Classic Poem

Come, Flower of Life, and lay thy beauty's rose
Upon the breast that storm and thee divide;
And like true knights whose queen no laggard knows,
Forth gently shall my love-bid fancies ride
To serve thy heart, and bring thy wishes in;
And shuttling rhyme a web shall make thee then
Whilst thou dost gaze, nor thy poor weaver chide.

Sweet wonder lay upon my opening eyes
That showed me in a gracious court of trees
Whose leaves were clouds that caught and lost sunrise,
And fell in mist upon a twirling breeze
That traced the ground and to a river grew,
Casting its tender spray in tinted dew
As curved its silver way with laughing ease.
I followed, forest deep, this wooing guide
Through fragrant gloom of cliff and bower o'er-grown,
Free as a fawn the stream 'twas born beside,
Nor held my step with fear at sounds unknown,—
High murmurings among the cloudy leaves,
As when some dull and dreamy throng receives
Strange lyric stir from power not its own.

And more and more the murmurs grew like song,
Save that no song could drop such honey-rain;
The lyre-god's self would do it unsweet wrong,
Were he that golden sound to breathe again;
And as my guide into a cave did pass,
That closèd seemed, and yet unclosèd was,
That airy cadence stooped and bore me in.

Then wandered life from out my memory,
Gone from desire, as ghost at last must go;
Nor shadow fell, where shadow could not be,
From those dark lures that make our worldly woe.
O Sweet, forgive that my inconstant tongue
Should dim the glories that I moved among
With name of gloom that wrongs the world we know.

The dome was fair as Heaven, or Heaven, in sooth,
It might have been, but that there shone,
The centre 'neath, a fountain-featured truth
That might no rival of its radiance own.
Ah, this was Heaven's heart, if Heaven be,
And the bright dome but its gold boundary;
Yet gleamèd here no crown or mounted throne.

The music budded till it dropped soft showers;
All things to other changed, though here no mage;
Clouds turned to light, and light to sweeter powers,
And chance and change to all was privilege;
The air was full of phantom-stirring things,
And I not breathed but that I touched new wings,
And sent some dream on airy pilgrimage.

Ere my delight had held me pausing long
Beneath a cloud that rained me lilies cool,
A stir awoke amid a ferny throng
That leaned their trembling grace above a pool,
And following the flutter of a song
To feathery rest where blossoms minute-young
Oped arms of vermeil soft, and dawning gule,

Mine eye saw Love. White on a verge's mount,
That swelled to show its burden dear, she lay;
A sighing mist that partly filled the fount,
And o'er the brink sought tenderly to stray,
For her fair body pillowed soft the ground,
Growing glad upward arms to clasp her round
And of each grace take new and sweet account.

In nymphlike mould her gentle figure ran,
Though nymph so bright did never sport in dell;
Her eyes an angel's were, if angels' can
Be thousand times more fair than dream can tell;
Unfalling tears they held, yet so could please
They might have hermits made forget their knees
And kings find out they had them, such their spell:

Above her forehead hovered close a star,
Like spirit guard, whose ever-changing ray
Was fed with fires of sacrifice that are
Love's life,—the offerings earth lovers lay
Upon her shrine, and as they pale or glow
She smiles or droops as this true star doth show,—
Or dim or bright as serve we or betray.

Beside her was an instrument of tune,
Of changeful beauty as her couch of cloud,
And as I looked she woke it to strange rune,
As in low murmur moved her thoughts aloud,—
For all Love's thoughts are music,—but to make
That ditty o'er, what heart would undertake,
And with a mortal chant her utterance shroud?

Anear her stood a youth bare of all guise
Save when a light enwrapped him in its flame;
He bore the ages in his listening eyes,
And prophecy there waited for a name;
Joy loved him best, and gave eternity,
And his lithe, lustrous being seemed to say
“I am the aspiration of all dream.”

Upward he gazed as though he would read o'er
The scroll of rising winds, the burst of suns,
And lists—ah, might it be earth's shore
Freed of her epic hates and tunèd groans!
War's passion beat, and woe's sad chorus past,
And all her song pure-winnowed, clear at last,
Pouring the music of her happy moons!

Then moved his lips, but yet unborn is he
Who may with their resound make sweet his own;
He who shall come as morning walks the sea,
Mate of the Wind when all her harps are one;
So much we know by frail yet quenchless light
That creeps through shadows of our lute-poor night,—
The brave rose-glimmers of his singing dawn.

Lo, every dream new-homing from far ways
On silent wing or spirit wave of air,
Came circling o'er his head in hovering maze,
Seen not, nor heard, albeit I knew them there;
But as each passed before his lifted face,
They gleamed to sight, and grace so mounted grace
My eyes seemed there anointed, though afar.

Then radiant couriers shook the fountain Heart
And turned me thither. Sweet and bold surprise
Took all my being with such tremorous start
I marvelled how aught else had held my eyes.
I could not tell what the bright wonder was
Whose garner-breast held every beauteous cause
Makes earth remember, and forget, the skies.

There shone the star that lit man's first desire,
And there his hope that latest fluttered bare;
One look translating made me as a lyre
Swept with a joy the heart of Truth might share,—
Truth that is silent, wanting joy to sing,—
But ere I breathèd had for wondering,
A face out-flashed wreathed with sun-flinging hair.

Youth was the angel of that countenance,
Where graces sprang in ever fairer throng;
Yet she was old ere any star's birth-dance,
If word of earthly time, or old or young,
Means aught of eyes whose brooding splendour swept
The silences when Uncreation slept
And gave the dream that woke the suns in song.

Each age that left a glory left it writ
Upon her brow, as with a pen of light
Whose track was pearls, and as each whiter lit
The story there, the court grew softlier bright;
Each dullsome thing—Oh, no thing there was dull!
Flushed o'er itself with glow more beautiful,
As might fair, sleeping gods wake to delight.

Then all the wonder that made vague her form,
Oped on a figure splendent so to view;
Mine eyes an instant swooned; and as from storm
Of warring rainbows it endearèd grew
To shape of her who 'gan descending slow,
Fair Love looked up, and Poesy knelt low:
'Twas Beauty's self, and mother of the two.

Whilst yet I gazed all vanished were the three;
And as a sighing shore no more may hold
The mermaid wave that would go out to sea,
So slipped the vision from my fancy bold.
O Flower of Life, no rest for me but this,
To dream awhile, and then awake to press
Upon my heart thy curls' beloved gold!