Collected Works (Vol. I)

94 MYSTERIES: LYRICAL AND DRAMATIC Music of sombre motion, swaying slow. The sky above is one dark indigo Voiceless and deep, no light is hard within To shame love’s lips and rouse the silky skin From its dull olive to a perfect white. For scarce an hour the golden rim of light Tinges the southward bergs; for scarce an hour The sun puts forth his seasonable flower, And only for a little while the wind Wakes at his coming, and beats cold and blind On the wild sea that struggles to release The hard grip from its throat, and lie at ease Lapped in the eternal summer. But its waves Roam through the solitude of empty caves {n vain ; no faster wheels the moon above ; And still reluctant fly the hours of love. It is so peaceful in the castle: here The night of winter never froze a tear On my love’s cheek or mine; no sorrow came To track our vessel by its wake of flame Wherein the dolphin bathed his shining side ; No smallest cloud between me and my bride Came like a little mist ; one tender fear, Too sweet to speak of, closed the dying year With love more perfect, for its purple root Might blossom outward to the snowy fruit Whose bloom to-night lay sleeping on her breast, As ifa touch might stir the sunny nest, Break the spell’s power, and hid the spirit fly Who had come near to dwell with us. But I Bend through long hours above the dear twin life, Look from love’s guerdon to the lover-wife, And back again to that small face so swect, And downwards to the little rosy feet, And see myself no longer in her eyes So perfectly as here, where passion les Buried and re-arisen and complete. O happy life too sweet, too perfect sweet, O happy leve too perfectly made one Not to arouse the envy of the sun Who sulks six months! for spite of it! O love, Too pure and fond for those pale gods above, Too perfect for their iron rods to break, Arise, awake, and die for death’s own sake! That one forgetfulness may take us three, Still three, still one, to the Lethean sea ; That all its waters may be sweet as those We wandered by, sweet sisters of the rose, That perfect night before we fled, we two Who were so silent down that avenue Grown golden with the moonlight, who should be No longer two, but one; nor one, but three. And now it is the spring; the ice is breaking; The waters roar; the winds their wings are shaking To sweep upon the northland ; we shall sail Under the summer perfume of the gale To some old valley where the altars steam Before the gods, and where the maidens dream Their little lives away, and where the trees Shake laughing tresses at the rising breeze, And where the wells of water lie profound, And not unfrequent is the silver sound Of shepherds tuneful as the leaves are green, Whose reedy music echoes, clear and clean, From rocky palaces where gnomes delight To sport all springtime, where the brooding night With cataract is musical, and thrushes Throb their young love beside the stream that rushes Ileadlong to beat its foamheads into snow, Where the sad swallow calls, and pale songs flow To match the music of the nightingale. There, when the pulses of the summer fail, The fiery flakes of autumn fall, and there Some warm perfection of the lazy air Swims through the purpling veins of lovers. Hark ! A faint bird’s note, as iffa silver spark 1 In Arctic latitudes the sun hardly rises at all from September to March, and is only visible in the south.