ALLEGRO MAESTOSO
Spring winds that blow As over leagues of myrtle-blooms and may;
Bevies of spring clouds trooping slow, Like matrons heavy bosomed and aglow With the mild and placid pride of increase! Nay, What makes this insolent and comely stream Of appetence, this freshet of desire (Milk from the wild breasts of the wilful Day!), Down Piccadilly dance and murmur and gleam In genial wave on wave and gyre on gyre?
Why does that nymph unparalleled splash and churn The wealth of her enchanted urn Till, over-billowing all between Her cheerful margents, grey and living green, It floats and wanders, glittering and fleeing, An estuary of the joy of being?
Why should the lovely leafage of the Park Touch to an ecstasy the act of seeing?
- Sure, sure my paramour, my Bride of Brides, Lingering and flushed, mysteriously abides In some dim, eye-proof angle of odorous dark, Some smiling nook of green-and-golden shade, In the divine conviction robed and crowned The globe fulfils his immemorial round But as the marrying-place of all things made!
There is no man, this deifying day, But feels the primal blessing in his blood.
There is no woman but disdains -
The sacred impulse of the May Brightening like sex made sunshine through her veins -
To vail the ensigns of her womanhood.
None but, rejoicing, flaunts them as she goes, Bounteous in looks of her delicious best, On her inviolable quest:
These with their hopes, with their sweet secrets those, But all desirable and frankly fair, As each were keeping some most prosperous tryst, And in the knowledge went imparadised!
For look! a magical influence everywhere, Look how the liberal and transfiguring air Washes this inn of memorable meetings, This centre of ravishments and gracious greetings, Till, through its jocund loveliness of length A tidal-race of lust from shore to shore, A brimming reach of beauty met with strength, It shines and sounds like some miraculous dream, Some vision multitudinous and agleam, Of happiness as it shall be evermore!
Praise God for giving Through this His messenger among the days His word the life He gave is thrice-worth living!
For Pan, the bountiful, imperious Pan -
Not dead, not dead, as impotent dreamers feigned, But the gay genius of a million Mays Renewing his beneficent endeavour! -
Still reigns and triumphs, as he hath triumphed and reigned Since in the dim blue dawn of time The universal ebb-and-flow began, To sound his ancient music, and prevails, By the persuasion of his mighty rhyme, Here in this radiant and immortal street Lavishly and omnipotently as ever In the open hills, the undissembling dales, The laughing-places of the juvenile earth.
For lo! the wills of man and woman meet, Meet and are moved, each unto each endeared, As once in Eden's prodigal bowers befell, To share his shameless, elemental mirth In one great act of faith: while deep and strong, Incomparably nerved and cheered, The enormous heart of London joys to beat To the measures of his rough, majestic song;
The lewd, perennial, overmastering spell That keeps the rolling universe ensphered, And life, and all for which life lives to long, Wanton and wondrous and for ever well.
RHYMES AND RHYTHMS
PROLOGUE
Something is dead . . .
The grace of sunset solitudes, the march Of the solitary moon, the pomp and power Of round on round of shining soldier-stars Patrolling space, the bounties of the sun -
Sovran, tremendous, unimaginable -
The multitudinous friendliness of the sea, Possess no more--no more.
Something is dead . . .
The Autumn rain-rot deeper and wider soaks And spreads, the burden of Winter heavier weighs, His melancholy close and closer yet Cleaves, and those incantations of the Spring That made the heart a centre of miracles Grow formal, and the wonder-working bours Arise no more--no more.
Something is dead . . .
'Tis time to creep in close about the fire And tell grey tales of what we were, and dream Old dreams and faded, and as we may rejoice In the young life that round us leaps and laughs, A fountain in the sunshine, in the pride Of God's best gift that to us twain returns, Dear Heart, no more--no more.
