There was soft beauty on the linnet's tongue
To see the rainbow's coloured bands arch wide.
The thunder darted his red fangs among
South mountains, but the East was like a bride
Drest for the altar at her mother's door
Weeping between two loves. The fields were pied
With May's munificence of flowers, that wore
The fashion of the days when Eve was young,
God's kirtles, ere the first sweet summer died.
The blackbird in a thorn of waving white
Sang bouquets of small tunes that bid me turn
From twilight wanderings thro' some old delight
I heard in my far memory making mourn.
Such music fills me with a joy half pain,
And beats a track across my life I spurn
In sober moments. Ah, this wandering brain
Could play its hurdy-gurdy all the night
To vagrant joys of days beyond the bourn.
I heard the river warble sweetly nigh
To meet the warm salt tide below the weir,
And saw a coloured line of cows pass by,--
And then a voice said quickly, "Iris here!"
"What message now hath Hera?" then I woke,
An exile in Arcadia, and a spear
Flashed by me, and ten nymphs fleet-footed broke
Out of the coppice with a silver cry,
Into the bow of lights to disappear.
For one blue minute then there was no sound
Save water-noise, slow round a rushy bend,
And bird-delight, and ripples on the ground
Of windy flowers that swelling would ascend
The coloured hill and break all beautiful
And, falling backwards, to the woods would send
The full tide of their love. What soft moons pull
Their moving fragrance? did I ask, and found
Sad Io in far Egypt met a friend.--
It was my body thought so, far away
In the grey future, not the wild bird tied
That is the wandering soul. Behind the day
We may behold thee, soft one, hunted wide
By the loud gadfly; but the truant soul
Knows thee before thou lay by night's dark side,
Wed to the dimness; long before its dole
Was meted it, to be thus pound in clay--
That daubs its whiteness and offends its pride.
There were loud questions in the rainbow's end,
And hurried answers, and a sound of spears.
And through the yellow blaze I saw one bend
Down on a trembling white knee, and her tears
Fell down in globes of light, and her small mouth
Was filled up with a name unspoken. Years
Of waiting love, and all their long, long drought
Of kisses parched her lips, and did she spend
Her eyes blue candles searching thro' her fears.
"She hath loved Ganymede, the stolen boy."
Said one, and then another, "Let us sing
To Zeus that he may give her living joy
Above Olympus, where the cool hill-spring
Of Lethe bubbles up to bathe the heart
Sorrow's lean fingers bruised. There eagles wing
To eyries in the stars, and when they part
Their broad dark wings a wind is born to buoy
The bee home heavy in the far evening."