| |
| TOO wearily had we and song | |
| Been left to look and left to long, | |
| Yea, song and we to long and look, | |
| Since thine acquainted feet forsook | |
| The mountain where the Muses hymn | 5 |
| For Sinai and the Seraphim. | |
| Now in both the mountains’ shine | |
| Dress thy countenance, twice divine! | |
| From Moses and the Muses draw | |
| The Tables of thy double Law! | 10 |
| His rod-born fount and Castaly | |
| Let the one rock bring forth for thee, | |
| Renewing so from either spring | |
| The songs which both thy countries sing: | |
| Or we shall fear lest, heavened thus long, | 15 |
| Thou shouldst forget thy native song, | |
| And mar thy mortal melodies | |
| With broken stammer of the skies. | |
| |
| Ah! let the sweet birds of the Lord | |
| With earth’s waters make accord; | 20 |
| Teach how the crucifix may be | |
| Carven from the laurel-tree, | |
| Fruit of the Hesperides | |
| Burnish take on Eden-trees, | |
| The Muses’ sacred grove be wet | 25 |
| With the red dew of Olivet, | |
| And Sappho lay her burning brows | |
| In white Cecilia’s lap of snows! | |
| |
| Thy childhood must have felt the stings | |
| Of too divine o’ershadowings; | 30 |
| Its odorous heart have been a blossom | |
| That in darkness did unbosom, | |
| Those fire-flies of God to invite, | |
| Burning spirits, which by night | |
| Bear upon their laden wing | 35 |
| To such hearts impregnating. | |
| For flowers that night-wings fertilize | |
| Mock down the stars’ unsteady eyes, | |
| And with a happy, sleepless glance | |
| Gaze the moon out of countenance. | 40 |
| I think thy girlhood’s watchers must | |
| Have took thy folded songs on trust, | |
| And felt them, as one feels the stir | |
| Of still lightnings in the hair, | |
| When conscious hush expects the cloud | 45 |
| To speak the golden secret loud | |
| Which tacit air is privy to; | |
| Flasked in the grape the wine they knew, | |
| Ere thy poet-mouth was able | |
| For its first young starry babble. | 50 |
| Keep’st thou not yet that subtle grace? | |
| Yea, in this silent interspace, | |
| God sets His poems in thy face! | |
| |
| The loom which mortal verse affords, | |
| Out of weak and mortal words, | 55 |
| Wovest thou thy singing-weed in, | |
| To a rune of thy far Eden. | |
| Vain are all disguises! ah, | |
| Heavenly incognita! | |
| Thy mien bewrayeth through that wrong | 60 |
| The great Uranian House of Song! | |
| As the vintages of earth | |
| Taste of the sun that riped their birth. | |
| We know what never cadent Sun | |
| Thy lampèd clusters throbbed upon, | 65 |
| What plumèd feet the winepress trod; | |
| Thy wine is flavorous of God. | |
| Whatever singing-robe thou wear | |
| Has the Paradisal air; | |
| And some gold feather it has kept | 70 |
| Shows what Floor it lately swept! | |
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