XII.
Lovely in joy but grander yet when rage
O’erflows the dams that reason interposed,
The barriers past, themselves must, loath, engage
And swell the tumult they’d have fain opposed;
There, once enlisted, shows the scene so fair,
Such modulation of impetuous wrath,
That what was scorn’d, now claims their tenderest care,
And arm’d in conscious worth they sally forth.
Aye, ever did thy just soul scorn the wrong,
’Twas only virtue lured thee thus astray;
How oft to goodness did’st thou wile the strong,
By young enticement’s headstrong, winning way,
Till all of theirs was thine, and thou could’st pour
At love’s high altar gifts of virgin ore.
XIII.
Young spirit, thou hast taught me what is joy,
And fathomed nature with a larger line;
How sweet to learn when nature’s powers deploy,
And o’er thy frame their dalliance combine:
Ye passions soothed to one unanimous end,
Thou concord breath’d through avenues of sound,
Witchery, ever winning, from its power to blend
Fancy’s light hints with intuition’s ground:
Fulness of power lives not with those who roam,
Dandling the toy of a fantastic grief,
Iconoclast of woe, it builds its home
In joy’s ebullience at its own relief;
Youth founds the pile where age contented dwells,
And drowns his dearth with draughts from childhood’s wells.
XIV.
A young Apollo flush’d with love and beauty,
The world shall wonder owning thy command;
Now, the boy Eros, scorning rugged duty,
And mocking forms poor custom’s sole demand:
His archness blended with his sprightly grace,
His glance of love and fitfulness and sport,
His human godhead and heaven-moulded face;
These all are mingled in thy witching port:
And, more than these, the eloquence of thy look,
The energy whose fire informs thy frame;
Well might man read thee as the favourite book,
Wherein maternal nature graves her name.
In thy humanity perfection lives,
And kills th’ ideals which rash fiction gives.