Part 3

And thou, bright girl, not long shalt thou repeat Idly the music from thy mother caught; Not vainly has she wrought, Not vainly from the cloudward-jetting turret Of her aerial mind, for thy weak feet, Let down the silken ladder of her thought. She bare thee with a double pain, Of the body and the spirit; Thou thy fleshly weeds hast ta'en, Thy diviner weeds inherit! The precious streams which through thy young lips roll Shall leave their lovely delta in thy soul: Where sprites of so essential kind Set their paces, Surely they shall leave behind The green traces Of their sportance in the mind; And thou shalt, ere we well may know it, Turn that daintiness, a poet,-- Elfin-ring Where sweet fancies foot and sing. So it may be, so it _shall_ be,-- O, take the prophecy from me! What if the old fastidious sculptor, Time, This crescent marvel of his hands Carveth all too painfully, And I who prophesy shall never see? What if the niche of its predestined rhyme, Its aching niche, too long expectant stands? Yet shall he after sore delays On some exultant day of days The white enshrouding childhood raise From thy fair spirit, finished for our gaze; While we (but 'mongst that happy "we" The prophet cannot be!) While we behold with no astonishments, With that serene fulfilment of delight Wherewith we view the sight When the stars pitch the golden tents Of their high encampment on the plains of night. Why should amazement be our satellite? What wonder in such things? If angels have hereditary wings, If not by Salic law is handed down The poet's crown, To thee, born in the purple of the throne, The laurel must belong: Thou, in thy mother's right Descendant of Castilian-chrismèd kings-- O Princess of the Blood of Song!

A FORETELLING OF THE CHILD'S HUSBAND

But on a day whereof I think, One shall dip his hand to drink In that still water of thy soul, And its imaged tremors race Over thy joy-troubled face, As the intervolved reflections roll From a shaken fountain's brink, With swift light wrinkling its alcove. From the hovering wing of Love The warm stain shall flit roseal on thy cheek. Then, sweet blushet! whenas he, The destined paramount of thy universe, Who has no worlds to sigh for, ruling thee, Ascends his vermeil throne of empery, One grace alone I seek. Oh! may this treasure-galleon of my verse, Fraught with its golden passion, oared with cadent rhyme, Set with a towering press of fantasies, Drop safely down the time, Leaving mine islèd self behind it far, Soon to be sunken in the abysm of seas, (As down the years the splendour voyages From some long ruined and night-submergèd star), And in thy subject sovereign's havening heart Anchor the freightage of its virgin ore; Adding its wasteful more To his own overflowing treasury. So through his river mine shall reach thy sea, Bearing its confluent part; In his pulse mine shall thrill; And the quick heart shall quicken from the heart that's still.

_Now pass your ways, fair bird, and pass your ways, If you will; I have you through the days. And 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!_

Love in Dian's Lap

BEFORE HER PORTRAIT IN YOUTH

As lovers, banished from their lady's face, And hopeless of her grace, Fashion a ghostly sweetness in its place, Fondly adore Some stealth-won cast attire she wore, A kerchief, or a glove: And at the lover's beck Into the glove there fleets the hand, Or at impetuous command Up from the kerchief floats the virgin neck:

