The silence of the white, bedewed way
Was flanked still with the songs of amorous birds,
Bruiting their joy for heaven’s hearing, when,
Like to an opal set in azurite.
Rose one lone star above the pillowed sun ;
And dream-enfolding night, as at a sign.
Dropped fringes of her curtain from the East.
Soon ever-deepening shadows fell athwart
A garden where the poet sat, until
The printed page wherein he read was blurred,
And winged words lay prone and massed in heaps,
Incapable of flight to his rapt mind –
Their colouring, too, quite lost, as that of flowers
When dun tone-levelling hues deepen to dark.
All through the golden sunlit day had he
Mused mutely in an arbour far withdrawn ;
Or spiritual converse held with his compeers
Whose songs are as a luminous trail that marks
Their too swift passage through our sphere ; but now
In haste forth-faring from the chosen spot,
He walked towards wide, all-wise, on-sweeping night
That, palpitating, held her secrets close
Within her sombre drapery ; yet he.
As, with a lover’s right, moved back a fold
And, passion seizing him, took his slow fill
Of joy in gazing on her bared breast ;
Swift thereupon, his face upturned to hers,
All ravished with her beauty, he outpoured
His burning love : ” O Queen of mine ! ” he cried,
“Alone in the aromas of thy bosom
May I find bliss ; thy temporal sister. Day,
A myriad clamouring claimants hath, and she
Her wanton love flings profligate ; too loose
And indiscriminate to reach my heart ;
But thou, O chaste and pure as waters in
Their mountain sources, virgin as earth or e’er
A storied sun wooed chaos into form ;
O queenly coy, thou dost this self consume –
Come, bare thy limbs, thy soul, and let me touch
In ecstasy thy nakedness.”
Forthwith
Did she divest herself of each last coil
Wherewith the garish day had hid her parts ;
Yet hastily, as if abashed and shy –
Though cozening with guiles her suitor sad –
She set upon her head a mooned-crown
And all her body’s garb did ornament
With lustre of a million winking stars.
Whereat her lover, sore disconsolate,
To pleading turned and dolorous complaint ;
” Long have I wooed thee ; long, heart-stricken, yearned
To gaze upon the jewelled inner of
Thy soul ; fain would I linger over it,
And, in delirious joy, feast longing eyes
Upon its loveliness ; fain would explore
Its secrets, and thereby my mind, now lit
But dimly as the dawn with morning stars.
Flood with the sun of its omniscience –
Oh ! I have knelt before thee, ever prayed.
And with long fast prepared for entry there
Where none but thine elected one may come !
I am but mocked ! Each time of my approach
Thy star-bespangled veil, dropped silently
As by some unseen servitor who waits
On thy command, thee hides, nay, and engulfs,
In mystery deeper far than e’er before.
Oh ! I am craven with a thousand fears.
And jealous with an ever-burning flame,
Unhappier than the most unhappy shade
That Dante in his vision saw ! If love
Be nought to thee, yet in sheer pity bend
And yield to this entreaty ! ”
As he ceased
A noise came from the concave of the world
Like to the murmur of an ocean swell
Or roll of thunders in great distances ;
And in it he discerned the voice of Night :
” Thus have I made thee, thus shalt thou remain,
Untiring suitor, my eternal lover ;
But wedded confidence can ne’er be thine.”
At sound thereof the lover hid his face
As, longtime, grief and anger held his soul –
Yet, when at length his god-like head he raised.
His brow bared to a passing amorous breeze,
A light showed in the love-inflamed eyes.
“O cruel, unrepentant, to have filled
This soul of mine with such great love of thee
And not requite it. Had it not better been
Me never to have shaped in this strange form
That mateth only with Eternity ! ”
” But thou shall take me, though this blood shall stain,
And so accuse, thy matchless purity !
No longer will I rest content to wait
And sue ; here will I make my protest heard,
Which Earth shall echo to the farthest bourne.
Thee home-accusing of thy treachery.
Deign now my mistress of the dark, tricked out
In myriads of luring lights, – Deign now,
Nay it is meet thou must – gaze down upon
This murder that shall cry aloud, afar,
Throughout the Universe, for just revenge ! ”
Hear did the listening air and see the Earth.
Yet vain, unheeded, were the wail and deed
That shook the ether, stained the callous ground.
At dawn a shepherd passed ; the poet’s brow
With dews was wet, his locks caressed the gorse,
His body’s blood ran ‘neath the wine-red bloom
Of autumn’s heather.
(Charles Granville)
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Based on Topics: Love Poems, World Poems, Night Poems, Light Poems, Mind Poems, Time Poems, Soul Poems, Joy & Excitement Poems, Flowers Poems, Cry Poems, Beauty PoemsBased on Keywords: entreaty, servitor, heart-stricken, colouring, outpoured, flanked, all-wise, compeers, clamouring, ever-burning, aromas