconscious of thy tree, With which indissolubly The tyrannous time shall one day make thee whole;Whose frank arms pass unfretted through its bole:
Who wear'st thy femineity Light as entrailed blossoms, that shalt find It erelong silver shackles unto thee.
Thou whose young sex is yet but in thy soul; -As hoarded in the vine Hang the gold skins of undelirious wine, As air sleeps, till it toss its limbs in breeze:-In whom the mystery which lures and sunders, Grapples and thrusts apart; endears, estranges;- The dragon to its own Hesperides -
Is gated under slow-revolving changes, Manifold doors of heavy-hinged years.
So once, ere Heaven's eyes were filled with wonders To see Laughter rise from Tears, Lay in beauty not yet mighty, Conched in translucencies, The antenatal Aphrodite, Caved magically under magic seas;Caved dreamlessly beneath the dreamful seas.
"Whose sex is in thy soul!"
What think we of thy soul?
Which has no parts, and cannot grow, Unfurled not from an embryo;Born of full stature, lineal to control;
And yet a pigmy's yoke must undergo.
