[Charista Musing]
Moveless, on the marge of a sunny cornfield,
Rapt in sudden revery while thou standest,
Like the sheaves, in beautiful Doric yellow
Clad to the ankle,
Oft to thee with delicate hasty footstep
So I steal, and suffer because I find thee
Inly flown, and only a fallen feather
Left of my darling.
Give me back thy wakening breath, thy ringlets
Fragrant as the vine of the bean in blossom,
And those eyes of violet dusk and daylight
Under sea-water,
Eyes too far away, and too full of longing!
Yes: and go not heavenward where I lose thee,
Go not, go not whither I cannot follow,
Being but earthly.
Willing swallow poisèd upon my finger,
Little wild-wing ever from me escaping,
For the care thou art to me, I thy lover
Love thee, and fear thee.
[The Still of the Year]
Up from the willow-root
Subduing agonies leap;
The field-mouse and the purple moth
Turn over amid their sleep;
The icicled rocks aloft
Burn amber and blue alway,
And trickling and tinkling
The snows of the drift decay.
Oh, mine is the head must hang
And share the immortal pang!
Winter or spring is fair;
Thaw's hard to bear.
Heigho! my heart's sick.
Sweet is cherry-time, sweet
A shower, a bobolink,
And trillium, fain far under
Her cloistering leaf to shrink;
But here in the vast, unborn,
Is the bitterest place to be,
Till striving and longing
Shall quicken the earth and me.
What change inscrutable
Is nigh us, we know not well;
Gone is the strength to sigh
Either to live or die.
Heigho! my heart's sick.
[A Footnote to a Famous Lyric]
True love's own talisman, which here
Shakespeare and Sidney failed to teach,
A steel-and-velvet Cavalier
Gave to our Saxon speech:
Chief miracle of theme and touch
That all must envy and adore:
I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.
No critic born since Charles was King
But sighed in smiling, as he read:
"Here's theft supreme of everything
A poet might have said!"
Young knight and wit and beau, who won
Mid war's upheaval, ladies' praise,
Was't well of you, ere you had done,
To blight our modern bays?
Oh, yet to you, whose random hand
Struck from the dark whole gems like these
(Archaic beauty, never planned
Nor reared by wan degrees,
Which leaves an artist poor, and Art
An earldom richer all her years);
To you, dead on your shield apart,
Be "Ave!" passed in tears.
'Twas virtue's breath inflamed your lyre:
Heroic from the heart it ran;
Nor for the shedding of such fire
Lived, since, a manlier man.
And till your strophe sweet and bold
So lovely aye, so lonely long,
Love's self outdo, dear Lovelace! hold
The parapets of Song.