| |
| AND thus all-expectant abiding I waited not long for soon | |
| A boat came gliding and gliding out in the light of the moon, | |
| Gliding with muffled oars, slowly, a thin dark line, | |
| Round from the shadowing shores into the silver shine | |
| Of the clear moon westering now, and still drew on and on, | 5 |
| While the water before its prow breaking and glistering shone, | |
| Slowly in silence strange; and the rower row’d till it lay | |
| Afloat within easy range deep in the curve of the bay; | |
| And besides the rower were two: a Woman, who sat in the stern, | |
| And Her by her fame I knew, one of those fames that burn, | 10 |
| Startling and kindling the world, one whose likeness we everywhere see; | |
| And a man reclining half-curl’d with an indolent grace at her knee, | |
| The Signor, lord of her choice; and he lightly touch’d a guitar;— | |
| A guitar for that glorious voice! Illumine the sun with a star! | |
| She sat superb and erect, stately, all-happy, serene, | 15 |
| Her right hand toying uncheck’d with the hair of that page of a Queen; | |
| With her head and her throat and her bust like the bust and the throat and the head | |
| Of Her who has long been dust, of her who shall never be dead, | |
| Preserv’d by the potent art made trebly potent by love, | |
| While the transient ages depart from under the heavens above,— | 20 |
| Preserv’d in the color and line on the canvas fulgently flung | |
| By Him the Artist divine who triumph’d and vanish’d so young: | |
| Surely there rarely hath been a lot more to be envied in life | |
| Than thy lot, O Fornarina, whom Raphael’s heart took to wife. | |
| |
| There was silence yet for a time save the tinkling capricious and quaint, | 25 |
| Then She lifted her voice sublime, no longer tender and faint, | |
| Pathetic and tremulous, no! but firm as a column it rose, | |
| Rising solemn and slow with a full rich swell to the close, | |
| Firm as a marble column soaring with noble pride | |
| In a triumph of rapture solemn to some Hero deified; | 30 |
| In a rapture of exultation made calm by its stress intense, | |
| In a triumph of consecration and a jubilation immense. | |
| And the Voice flow’d on and on, and ever it swell’d as it pour’d, | |
| Till the stars that throbb’d as they shone seem’d throbbing with it in accord; | |
| Till the moon herself in my dream, still Empress of all the night, | 35 |
| Was only that voice supreme translated into pure light: | |
| And I lost all sense of the earth though I still had sense of the sea; | |
| And I saw the stupendous girth of a tree like the Norse World-Tree; | |
| And its branches fill’d all the sky, and the deep sea water’d its root, | |
| And the clouds were its leaves on high and the stars were its silver fruit; | 40 |
| Yet the stars were the notes of the singing and the moon was the voice of the song, | |
| Through the vault of the firmament ringing and swelling resistlessly strong; | |
| And the whole vast night was a shell for that music of manifold might, | |
| And was strain’d by the stress of the swell of the music yet vaster than night. | |
| And I saw as a crystal fountain whose shaft was a column of light | 45 |
| More high than the loftiest mountain ascend the abyss of the night; | |
| And its spray fill’d all the sky, and the clouds were the clouds of its spray, | |
| Which glitter’d in star-points on high and fill’d with pure silver the bay; | |
| And ever in rising and falling it sang as it rose and it fell, | |
| And the heavens with their pure azure walling all puls’d with the pulse of its swell, | 50 |
| For the stars were the notes of the singing and the moon was the voice of the song | |
| Through the vault of the firmament ringing and swelling ineffably strong; | |
| And the whole vast night was a shell for that music of manifold might, | |
| And was strain’d by the stress of the swell of the music yet vaster than night: | |
| And the fountain in swelling and soaring and filling beneath and above, | 55 |
| Grew flush’d with red fire in outpouring, transmuting great power into love, | |
| Great power with a greater love flushing, immense and intense and supreme, | |
| As if all the World’s heart-blood outgushing ensanguin’d the trance of my dream; | |
| And the waves of its blood seem’d to dash on the shore of the sky to the cope | |
| With the stress of the fire of a passion and yearning of limitless scope, | 60 |
| Vast fire of a passion and yearning, keen torture of rapture intense, | |
| A most unendurable burning consuming the soul with the sense:— | |
| “Love, love only, forever love with its torture of bliss; | |
| All the world’s glories can never equal two souls in one kiss: | |
| Love, and ever love wholly; love in all time and all space; | 65 |
| Life is consummate then solely in the death of a burning embrace.” | |
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