THE WOOING PINE.
THERE was a lady, starshine in her look,
Of lineage fierce, yet tremulous and kind
As the field-gossamer, that down the wind
Floats gleamingly from some enthistled nook;
And wayward as her beauty was her mind
That evermore bright errant journeys took.
Her father’s houndish lords she moved among,
From feud and uproar dewily distraught;
Winnowed her harp of its least pain; and brought
Delight’s full freshet to a beggar’s tongue,
Or spun amid her maids with chapel-thought
That on a crystal pivot burned and swung.
But night on night, an exile from sleek rest,
She nestled warm before her hearth-fire low,
To watch its little wind-born planets go
Orbing; and from the martyr-oak’s charred breast,
In spirit-blue flame, in quintuple wild glow,
The tossing leaves prolong their summer zest.
And ailingly, she needs must often sigh,
Perplexèd out of her rich wonted glee,
Whereof some unseen warder kept the key,
And quell the dark defiance of her eye
In patience, as a torch dips in the sea.
And so, in brooding, went the white days by.
Unto the horsemen brave in war’s array
She waved no token from her latticed house,
Nor yet of princelings bare upon her brows
Love’s salutation; but from such as they
Turned, as a shy brook wheels from jutting boughs,
And in a sidelong glimmer sobs away
Her sealèd sense beheld no man, nor heard,
Nor lent its troth to any mortal bond,
But lived heart-full of vital light beyond,
And with miraculous tides of being stirred,
Lingering tho’ eager, till the forest fond
Winged to its own pure peace this homing bird.
For, sad with rains of unrevealed desire,
And heavy with predestined glory’s beam,
She to the water-girdled wood’s extreme
Stole from her suitors’ pleas, her father’s ire,
Far from their brambly ways to sit and dream,
And make sweet plaint, in daylight’s dying fire;
When, one with lilt of her own veins, there rose
Across remote and jasmine-pillared space,
A voice of so persuasive, piteous grace
That all her globèd sorrow did unclose
To fragrant helpfulness in that still place,
And sought, in tears, the breather of such woes.