Till heavily parts a sinister chasm, * a grisly jaw, whose verges soon,
Slowly and ominously filled * by the on-coming plenilune,
Supportlessly congest with fire, * and suddenly spit forth the moon:—
With beauty, not terror, through tangled error * of night-dipt plumes so burned their charge;
Swayed and parted the globing clusters * so,—disclosed from their kindling marge,
Roseal-chapleted, splendent-vestured, * the singer there where God’s light lay large.
Hu, hu! a wonder! a wonder! see, * clasping the singer’s glories clings
A dingy creature, even to laughter * cloaked and clad in patchwork things,
Shrinking close from the unused glows * of the seraphs’ versicoloured wings.
A rhymer, rhyming a futile rhyme, * he had crept for convoy through Eden-ways
Into the shade of the poet’s glory, * darkened under his prevalent rays,
Fearfully hoping a distant welcome * as a poor kinsman of his lays.
The angels laughed with a lovely scorning: *—“Who has done this sorry deed in
The garden of our Father, God? * ’mid his blossoms to sow this weed in?
Never our fingers knew this stuff: * not so fashion the looms of Eden!”
The singer bowed his brow majestic, * searching that patchwork through and through,
Feeling God’s lucent gazes traverse * his singing-stoling and spirit too:
The hallowed harpers were fain to frown * on the strange thing come ’mid their sacred crew,
Only the singer that was earth * his fellow-earth and his own self knew.
But the poet rent off robe and wreath, * so as a sloughing serpent doth,
Laid them at the rhymer’s feet, * shed down wreath and raiment both,
Stood in a dim and shamèd stole, * like the tattered wing of a musty moth.
“Thou gav’st the weed and wreath of song, * the weed and wreath are solely Thine,
And this dishonest vesture * is the only vesture that is mine;
The life I textured, Thou the song *—my handicraft is not divine!”
He wrested o’er the rhymer’s head * that garmenting which wrought him wrong;
A flickering tissue argentine * down dripped its shivering silvers long:—
“Better thou wov’st thy woof of life * than thou didst weave thy woof of song!”
Never a chief in Saintdom was, * but turned him from the Poet then;
Never an eye looked mild on him * ’mid all the angel myriads ten,
Save sinless Mary, and sinful Mary *—the Mary titled Magdalen.