Within the voice, within the heart, Within the mind of Love-Lily, A spirit is born who lifts apart His tremulous wings and looks at me; Who on my mouth his finger lays, And shows, while whispering lutes confer, That Eden of Love's watered ways Whose winds and spirits worship her. Brows, hands, and lips, heart, mind, and voice, Kisses and words of Love-Lily,— Oh! bid me with your joy rejoice Till riotous longing rest in me! Ah! let not hope be still distraught, But find in her its gracious goal, Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought Nor Love her body from her soul. 1870. THE HOUSE OF LIFE THE SONNET A Sonnet is a moment's monument,- To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be, Whether for lustral rite or dire portent, Of its own arduous fulness reverent : Carve it in ivory or in ebony, As Day or Night may rule; and let Its flowering crest impearled and orient. Whether for tribute to the august appeals In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death. PART I. YOUTH AND CHANGE I. LOVE ENTHRONED I MARKED all kindred Powers the heart finds fair : Truth, with awed lips; and Hope, with eyes upcast; And Fame, whose loud wings fan the ashen Past To signal-fires, Oblivion's flight to scare; And Youth, with still some single golden hair VIII. LOVE'S LOVERS SOME ladies love the jewels in Love's zone And gold-tipped darts he hath for painless play In idle scornful hours he flings away; And some that listen to his lute's soft tone Do love to vaunt the silver praise their own; Some prize his blindfold sight; and there be they Who kissed his wings which brought him yesterday And thank his wings to-day that he is flown. My lady only loves the heart of Love: Therefore Love's heart, my lady, hath for thee His bower of unimagined flower and tree: There kneels he now, and all-anhungered of Thine eyes gray-lit in shadowing hair above, Seals with thy mouth his immortality. IX. PASSION AND WORSHIP ONE flame-winged brought a whitewinged harp-player Even where my lady and I lay all alone; Saying "Behold, this minstrel is unknown; Bid him depart. for I am minstrel here: 66 Through thine hautboy's rapturous tone Unto my lady still this harp makes moan, And still she deems the cadence deep and clear." Then said my lady: "Thou art Passion of Love, And this Love's Worship: both he plights to me. Thy mastering music walks the sunlit sea: But where wan water trembles in the grove And the wan moon is all the light thereof, This harp still makes my name its voluntary." X. THE PORTRAIT O LORD of all compassionate control. Still glades; and meeting faces scarcely fann'd: An osier-odored stream that draws the skies Deep to its heart; and mirrored eyes in eyes: Fresh hourly wonder o'er the Summer land Of light and cloud; and two souls softly spann'd With one o'erarching heaven of smiles and sighs :- Even such their path, whose bodies lean unto Each other's visible sweetness amorously, Whose passionate hearts lean by Love's high decree Together on his heart for ever true, 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 like wise the envenomed years, whose tooth Rends shallower grace with ruin void of ruth, Upon this beauty's power shall wreak no wrong. XIX. SILENT NOON YOUR hands lie open in the long, fresh grass, The finger-points look through like 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, Is like a hand laid softly on the soul; Whose hand is like a sweet voice to control Those worn tired brows it hath the keeping of : What word can answer to thy wordwhat gaze To thine, which now absorbs within its sphere My worshipping face, till I am mirrored there Light-circled in a heaven of deep-drawn rays? What clasp, what kiss mine inmost heart can prove, O lovely and beloved, O my love? XXVII. HEART'S COMPASS SOMETIMES thou seem'st not as thyself alone, But as the meaning of all things that are; A breathless wonder, shadowing forth afar Some heavenly solstice hushed and halcyon; Whose unstirred lips are music's visible tone; Whose eyes the sun-gate of the soul unbar, Being of its furthest fires oracular- mown. |