FROM the depth of the dreamy decline of the dawn through a notable
nimbus of nebulous moonshine,
Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower that flickers with
fear of the flies as they float,
Are they looks of our lovers that lustrously lean from a marvel of
mystic miraculous moonshine,
These that we feel in the blood of our blushes that thicken and
threaten with throbs through the throat?
Thicken and thrill as a theatre thronged at appeal of an actor’s
appalled agitation,
Fainter with fear of the fires of the future than pale with the
promise of pride in the past;
Flushed with the famishing fulness of fever that reddens with
radiance of rathe recreation,
Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom
of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast?
Nay, for the nick of the tick of the time is a tremulous touch on
the temples of terror,
Strained as the sinews yet strenuous with strife of the dead who
is dumb as the dust-heaps of death;
Surely no soul is it, sweet as the spasm of erotic emotional
exquisite error,
Bathed in the balms of beatified bliss, beatific itself by
beatitude’s breath.
Surely no spirit or sense of a soul that was soft to the spirit and
soul of our senses
Sweetens the stress of surprising suspicion that sobs in the
semblance and sound of a sigh;
Only this oracle opens Olympian, in mystical moods and triangular
tenses,—
“Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the
dawn of the day when we die.”
Mild is the mirk and monotonous music of memory, melodiously mute as
it may be,
While the hope in the heart of a hero is bruised by the breach of
men’s rapiers, resigned to the rod;
Made meek as a mother whose bosom-beats bound with the bliss-bringing
bulk of a balm-breathing baby,
As they grope through the grave-yard of creeds, under skies growing
green at a groan for the grimness of God.
Blank is the book of his bounty beholden of old, and its binding is
blacker than bluer:
Out of blue into black is the scheme of the skies, and their dews
are the wine of the bloodshed of things;
Till the darkling desire of delight shall be free as a fawn that is
freed from the fangs that pursue her,
Till the heart-beats of hell shall be hushed by a hymn from the
hunt that has harried the kennel of kings.
_Algernon Charles Swinburne._