So I, in very lowlihead of love,-- Too shyly reverencing To let one thought's light footfall smooth Tread near the living, consecrated thing,-- Treasure me thy cast youth. This outworn vesture, tenantless of thee, Hath yet my knee, For that, with show and semblance fair Of the past Her Who once the beautiful, discarded raiment bare, It cheateth me. As gale to gale drifts breath Of blossoms' death, So dropping down the years from hour to hour This dead youth's scent is wafted me to-day: I sit, and from the fragrance dream the flower. So, then, she looked (I say); And so her front sunk down Heavy beneath the poet's iron crown: On her mouth museful sweet-- (Even as the twin lips meet) Did thought and sadness greet: Sighs In those mournful eyes So put on visibilities; As viewless ether turns, in deep on deep, to dyes. Thus, long ago, She kept her meditative paces slow Through maiden meads, with wavèd shadow and gleam Of locks half-lifted on the winds of dream, Till love up-caught her to his chariot's glow. Yet, voluntary, happier Proserpine, This drooping flower of youth thou lettest fall I, faring in the cockshut-light, astray, Find on my 'lated way, And stoop, and gather for memorial, And lay it on my bosom, and make it mine. To this, the all of love the stars allow me, I dedicate and vow me. I reach back through the days A trothed hand to the dead the last trump shall not raise. The water-wraith that cries From those eternal sorrows of thy pictured eyes Entwines and draws me down their soundless intricacies!

TO A POET BREAKING SILENCE

Too wearily had we and song Been left to look and left to long, Yea, song and we to long and look, Since thine acquainted feet forsook The mountain where the Muses hymn For Sinai and the Seraphim. Now in both the mountains' shine Dress thy countenance, twice divine! From Moses and the Muses draw The Tables of thy double Law! His rod-born fount and Castaly Let the one rock bring forth for thee, Renewing so from either spring The songs which both thy countries sing: Or we shall fear lest, heavened thus long, Thou should'st forget thy native song, And mar thy mortal melodies With broken stammer of the skies.

Ah! let the sweet birds of the Lord With earth's waters make accord; Teach how the crucifix may be Carven from the laurel-tree, Fruit of the Hesperides Burnish take on Eden-trees, The Muses' sacred grove be wet With the red dew of Olivet, And Sappho lay her burning brows In white Cecilia's lap of snows!

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I think thy girlhood's watchers must Have took thy folded songs on trust, And felt them, as one feels the stir Of still lightnings in the hair, When conscious hush expects the cloud To speak the golden secret loud Which tacit air is privy to; Flasked in the grape the wine they knew, Ere thy poet-mouth was able For its first young starry babble. Keep'st thou not yet that subtle grace? Yea, in this silent interspace, God sets His poems in thy face!

The loom which mortal verse affords, Out of weak and mortal words, Wovest thou thy singing-weed in, To a rune of thy far Eden. Vain are all disguises! Ah, Heavenly _incognita_! Thy mien bewrayeth through that wrong The great Uranian House of Song! As the vintages of earth Taste of the sun that riped their birth, We know what never-cadent Sun Thy lampèd clusters throbbed upon, What plumèd feet the winepress trod; Thy wine is flavorous of God. Whatever singing-robe thou wear Has the paradisal air; And some gold feather it has kept Shows what Floor it lately swept.

A CARRIER SONG

Since you have waned from us, Fairest of women, I am a darkened cage Song cannot hymn in. My songs have followed you, Like birds the summer; Ah! bring them back to me, Swiftly, dear comer! _Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals!_

Whereso your angel is, My angel goeth; I am left guardianless, Paradise knoweth! I have no Heaven left To weep my wrongs to; Heaven, when you went from us, Went with my songs too. _Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals!_

I have no angels left Now, Sweet, to pray to: Where you have made your shrine They are away to. They have struck Heaven's tent, And gone to cover you: Whereso you keep your state Heaven is pitched over you! _Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals!_

She that is Heaven's Queen Her title borrows, For that she, pitiful, Beareth our sorrows. So thou, _Regina mi, Spes infirmorum_; With all our grieving crowned _Mater dolorum! Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals!_

Yet, envious coveter Of other's grieving! This lonely longing yet 'Scapeth your reaving. Cruel to take from a Sinner his Heaven! Think you with contrite smiles To be forgiven? _Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals!_

Penitent! give me back Angels, and Heaven; Render your stolen self, And be forgiven! How frontier Heaven from you? For my soul prays, Sweet, Still to your face in Heaven, Heaven in your face, Sweet! _Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals!_

