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, SWEET dimness of her loosened hair's downfall About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head In gracious fostering union garlanded; Her tremulous smiles; her glances' sweet recall Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial; Her mouth's culled sweetness by thy kisses shed On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led Back to her mouth, which answers there for all: What sweeter than these things, except the thing In lacking which all these would lose their sweet : The confident heart's still fervor: the swift beat And soft subsidence of the spirit's wing, Then when it feels, in cloud-girt way faring. The breath of kindred plumes against its feet? XXIV. PRIDE OF YOUTH EVEN as a child, of sorrow that we give The dead, but little in his heart can find, Since without need of thought to his clear mind Their turn it is to die and his to live :Even so the winged New Love smiles to receive THOU lovely and beloved, thou my love; Whose kiss seems still the first; whose summoning eyes, Even now, as for our love-world's new sunrise, Shed very dawn; whose voice, attuned above All modulation of the deep-bowered dove, 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 — The evident heart of all life sown and mown. |