Youth was the angel of that countenance,
Where graces sprang in ever fairer throng;
Yet she was old ere any star's birth-dance,
If word of earthly time, or old or young,
Means aught of eyes whose brooding splendour swept
The silences when Uncreation slept
And gave the dream that woke the suns in song.
Each age that left a glory left it writ
Upon her brow, as with a pen of light
Whose track was pearls, and as each whiter lit
The story there, the court grew softlier bright;
Each dullsome thing—Oh, no thing there was dull!
Flushed o'er itself with glow more beautiful,
As might fair, sleeping gods wake to delight.
Then all the wonder that made vague her form,
Oped on a figure splendent so to view;
Mine eyes an instant swooned; and as from storm
Of warring rainbows it endearèd grew
To shape of her who 'gan descending slow,
Fair Love looked up, and Poesy knelt low:
'Twas Beauty's self, and mother of the two.
Whilst yet I gazed all vanished were the three;
And as a sighing shore no more may hold
The mermaid wave that would go out to sea,
So slipped the vision from my fancy bold.
O Flower of Life, no rest for me but this,
To dream awhile, and then awake to press
Upon my heart thy curls' beloved gold!
MID-MAY
Hand clamped to desk,
And eyes on task undone,
I see a meadow pool,
With shaken willows silvering.
O, gods that trouble me,
Wherefore, wherefore?—
Pan is at the door.
An arabesque
Of sifted sun
And forest star-grass, cool
With shadows tunnelling:
Witch-work that tauntingly
Webs my bare floor:
Ah, Pan is at the door.
I'm civilized,
And in my veins
The mountain brook is still
As water in a jar;
But oh, the heart hill-born,
It paineth sore,
For Pan is at the door.