HER PORTRAIT

Oh, but the heavenly grammar did I hold Of that high speech which angels' tongues turn gold! So should her deathless beauty take no wrong, Praised in her own great kindred's fit and cognate tongue. Or if that language yet with us abode Which Adam in the garden talked with God! But our untempered speech descends--poor heirs! Grimy and rough-cast still from Babel's bricklayers: Curse on the brutish jargon we inherit, Strong but to damn, not memorise, a spirit! A cheek, a lip, a limb, a bosom, they Move with light ease in speech of working-day; And women we do use to praise even so. But here the gates we burst, and to the temple go. Their praise were her dispraise; who dare, who dare, Adulate the seraphim for their burning hair? How, if with them I dared, here should I dare it? How praise the woman, who but know the spirit? How praise the colour of her eyes, uncaught While they were coloured with her varying thought? How her mouth's shape, who only use to know What tender shape her speech will fit it to? Or her lips' redness, when their joinèd veil Song's fervid hand has parted till it wore them pale?

If I would praise her soul (temerarious if!) All must be mystery and hieroglyph. Heaven, which not oft is prodigal of its more To singers, in their song too great before-- By which the hierarch of large poesy is Restrained to his one sacred benefice-- Only for her the salutary awe Relaxes and stern canon of its law; To her alone concedes pluralities, In her alone to reconcile agrees The Muse, the Graces, and the Charities; To her, who can the trust so well conduct, To her it gives the use, to us the usufruct. What of the dear administress then may I utter, though I spoke her own carved perfect way? What of her daily gracious converse known, Whose heavenly despotism must needs dethrone And subjugate all sweetness but its own? Deep in my heart subsides the infrequent word, And there dies slowly throbbing like a wounded bird. What of her silence, that outsweetens speech? What of her thoughts, high marks for mine own thoughts to reach? Yet (Chaucer's antique sentence so to turn), Most gladly will she teach, and gladly learn; And teaching her, by her enchanting art, The master threefold learns for all he can impart. Now all is said, and all being said,--aye me! There yet remains unsaid the very She. Nay, to conclude (so to conclude I dare), If of her virtues you evade the snare, Then for her faults you'll fall in love with her.

Alas, and I have spoken of her Muse-- Her Muse, that died with her auroral dews! Learn, the wise cherubim from harps of gold Seduce a trepidating music manifold; But the superior seraphim do know None other music but to flame and glow. So she first lighted on our frosty earth, A sad musician, of cherubic birth, Playing to alien ears--which did not prize The uncomprehended music of the skies-- The exiled airs of her far Paradise. But soon, from her own harpings taking fire, In love and light her melodies expire. Now Heaven affords her, for her silenced hymn, A double portion of the seraphim. At the rich odours from her heart that rise, My soul remembers its lost Paradise, And antenatal gales blow from Heaven's shores of spice; I grow essential all, uncloaking me From this encumbering virility, And feel the primal sex of heaven and poetry: And parting from her, in me linger on Vague snatches of Uranian antiphon.

How to the petty prison could she shrink Of femineity?--Nay, but I think In a dear courtesy her spirit would Woman assume, for grace to womanhood. Or, votaress to the virgin Sanctitude Of reticent withdrawal's sweet, courted pale, She took the cloistral flesh, the sexual veil, Of her sad, aboriginal sisterhood; The habit of cloistral flesh which founding Eve indued.

Thus do I know her: but for what men call Beauty--the loveliness corporeal, Its most just praise a thing unproper were To singer or to listener, me or her. She wears that body but as one indues A robe, half careless, for it is the use; Although her soul and it so fair agree, We sure may, unattaint of heresy, Conceit it might the soul's begetter be. The immortal could we cease to contemplate, The mortal part suggests its every trait. God laid His fingers on the ivories Of her pure members as on smoothèd keys, And there out-breathed her spirit's harmonies. I'll speak a little proudly:--I disdain To count the beauty worth my wish or gain, Which the dull daily fool can covet or obtain. I do confess the fairness of the spoil, But from such rivalry it takes a soil. For her I'll proudlier speak:--how could it be That I should praise the gilding on the psaltery? 'Tis not for her to hold that prize a prize, Or praise much praise, though proudest in its wise, To which even hopes of merely women rise. Such strife would to the vanquished laurels yield, Against _her_ suffered to have lost a field. Herself must with herself be sole compeer, Unless the people of her distant sphere Some gold migration send to melodise the year.

