Rosa Coeli

They are but plaisters of cool leaves that dip In pleasant water to the white-hot wise Terrible flames of hell that would devour me, Did not the raptures of thy love embower me In meads Elysian, fields of foamless fire, Nights of invincible desire, Things beyond words, beyond the want of them, Beyond the pauses and the ecstasies . . . . Where should my dream get such a diadem Of voiceless thoughts as these ? XIII HESE dreams reform Themselves into a rainbow to the storm Of simple passion ; let me from the string Take many-coloured wing As a swift-thoughted arrow Vertically shot against the sun ! I would you were a sow And these my verses were your squealing farrow That they might suck the milk of your perfection Unto them, that the world’s ear might be won, The world’s heart melted now, The world’s mind drawn from its dejection, By the sure fact that not in idle dream But sole in sense supreme Certainly visible and tangible 13 T