“Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven.”
If, while you keep the vigils of the night,
For your wild tears make darkness all too bright,
Some lone orb through your lonely window peeps,
As it played lover over your sweet sleeps;
Think it a golden crevice in the sky,
Which I have pierced but to behold you by!
And when, immortal mortal, droops your head,
And you, the child of deathless song, are dead;
Then, as you search with unaccustomed glance
The ranks of Paradise for my countenance,
Turn not your tread along the Uranian sod
Among the bearded counsellors of God;
For if in Eden as on earth are we,
I sure shall keep a younger company:
Pass where beneath their rangèd gonfalons
The starry cohorts shake their shielded suns,
The dreadful mass of their enridgèd spears;
Pass where majestical the eternal peers,
The stately choice of the great Saintdom, meet—
A silvern segregation, globed complete
In sandalled shadow of the Triune feet;
Pass by where wait, young poet-wayfarer,
Your cousined clusters, emulous to share
With you the roseal lightnings burning ’mid their hair;
Pass the crystalline sea, the Lampads seven:—
Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven.
THE POPPY.
TO MONICA.
SUMMER set lip to earth’s bosom bare.
And left the flushed print in a poppy there:
Like a yawn of fire from the grass it came,
And the fanning wind puffed it to flapping flame.
With burnt mouth red like a lion’s it drank
The blood of the sun as he slaughtered sank,
And dipped its cup in the purpurate shine
When the eastern conduits ran with wine.
Till it grew lethargied with fierce bliss,
And hot as a swinked gipsy is,
And drowsed in sleepy savageries,
With mouth wide a-pout for a sultry kiss.
A child and man paced side by side,
Treading the skirts of eventide;
But between the clasp of his hand and hers
Lay, felt not, twenty withered years.
She turned, with the rout of her dusk South hair,
And saw the sleeping gipsy there;
And snatched and snapped it in swift child’s whim,
With—“Keep it, long as you live!”—to him.
And his smile, as nymphs from their laving meres,
Trembled up from a bath of tears;
And joy, like a mew sea-rocked apart,
Tossed on the wave of his troubled heart.
“Spring is come home with her world-wandering feet./ And all the things are made young with young desires.”
This is the song the stars sing,
(_Tonèd all in time_);
Tintinnabulous, tuned to ring
A multitudinous-single thing,
Rung all in rhyme.
FROM THE NIGHT OF FOREBEING
AN ODE AFTER EASTER
_In the chaos of preordination_, _and night of our forebeings_.—
SIR THOMAS BROWNE.
_Et lux in tenebris erat_, _et tenebræ eam non comprehenderunt_.—
ST. JOHN.
CAST wide the folding doorways of the East,
For now is light increased!
And the wind-besomed chambers of the air,
See they be garnished fair;
And look the ways exhale some precious odours,
And set ye all about wild-breathing spice,
Most fit for Paradise.
Now is no time for sober gravity,
Season enough has Nature to be wise;
But now discinct, with raiment glittering free,
Shake she the ringing rafters of the skies
With festal footing and bold joyance sweet,
And let the earth be drunken and carouse!
For lo, into her house
Spring is come home with her world-wandering feet,
And all things are made young with young desires;
And all for her is light increased
In yellow stars and yellow daffodils,
And East to West, and West to East,
Fling answering welcome-fires,
By dawn and day-fall, on the jocund hills.
And ye, winged minstrels of her fair meinie,
Being newly coated in glad livery,
Upon her steps attend,
And round her treading dance and without end
Reel your shrill lutany.
What popular breath her coming does out-tell
The garrulous leaves among!
What little noises stir and pass
From blade to blade along the voluble grass!
O Nature, never-done
Ungaped-at Pentecostal miracle,
We hear thee, each man in his proper tongue!
Break, elemental children, break ye loose
From the strict frosty rule
Of grey-beard Winter’s school.
Vault, O young winds, vault in your tricksome courses
Upon the snowy steeds that reinless use
In coerule pampas of the heaven to run;
Foaled of the white sea-horses,
Washed in the lambent waters of the sun.
“And left the flushed print in a poppy there.”