Yet I have felt what terrors may consort In women's cheeks, the Graces' soft resort; My hand hath shook at gentle hands' access, And trembled at the waving of a tress; My blood known panic fear, and fled dismayed, Where ladies' eyes have set their ambuscade. The rustle of a robe hath been to me The very rattle of love's musketry; Although my heart hath beat the loud advance, I have recoiled before a challenging glance, Proved gay alarms where warlike ribbons dance. And from it all, this knowledge have I got,-- The whole that others have, is less than they have not; All which makes other women noted fair, Unnoted would remain and overshone in her.

How should I gauge what beauty is her dole, Who cannot see her countenance for her soul, As birds see not the casement for the sky? And, as 'tis check they prove its presence by, I know not of her body till I find My flight debarred the heaven of her mind. Hers is the face whence all should copied be, Did God make replicas of such as she; Its presence felt by what it does abate, Because the soul shines through tempered and mitigate: Where--as a figure labouring at night Beside the body of a splendid light-- Dark Time works hidden by its luminousness; And every line he labours to impress Turns added beauty, like the veins that run Athwart a leaf which hangs against the sun.

There regent Melancholy wide controls; There Earth-and Heaven-Love play for aureoles; There Sweetness out of Sadness breaks at fits, Like bubbles on dark water, or as flits A sudden silver fin through its deep infinites; There amorous Thought has sucked pale Fancy's breath, And Tenderness sits looking towards the lands of death; There Feeling stills her breathing with her hand, And Dream from Melancholy part wrests the wand And on this lady's heart, looked you so deep, Poor Poetry has rocked himself to sleep: Upon the heavy blossom of her lips Hangs the bee Musing; nigh, her lids eclipse Each half-occulted star beneath that lies; And in the contemplation of those eyes, Passionless passion, wild tranquillities.

EPILOGUE TO THE POET'S SITTER

_Wherein he excuseth himself for the Manner of the Portrait_

Alas! now wilt thou chide, and say (I deem) My figured descant hides the simple theme: Or, in another wise reproving, say I ill observe thine own high reticent way. Oh, pardon, that I testify of thee What thou couldst never speak, nor others be!

Yet (for the book is not more innocent Of what the gazer's eyes makes so intent), She will but smile, perhaps, that I find my fair Sufficing scope in such strait theme as her. "Bird of the sun! the stars' wild honey bee! Is your gold browsing done so thoroughly? Or sinks a singèd wing to narrow nest in me?" (Thus she might say: for not this lowly vein Out-deprecates her deprecating strain.) Oh, you mistake, dear lady, quite; nor know Ether was strict as you, its loftiness as low! The heavens do not advance their majesty Over their marge; beyond his empery The ensigns of the wind are not unfurled, His reign is hooped in by the pale o' the world. 'Tis not the continent, but the contained, That pleasaunce makes or prison, loose or chained. Too much alike or little captives me, For all oppression is captivity. What groweth to its height demands no higher; The limit limits not, but the desire.

* * * * *

We, therefore, with a sure instinctive mind, An equal spaciousness of bondage find In confines far or near, of air or our own kind. Our looks and longings, which affront the stars, Most richly bruised against their golden bars, Delighted captives of their flaming spears, Find a restraint restrainless which appears As that is, and so simply natural, In you;--the fair detention freedom call, And overscroll with fancies the loved prison-wall.

