Thou, in thy mother's right Descendant of Castalian-chrismed kings -O Princess of the Blood of Song!
Peace; too impetuously have I been winging Toward vaporous heights which beckon and beguile I sink back, saddened to my inmost mind;Even as I list a-dream that mother singing The poesy of sweet tone, and sadden, while Her voice is cast in troubled wake behind The keel of her keen spirit.Thou art enshrined In a too primal innocence for this eye -Intent on such untempered radiancy -
Not to be pained; my clay can scarce endure Ungrieved the effluence near of essences so pure.
Therefore, little, tender maiden, Never be thou overshaden With a mind whose canopy Would shut out the sky from thee;Whose tangled branches intercept Heaven's light:
I will not feed my unpastured heart On thee, green pleasaunce as thou art, To lessen by one flower thy happy daisies white.
The water-rat is earth-hued like the runlet Whereon he swims; and how in me should lurk Thoughts apt to neighbour thine, thou creature sunlit?
If through long fret and irk Thine eyes within their browed recesses were Worn caves where thought lay couchant in its lair;Wert thou a spark among dank leaves, ah ruth!
With age in all thy veins, while all thy heart was youth;Our contact might run smooth.
But life's Eoan dews still moist thy ringed hair;Dian's chill finger-tips Thaw if at night they happen on thy lips;The flying fringes of the sun's cloak frush The fragile leaves which on those warm lips blush;And joy only lurks retired In the dim gloaming of thine irid.
Then since my love drags this poor shadow, me, And one without the other may not be, From both I guard thee free.
It still is much, yes, it is much, Only--my dream!--to love my love of thee;And it is much, yes, it is much, In hands which thou hast touched to feel thy touch In voices which have mingled with thine own To hear a double tone.
As anguish, for supreme expression prest, Borrows its saddest tongue from jest, Thou hast of absence so create A presence more importunate;And thy voice pleads its sweetest suit When it is mute.
I thank the once accursed star Which did me teach To make of Silence my familiar, Who hath the rich reversion of thy speech, Since the most charming sounds thy thought can wear, Cast off, fall to that pale attendant's share;And thank the gift which made my mind A shadow-world, wherethrough the shadows wind Of all the loved and lovely of my kind.
Like a maiden Saxon, folden, As she flits, in moon-drenched mist;Whose curls streaming flaxen-golden, By the misted moonbeams kist, Dispread their filmy floating silk Like honey steeped in milk:
So, vague goldenness remote, Through my thoughts I watch thee float.
When the snake summer casts her blazoned skin We find it at the turn of autumn's path, And think it summer that rewinded hath, Joying therein;And this enamouring slough of thee, mine elf, I take it for thyself;Content.Content? Yea, title it content.
The very loves that belt thee must prevent My love, I know, with their legitimacy:
As the metallic vapours, that are swept Athwart the sun, in his light intercept The very hues Which THEIR conflagrant elements effuse.
But, my love, my heart, my fair, That only I should see thee rare, Or tent to the hid core thy rarity, -This were a mournfulness more piercing far Than that those other loves my own must bar, Or thine for others leave thee none for me.
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 isled 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-submerged 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.
Ah! help, my Daemon that hast served me well!
Not at this last, oh, do not me disgrace!
I faint, I sicken, darkens all my sight, As, poised upon this unprevisioned height, I lift into its place The utmost aery traceried pinnacle.
So; it is builded, the high tenement, - God grant--to mine intent!
Most like a palace of the Occident, Up-thrusting, toppling maze on maze, Its mounded blaze, And washed by the sunset's rosy waves, Whose sea drinks rarer hue from those rare walls it laves.
Yet wail, my spirits, wail!
So few therein to enter shall prevail!
Scarce fewer could win way, if their desire A dragon baulked, with involuted spire, And writhen snout spattered with yeasty fire.
For at the elfin portal hangs a horn Which none can wind aright Save the appointed knight Whose lids the fay-wings brushed when he was born.
All others stray forlorn, Or glimpsing, through the blazoned windows scrolled Receding labyrinths lessening tortuously In half obscurity;With mystic images, inhuman, cold, That flameless torches hold.
