displays,
         Cozening my mateless days
         By sick, intolerable delays.
And so I keep mine uncompanioned ways;
And so my touch, to golden poesies
Turning love’s bread, is bought at hunger’s price.
So,—in the inextinguishable wars
Which roll song’s Orient on the sullen night
Whose ragged banners in their own despite
Take on the tinges of the hated light,—
So Sultan Phoebus has his Janizars.
But if mine unappeasèd cicatrices
         Might get them lawful ease;
Were any gentle passion hallowed me,
   Who must none other breath of passion feel
   Save such as winnows to the fledgèd heel
      The tremulous Paradisal plumages;
      The conscious sacramental trees
            Which ever be
            Shaken celestially,
Consentient with enamoured wings, might know my love for thee.
Yet is there more, whereat none guesseth, love!
   Upon the ending of my deadly night
(Whereof thou hast not the surmise, and slight
Is all that any mortal knows thereof),
   Thou wert to me that earnest of day’s light,
When, like the back of a gold-mailèd saurian
   Heaving its slow length from Nilotic slime,
The first long gleaming fissure runs Aurorian
   Athwart the yet dun firmament of prime.
Stretched on the margin of the cruel sea
         Whence they had rescued me,
   With faint and painful pulses was I lying;
         Not yet discerning well
If I had ’scaped, or were an icicle,
         Whose thawing is its dying.
Like one who sweats before a despot’s gate,
Summoned by some presaging scroll of fate,
And knows not whether kiss or dagger wait;
And all so sickened is his countenance,
The courtiers buzz, “Lo, doomed!” and look at him askance:—
         At Fate’s dread portal then
         Even so stood I, I ken,
Even so stood I, between a joy and fear,
And said to mine own heart, “Now if the end be here!”

      They say, Earth’s beauty seems completest
         To them that on their death-beds rest;
      Gentle lady! she smiles sweetest
         Just ere she clasp us to her breast.
And I,—now my Earth’s countenance grew bright,
Did she but smile me towards that nuptial-night?
But whileas on such dubious bed I lay,
               One unforgotten day,
      As a sick child waking sees
         Wide-eyed daisies
      Gazing on it from its hand,
      Slipped there for its dear amazes;
      So between thy father’s knees
         I saw thee stand,
         And through my hazes
Of pain and fear thine eyes’ young wonder shone.
Then, as flies scatter from a carrion,
   Or rooks in spreading gyres like broken smoke
   Wheel, when some sound their quietude has broke,
Fled, at thy countenance, all that doubting spawn:
      The heart which I had questioned spoke,
A cry impetuous from its depths was drawn,—
“I take the omen of this face of dawn!”
And with the omen to my heart cam’st thou.
         Even with a spray of tears
That one light draft was fixed there for the years.

         And now?—
The hours I tread ooze memories of thee, Sweet!
      Beneath my casual feet.
      With rainfall as the lea,
         The day is drenched with thee;
      In little exquisite surprises
Bubbling deliciousness of thee arises
            From sudden places,
      Under the common traces
Of my most lethargied and customed paces.

      As an Arab journeyeth
      Through a sand of Ayaman,
      Lean Thirst, lolling its cracked tongue,
      Lagging by his side along;
      And a rusty-wingèd Death
      Grating its low flight before,
      Casting ribbèd shadows o’er
      The blank desert, blank and tan:
He lifts by hap toward where the morning’s roots are
            His weary stare,—
   Sees, although they plashless mutes are,
      Set in a silver air
   Fountains of gelid shoots are,
      Making the daylight fairest fair;
   Sees the palm and tamarind
Tangle the tresses of a phantom wind;—
A sight like innocence when one has sinned!
A green and maiden freshness smiling there,
         While with unblinking glare
The tawny-hided desert crouches watching her.

            ’Tis a vision:
      Yet the greeneries Elysian
      He has known in tracts afar;
      Thus the enamouring fountains flow,
      Those the very palms that grow,
By rare-gummed Sava, or Herbalimar.—

      Such a watered dream has tarried
      Trembling on my desert arid;
            Even so
         Its lovely gleamings
            Seemings show
         Of things not seemings;
            And I gaze,
      Knowing that, beyond my ways,
            Verily
         All these are, for these are she.
      Eve no gentlier lays her cooling cheek
      On the burning brow of the sick earth,
         Sick with death, and sick with birth,
   Aeon to aeon, in secular fever twirled,
         Than thy shadow soothes this weak
         And distempered being of mine.
In all I work, my hand includeth thine;
         Thou rushest down in every stream
Whose passion frets my spirit’s deepening gorge;
Unhood’st mine eyas-heart, and fliest my dream;
         Thou swing’st the hammers of my forge;
As the innocent moon, that nothing does but shine,
Moves all the labouring surges of the world.
   Pierce where thou wilt the springing thought in me,
And there thy pictured countenance lies enfurled,
   As in the cut fern lies the imaged tree.
      This poor song that sings of thee,
   This fragile song, is but a curled
      Shell outgathered from thy sea,
   And murmurous still of its nativity.
            Princess of Smiles!
Sorceress of most unlawful-lawful wiles!
      Cunning pit for gazers’ senses,
      Overstrewn with innocences!
      Purities gleam white like statues
      In the fair lakes of thine eyes,
      And I watch the sparkles that use
            There to rise,
            Knowing these
      Are bubbles from the calyces
      Of the lovely thoughts that breathe
Paving, like water-flowers, thy spirit’s floor beneath.

            O thou most dear!
Who art thy sex’s complex harmony
      God-set more facilely;
      To thee may love draw near
      Without one blame or fear,
Unchidden save