  Come, Flower of Life, and lay thy beauty's rose Upon the breast that storm and thee divide; And like true knights whose queen no laggard knows, Forth gently shall my love-bid fancies ride To serve thy heart, and bring thy wishes in; And shuttling rhyme a web shall make thee then Whilst thou dost gaze, nor thy poor weaver chide. Sweet wonder lay upon my opening eyes That showed me in a gracious court of trees Whose leaves were clouds that caught and lost sunrise, And fell in mist upon a twirling breeze That traced the ground and to a river grew, Casting its tender spray in tinted dew As curved its silver way with laughing ease. Through fragrant gloom of cliff and bower o'ergrown, Free as a fawn the stream 'twas born beside, Nor held my step with fear at sounds unknown,— High murmurings among the cloudy leaves, As when some dull and dreamy throng receives Strange lyric stir from power not its own. And more and more the murmurs grew like song, Save that no song could drop such honey-rain; The lyre-god's self would do it unsweet wrong, Were he that golden sound to breathe again; And as my guide into a cave did pass, That closÈd seemed, and yet unclosÈd was, That airy cadence stooped and bore me in. Then wandered life from out my memory, Gone from desire, as ghost at last must go; Nor shadow fell, where shadow could not be, From those dark lures that make our worldly woe. Should dim the glories that I moved among With name of gloom that wrongs the world we know. The dome was fair as Heaven, or Heaven, in sooth, It might have been, but that there shone, The centre 'neath, a fountain-featured truth That might no rival of its radiance own. Ah, this was Heaven's heart, if Heaven be, And the bright dome but its gold boundary; Yet gleamÈd here no crown or mounted throne. The music budded till it dropped soft showers; All things to other changed, though here no mage; Clouds turned to light, and light to sweeter powers, And chance and change to all was privilege; The air was full of phantom-stirring things, And I not breathed but that I touched new wings, And sent some dream on airy pilgrimage. Ere my delight had held me pausing long Beneath a cloud that rained me lilies cool, That leaned their trembling grace above a pool, And following the flutter of a song To feathery rest where blossoms minute-young Oped arms of vermeil soft, and dawning gule, Mine eye saw Love. White on a verge's mount, That swelled to show its burden dear, she lay; A sighing mist that partly filled the fount, And o'er the brink sought tenderly to stray, For her fair body pillowed soft the ground, Growing glad upward arms to clasp her round And of each grace take new and sweet account. In nymphlike mould her gentle figure ran, Though nymph so bright did never sport in dell; Her eyes an angel's were, if angels' can Be thousand times more fair than dream can tell; Unfalling tears they held, yet so could please They might have hermits made forget their knees And kings find out they had them, such their spell. Like spirit guard, whose ever-changing ray Was fed with fires of sacrifice that are Love's life,—the offerings earth lovers lay Upon her shrine, and as they pale or glow She smiles or droops as this true star doth show,— Or dim or bright as serve we or betray. Beside her was an instrument of tune, Of changeful beauty as her couch of cloud, And as I looked she woke it to strange rune, As in low murmur moved her thoughts aloud,— For all Love's thoughts are music,—but to make That ditty o'er, what heart would undertake, And with a mortal chant her utterance shroud? Anear her stood a youth bare of all guise Save when a light enwrapped him in its flame; He bore the ages in his listening eyes, And prophecy there waited for a name; Joy loved him best, and gave eternity, And his lithe, lustrous being seemed to say "I am the aspiration of all dream." The scroll of rising winds, the burst of suns, And lists—ah, might it be earth's shore Freed of her epic hates and tunÈd groans! War's passion beat, and woe's sad chorus past, And all her song pure-winnowed, clear at last, Pouring the music of her happy moons! Then moved his lips, but yet unborn is he Who may with their resound make sweet his own; He who shall come as morning walks the sea, Mate of the Wind when all her harps are one; So much we know by frail yet quenchless light That creeps through shadows of our lute-poor night,— The brave rose-glimmers of his singing dawn. Lo, every dream new-homing from far ways On silent wing or spirit wave of air, Came circling o'er his head in hovering maze, Seen not, nor heard, albeit I knew them there; But as each passed before his lifted face, They gleamed to sight, and grace so mounted grace My eyes se |
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