What dawn-pulse at the heart of heaven, or last Incarnate flower of culminating day,--What marshalled marvels on the skirts of May, Or song full-quired, sweet June's encomiast;What glory of change by nature's hand amass'd Can vie with all those moods of varying grace Which o'er one loveliest woman's form and face Within this hour, within this room, have pass'd?
Love's very vesture and elect disguise Was each fine movement,--wonder new-begot Of lily or swan or swan-stemmed galiot;Joy to his sight who now the sadlier sighs, Parted again; and sorrow yet for eyes Unborn that read these words and saw her not.
GENIUS IN BEAUTY
Beauty like hers is genius. Not the call Of Homer's or of Dante's heart sublime,--Not Michael's hand furrowing the zones of time,--Is more with compassed mysteries musical;
Nay, not in Spring's or Summer's sweet footfall More gathered gifts exuberant Life bequeathes*Than doth this sovereign face, whose love-spell breathes Even from its shadowed contour on the wall.
As many men are poets in their youth, But for one sweet-strung soul the wires prolong Even through all change the indomitable song;So in likewise the envenomed years, whose tooth Rends shallower grace with ruin void of ruth, Upon this beauty's power shall wreak no wrong.
*[sic]
SILENT NOON
Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,--The finger-points look through the rosy blooms:
Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms 'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.
All round our nest, far as the eye can pass, Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.
Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky:
So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower, This close-companioned inarticulate hour When twofold silence was the song of love.
GRACIOUS MOONLIGHT
Even as the moon grows queenlier in mid-space When the sky darkens, and her cloud-rapt car Thrills with intenser radiance from afar,--So lambent, lady, beams thy sovereign grace When the drear soul desires thee. Of that face What shall be said,--which, like a governing star, Gathers and garners from all things that are Their silent penetrative loveliness?
O'er water-daisies and wild waifs of Spring, There where the iris rears its gold-crowned sheaf With flowering rush and sceptred arrow-leaf, So have I marked Queen Dian, in bright ring Of cloud above and wave below, take wing And chase night's gloom, as thou the spirit's grief.
LOVE-SWEETNESS
Sweet dimness of her loosened hair's downfall About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head In gracious fostering union garlanded, Her tremulous smiles, her glances' sweet recall Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial;Her mouth's culled sweetness by thy kisses shed On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led Back to her mouth which answers there for all:--What sweeter than these things, except the thing In lacking which all these would lose their sweet:--The confident heart's still fervour: the swift beat And soft subsidence of the spirit's wing, Then when it feels, in cloud--girt wayfaring, The breath of kindred plumes against its feet?
HEART'S HAVEN
Sometimes she is a child within mine arms, Cowering beneath dark wings that love must chase,--With still tears showering and averted face, Inexplicably filled with faint alarms:
And oft from mine own spirit's hurtling harms I crave the refuge of her deep embrace,--Against all ills the fortified strong place And sweet reserve of sovereign counter-charms.
And Love, our light at night and shade at noon, Lulls us to rest with songs, and turns away All shafts of shelterless tumultuous day.
Like the moon's growth, his face gleams through his tune;And as soft waters warble to the moon, Our answering spirits chime one roundelay.
LOVE'S BAUBLES
I stood where Love in brimming armfuls bore Slight wanton flowers and foolish toys of fruit:
And round him ladies thronged in warm pursuit, Fingered and lipped and proffered the strange store:
And from one hand the petal and the core Savoured of sleep; and cluster and curled shoot Seemed from another hand like shame's salute,--Gifts that I felt my cheek was blushing for.
At last Love bade my Lady give the same:
And as I looked, the dew was light thereon;
And as I took them, at her touch they shone With inmost heaven-hue of the heart of flame.
And then Love said: 'Lo! when the hand is hers, Follies of love are love's true ministers.'
PRIDE OF YOUTH
Even as a child, of sorrow that we give The dead, but little in his heart can find, Since without need of thought to his clear mind Their turn it is to die and his to live:
Even so the winged New Love smiles to receive Along his eddying plumes the auroral wind, Nor, forward glorying, casts one look behind Where night-rack shrouds the Old Love fugitive.
There is a change in every hour's recall, And the last cowslip in the fields we see On the same day with the first corn-poppy.
Alas for hourly change! Alas for all The loves that from his hand proud Youth lets fall, Even as the beads of a told rosary!
WINGED HOURS
Each hour until we meet is as a bird That wings from far his gradual way along The rustling covert of my soul,--his song Still loudlier trilled through leaves more deeply stirr'd:
But at the hour of meeting, a clear word Is every note he sings, in Love's own tongue;Yet, Love, thou know'st the sweet strain wrong, Through our contending kisses oft unheard.
What of that hour at last, when for her sake No wing may fly to me nor song may flow;When, wandering round my life unleaved, I The bloodied feathers scattered in the brake, And think how she, far from me, with like eyes Sees through the untuneful bough the wingless skies?
MID - RAPTURE
Thou lovely and beloved, thou my love;
