The first time that you met?
THE MOTHER
Ah, that first time!
It was a night of gods, a night of love.
The earth was still beneath a summer sky
So thickly sown with stars, that it appeared
A vase of ebon in a silver shroud;
No breath there stirred, the hot air seemed to hang
In heavy folds, like silken tapestry,
Clinging, caressing; all the birds were still,
No nightingale with her ecstatic pain
Transfixed the silence; earth was dead asleep,
Sunk in a scented languor; every flower
Steamed all its odour forth, as it would pour
Its soul before the mystery of love.
And I into the night had stolen forth,
Oppressed, with pain or joy, I knew not which,
Knew only that the blood throughout my veins
Did run like liquid fire, head to foot
I tingled with sensation, all my hair
Stirred, as with separate life within itself;
And as I plucked the flowers and wove them in,
Purple and waxen, languorously sweet,
They seemed anticipation of a touch
Should make each thread of hair become a bird,
Fluttering with outstretched wings. From off my breast
I flung my garment back; the soft air wooed
Like sleepy lips ere love is yet awake.
Then, as I lingered in the dusky depths,
All flower-shadowed, blacker than the night,
Blacker than shadows cast by palace walls
Upon a moonlit night, there, in that web
Of close-knit darkness, suddenly there came
The wonder unto me, the god, my love—
Within mine ears there was a silver silence,
And in my heart a golden burst of song,
The darkness burned around me, with a light
Born from the other worlds, and there he stood,
Radiant, godlike, purple were his wings
And splashed with fire, purply-black his hair
And crowned with stars for flowers; in his eyes
My soul sank into passion and was drowned.
CHORUS
Oh, what a pair of birds,
Hidden among the leaves!
He a god and she a maid,
Deathless lips on mortal laid;
(Nothing death retrieves.)
There a son of God
And child of mortal seed
Met and kissed as love with love;
Oh the leaves were thick above,
No stars saw the deed.
No stars, but the eye of God?
Ah, perchance He saw
How a god to mortal prayed
And the fatal compact made
'Gainst eternal law.
Veiled and still the night.
So, a fount of tears
Springs at first unseen, unguessed,
Till at last the flood confessed
Gushes down the years.
Son of a son of God
And the daughter of men too frail!
Union of the nature's twain?
Only sorrow and want and pain,
Striving without avail;