Such sweet captivity, and only such, In you, as in those golden bars, we touch! Our gazes for sufficing limits know The firmament above, your face below; Our longings are contented with the skies, Contented with the heaven, and your eyes. My restless wings, that beat the whole world through, Flag on the confines of the sun and you; And find the human pale remoter of the two.

AFTER HER GOING

The after-even! Ah, did I walk, Indeed, in her or even? For nothing of me or around But absent She did leaven, Felt in my body as its soul, And in my soul its heaven.

"Ah me! my very flesh turns soul, Essenced," I sighed, "with bliss!" And the blackbird held his lutany, All fragrant-through with bliss; And all things stilled were as a maid Sweet with a single kiss.

For grief of perfect fairness, eve Could nothing do but smile; The time was far too perfect fair, Being but for a while; And ah, in me, too happy grief Blinded herself with smile!

The sunset at its radiant heart Had somewhat unconfest: The bird was loath of speech, its song Half-refluent on its breast, And made melodious toyings with A note or two at best.

And she was gone, my sole, my Fair, Ah, sole my Fair, was gone! Methinks, throughout the world 'twere right I had been sad alone; And yet, such sweet in all things' heart, And such sweet in my own!

Miscellaneous Poems

A FALLEN YEW

It seemed corrival of the world's great prime, Made to un-edge the scythe of Time, And last with stateliest rhyme.

No tender Dryad ever did indue That rigid chiton of rough yew, To fret her white flesh through:

But some god, like to those grim Asgard lords Who walk the fables of the hordes From Scandinavian fjords,

Upheaved its stubborn girth, and raised unriven, Against the whirl-blast and the levin, Defiant arms to Heaven.

When doom puffed out the stars, we might have said, It would decline its heavy head, And see the world to bed.

For this firm yew did from the vassal leas, And rain and air, its tributaries, Its revenues increase,

And levy impost on the golden sun, Take the blind years as they might run, And no fate seek or shun.

But now our yew is strook, is fallen--yea Hacked like dull wood of every day To this and that, men say.

Never!--To Hades' shadowy shipyards gone, Dim barge of Dis, down Acheron It drops, or Lethe wan.

Stirred by its fall--poor destined bark of Dis!-- Along my soul a bruit there is Of echoing images,

Reverberations of mortality: Spelt backward from its death, to me Its life reads saddenedly.

Its breast was hollowed as the tooth of eld; And boys, there creeping unbeheld, A laughing moment dwelled.

Yet they, within its very heart so crept, Reached not the heart that courage kept With winds and years beswept.

And in its boughs did close and kindly nest The birds, as they within its breast, By all its leaves caressed.

But bird nor child might touch by any art Each other's or the tree's hid heart, A whole God's breadth apart;

The breadth of God, the breadth of death and life! Even so, even so, in undreamed strife With pulseless Law, the wife,--

The sweetest wife on sweetest marriage-day,-- Their soul at grapple in mid-way, Sweet to her sweet may say:

"I take you to my inmost heart, my true!" Ah, fool! but there is one heart you Shall never take him to!

The hold that falls not when the town is got, The heart's heart, whose immurèd plot Hath keys yourself keep not!

Its ports you cannot burst--you are withstood-- For him that to your listening blood Sends precepts as he would.

Its gates are deaf to Love, high summoner; Yea, Love's great warrant runs not there: You are your prisoner.

Yourself are with yourself the sole consortress In that unleaguerable fortress; It knows you not for portress.

Its keys are at the cincture hung of God; Its gates are trepidant to His nod; By Him its floors are trod.

And if His feet shall rock those floors in wrath, Or blest aspersion sleek His path, Is only choice it hath.

Yea, in that ultimate heart's occult abode To lie as in an oubliette of God; Or in a bower untrod,

Built by a secret Lover for His Spouse;-- Sole choice is this your life allows, Sad tree, whose perishing boughs So few birds house!

THE HOUND OF HEAVEN