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I
I MAKE not my division of the hours | |
| By dials, clocks, or waking birds’ acclaim, | |
| Nor measure seasons by the reigning flowers, | |
| The spring’s green glories, or the autumn’s flame. | |
| To me thy absence winter is, and night, | 5 |
| Thy presence spring, and the meridian day. | |
| From thee I draw my darkness and my light, | |
| Now swart eclipse, now more than heavenly ray. | |
| Thy coming warmeth all my soul like fire, | |
| And through my heartstrings melodies do run, | 10 |
| As poets fabled the Memnonian lyre | |
| Hymned acclamation to the rising sun. | |
| My heart hums music in thy influence set: | |
| So winds put harps Aeolian on the fret. | |
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II
The rude rebuffs of bay-besieging winds | 15 |
| But make the anchored ships towards them turn, | |
| So thy unkindness unto me but finds | |
| My love tow’rds thee with keener ardour burn; | |
| As myrrh incised bleeds odoriferous gum, | |
| I am become a poet through my wrong, | 20 |
| For through the sad-mouthed heart-wounds in me come | |
| These earthly echoes of celestial song. | |
| My thoughts as birds make flutter in my heart, | |
| Poor muffled choristers! whose sad refrain | |
| Gives sorrow sleep, and bids that woe depart | 25 |
| Whose heavy burden weighs upon my strain. | |
| Imprisoned larks pipe sweeter than when free, | |
| And I, enslaved, have learnt to sing for thee. | |
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III
Thy throne is ringed by amorous cavaliers, | |
| And all the air is heavy with the sound | 30 |
| Of tiptoe compliment, whilst anxious fears | |
| Strike dumb the lesser satellites around. | |
| One clasps thy hand, another squires thy chair, | |
| Some bask in light shed from the eyes of thee, | |
| Some taste the perfume shaken from thy hair, | 35 |
| Some watch afar their worshipped deity. | |
| All have their orbits, and due distance keep, | |
| As round the sun concentric planets move; | |
| Smiles light yon lord, whilst I, at distance, weep | |
| In the sad twilight of uncertain love. | 40 |
| ’Thwart thee, my sun, how many a mincer slips, | |
| Whose constant transits make for me eclipse. | |
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IV
Know that the age of Pyrrha is long passed, | |
| And though thy form is eternized in stone, | |
| The sculptor’s doings cannot Time outlast, | 45 |
| Nor Beauty live save but in blood and bone; | |
| Though new Pygmalions should again arise | |
| Idolatrous of images like thee, | |
| Time the iconoclast e’en stone destroys, | |
| As steadfast rocks are splintered by the sea. | 50 |
| Thou shouldst indeed a hamadryad be, | |
| Inhabiting some knotted oak alone, | |
| And so revive the worship of the Tree | |
| Which, by succession, outlives barren stone. | |
| Though thus transformed still worshippers would woo, | 55 |
| As Daphne-laurels poets yet pursue. | |
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V
Why dost thou like a Roman vestal make | |
| The whole long year unmarriageable May, | |
| And, like the phoenix, no companion take | |
| To share the wasteful burthen of decay? | 60 |
| See this rich climate, where the airs that blow | |
| Are heavenly suspirings, and the skies | |
| Steep day from head to heel in summer glow, | |
| And moons make mellow mornings as they rise; | |
| As brides white-veiled that come to marry earth, | 65 |
| Now each mist-morning sweet July attires, | |
| Now moon-night mists are not of earthly birth, | |
| But silver smoke blown down from heavenly fires. | |
| Skies kiss the earth, clouds join the land and sea, | |
| All Nature marries, only thou art free. | 70 |
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VI
O what an eve was that which ushered in | |
| The night that crowned the wish I cherished long! | |
| Heaven’s curtains oped to see the night begin, | |
| And infant winds broke lightly into song; | |
| Methought the hours in softly-swelling sound | 75 |
| Wailed funeral dirges for the dying light; | |
| I seemed to stand upon a neutral ground | |
| Between the confines of the day and night; | |
| For o’er the east Night stretched her sable rod, | |
| And ranked her stars in glittering array, | 80 |
| While, in the west, the golden twilight trod | |
| With [burning] crimsons on the verge of day. | |
| Bright bars of cloud formed in the glowing even | |
| A Jacob-ladder joining earth and heaven. | |
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VII
O sweet Queen-city of the golden South, | 85 |
| Piercing the evening with thy starlit spires, | |
| Thou wert a witness when I kissed the mouth | |
| Of her whose eyes outblazed the skiey fires. | |
| I saw the parallels of thy long streets | |
| With lamps like angels shining all a-row, | 90 |
| While overhead the empyrean seats | |
| Of gods were steeped in paradisic glow. | |
| The Pleiades with rarer fires were tipt, | |
| Hesper sat throned upon his jewelled chair, | |
| The belted giant’s triple stars were dipt | 95 |
| In all the splendour of Olympian air. | |
| On high to bless, the Southern Cross did shine, | |
| Like that which blazed o’er conquering Constantine. | |
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