The Poems of Sidney Lanier Part 12

IV.

Let no man say, 'He at his lady's feet Lays wors.h.i.+p that to Heaven alone belongs; Yea, swings the incense that for G.o.d is meet In flippant censers of light lover's songs.'

Who says it, knows not G.o.d, nor love, nor thee; For love is large as is yon heavenly dome: In love's great blue, each pa.s.sion is full free To fly his favorite flight and build his home.

Did e'er a lark with skyward-pointing beak Stab by mischance a level-flying dove?

Wife-love flies level, his dear mate to seek: G.o.d-love darts straight into the skies above.

Crossing, the windage of each other's wings But speeds them both upon their journeyings.

____ Baltimore, 1874.

Acknowledgment.

I.

O Age that half believ'st thou half believ'st, Half doubt'st the substance of thine own half doubt, And, half perceiving that thou half perceiv'st, Stand'st at thy temple door, heart in, head out!

Lo! while thy heart's within, helping the choir, Without, thine eyes range up and down the time, Blinking at o'er-bright science, smit with desire To see and not to see. Hence, crime on crime.

Yea, if the Christ (called thine) now paced yon street, Thy halfness hot with His rebuke would swell; Legions of scribes would rise and run and beat His fair intolerable Wholeness twice to h.e.l.l.

'Nay' (so, dear Heart, thou whisperest in my soul), ''Tis a half time, yet Time will make it whole.'

II.

Now at thy soft recalling voice I rise Where thought is lord o'er Time's complete estate, Like as a dove from out the gray sedge flies To tree-tops green where cooes his heavenly mate.

From these clear coverts high and cool I see How every time with every time is knit, And each to all is mortised cunningly, And none is sole or whole, yet all are fit.

Thus, if this Age but as a comma show 'Twixt weightier clauses of large-worded years, My calmer soul scorns not the mark: I know This crooked point Time's complex sentence clears.

Yet more I learn while, Friend! I sit by thee: Who sees all time, sees all eternity.

III.

If I do ask, How G.o.d can dumbness keep While Sin creeps grinning through His house of Time, Stabbing His saintliest children in their sleep, And staining holy walls with clots of crime? -- Or, How may He whose wish but names a fact Refuse what miser's-scanting of supply Would richly glut each void where man hath lacked Of grace or bread? -- or, How may Power deny Wholeness to th' almost-folk that hurt our hope -- These heart-break Hamlets who so barely fail In life or art that but a hair's more scope Had set them fair on heights they ne'er may scale? -- Somehow by thee, dear Love, I win content: Thy Perfect stops th' Imperfect's argument.

IV.

By the more height of thy sweet stature grown, Twice-eyed with thy gray vision set in mine, I ken far lands to wifeless men unknown, I compa.s.s stars for one-s.e.xed eyes too fine.

No text on sea-horizons cloudily writ, No maxim vaguely starred in fields or skies, But this wise thou-in-me deciphers it: Oh, thou'rt the Height of heights, the Eye of eyes.

Not hardest Fortune's most unbounded stress Can blind my soul nor hurl it from on high, Possessing thee, the self of loftiness, And very light that Light discovers by.

Howe'er thou turn'st, wrong Earth! still Love's in sight: For we are taller than the breadth of night.

____ Baltimore, 1874-5.

Laus Mariae.

Across the brook of Time man leaping goes On stepping-stones of epochs, that uprise Fixed, memorable, midst broad shallow flows Of neutrals, kill-times, sleeps, indifferencies.

So twixt each morn and night rise salient heaps: Some cross with but a zigzag, jaded pace From meal to meal: some with convulsive leaps Shake the green tussocks of malign disgrace: And some advance by system and deep art O'er vantages of wealth, place, learning, tact.

But thou within thyself, dear manifold heart, Dost bind all epochs in one dainty Fact.

Oh, sweet, my pretty sum of history, I leapt the breadth of Time in loving thee!

____ Baltimore, 1874-5.

Special Pleading.

Time, hurry my Love to me: Haste, haste! Lov'st not good company?

Here's but a heart-break sandy waste 'Twixt Now and Then. Why, killing haste Were best, dear Time, for thee, for thee!

Oh, would that I might divine Thy name beyond the zodiac sign Wherefrom our times-to-come descend.

He called thee 'Sometime'. Change it, friend: 'Now-time' sounds so much more fine!

Sweet Sometime, fly fast to me: Poor Now-time sits in the Lonesome-tree And broods as gray as any dove, And calls, 'When wilt thou come, O Love?'

And pleads across the waste to thee.

Good Moment, that giv'st him me, Wast ever in love? Maybe, maybe Thou'lt be this heavenly velvet time When Day and Night as rhyme and rhyme Set lip to lip dusk-modestly;

Or haply some noon afar, -- O life's top bud, mixt rose and star, How ever can thine utmost sweet Be star-consummate, rose-complete, Till thy rich reds full opened are?

Well, be it dusk-time or noon-time, I ask but one small boon, Time: Come thou in night, come thou in day, I care not, I care not: have thine own way, But only, but only, come soon, Time.

____ Baltimore, 1875.

The Bee.

What time I paced, at pleasant morn, A deep and dewy wood, I heard a mellow hunting-horn Make dim report of Dian's l.u.s.tihood Far down a heavenly hollow.

Mine ear, though fain, had pain to follow: 'Tara!' it tw.a.n.ged, 'tara-tara!' it blew, Yet wavered oft, and flew Most ficklewise about, or here, or there, A music now from earth and now from air.

But on a sudden, lo!

I marked a blossom s.h.i.+ver to and fro With dainty inward storm; and there within A down-drawn trump of yellow jessamine A bee Thrust up its sad-gold body l.u.s.tily, All in a honey madness hotly bound On blissful burglary.

A cunning sound In that wing-music held me: down I lay In amber shades of many a golden spray, Where looping low with languid arms the Vine In wreaths of ravishment did overtwine Her kneeling Live-Oak, thousand-fold to plight Herself unto her own true stalwart knight.

As some dim blur of distant music nears The long-desiring sense, and slowly clears To forms of time and apprehensive tune, So, as I lay, full soon Interpretation throve: the bee's fanfare, Through sequent films of discourse vague as air, Pa.s.sed to plain words, while, fanning faint perfume, The bee o'erhung a rich, unrifled bloom: "O Earth, fair lordly Blossom, soft a-s.h.i.+ne Upon the star-pranked universal vine, Hast nought for me?