And when, immortal mortal, droops your head,
And you, the child of deathless song, are dead;
Then, as you search with unaccustomed glance
The ranks of Paradise for my countenance,
Turn not your tread along the Uranian sod
Among the bearded counsellors of God;
For if in Eden as on earth are we,
I sure shall keep a younger company:
Pass where beneath their rangèd gonfalons
The starry cohorts shake their shielded suns,
The dreadful mass of their enridgèd spears;
Pass where majestical the eternal peers,
The stately choice of the great Saintdom, meet—
A silvern segregation, globed complete
In sandalled shadow of the Triune feet;
Pass by where wait, young poet-wayfarer,
Your cousined clusters, emulous to share
With you the roseal lightnings burning ’mid their hair;
Pass the crystalline sea, the Lampads seven:—
Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven.
THE POPPY.
TO MONICA.
SUMMER set lip to earth’s bosom bare.
And left the flushed print in a poppy there:
Like a yawn of fire from the grass it came,
And the fanning wind puffed it to flapping flame.
With burnt mouth red like a lion’s it drank
The blood of the sun as he slaughtered sank,
And dipped its cup in the purpurate shine
When the eastern conduits ran with wine.
Till it grew lethargied with fierce bliss,
And hot as a swinked gipsy is,
And drowsed in sleepy savageries,
With mouth wide a-pout for a sultry kiss.
A child and man paced side by side,
Treading the skirts of eventide;
But between the clasp of his hand and hers
Lay, felt not, twenty withered years.
She turned, with the rout of her dusk South hair,
And saw the sleeping gipsy there;
And snatched and snapped it in swift child’s whim,
With—“Keep it, long as you live!”—to him.
And his smile, as nymphs from their laving meres,
Trembled up from a bath of tears;
And joy, like a mew sea-rocked apart,
Tossed on the wave of his troubled heart.
“All things by immortal power,Near and FarHiddenlyTo each other linked are,That thou canst not stir a flowerWithout troubling of a star.”
“Nothing begins and nothing ends That is not paid with moan; For we are born in others pain, And perish in our own”
“An atheist is a man who believes himself to be an accident”
“The devil doesnt know how to sing, only how to howl.”
“I do not believe that Nature has a heart; and I suspect that, like many another beauty, she has been credited with a heart because of her face”
“The chambers in the house of dreams Are fed with so divine an air, That Times hoary wings grow young therein, And they who walk there are most fair.”
Where is the land of Luthany,Where is the tract of Elenore?I am bound therefore.Pierce thy heart to find the key;With thee takeOnly what none else would keep;Learn to dream when thou dost wake;Learn to wake when thou dost sleep.Learn to water joy with tears,Learn from fears to vanquish fears;To hope, for thou darst not despair;Exult, for that thou darst not grieve;Plough thou the rock until it bear;Know, for thou else couldst not believe;Lose, that the lost thou mayst receive;Die, for none other way canst live.When earth and heave lay down their veil,And that apocalypse turns thee pale;When thy seeing blindeth theeTo what thy fellow-mortals see;When their sight to thee is sightless;Their living, death; their light, most lightless;Search no more--Pass the gates of Luthany,Tread the region Elenore!Where is the land of Luthany?And where the region Elenore?I do faint therefore.When to the new eyes of theeAll things by immortal power,Near or far,HiddenlyTo each other linked are,That thou canst not stir a flowerWithout troubling of a star;When thy song is shield and mirrorTo the fair snake curled pain,Where thou darst affront her terrorThat on her thou mayst attainPersean Conquest; seek no more,O seek no more!Pass the gates of Luthany,Tread the region Elenore!
The fairest things have fleetest end,Their scent survives their close:But the roses scent is bitternessTo her who loved the rose.
My freshness is spending its wavering shower in the dust.
Summer set lip to earths bosom bare, and left the flushed print in a poppy there.
In all change well looked into the germinal good out-vails the apparent ill.
What you theoretically know vividly realize.
Nothing begins and nothing ends That is not paid with moan For we are born in others pain And perish in our own.
All things by immortal power. Near of far, to each other linked are, that thou canst not stir a flower without troubling of a star.
