I
What is sweeter, sweet, than you?
Not the fairy dew
Of these bee-sipped pastures where
Time, unsandalled, unaware,
Rests him ere he tire.
Shall I his forgotten hour
Strike for thee?
Fatefully,
Lift the wand that wakes
Woman in the flower?
Then o'er dream's horizon breaks
Rose of other fire;
From a world more sweet
Rival rise the fragrant floods;
Breath that makes
Thy morning meadows dun,
Mutes their dew-bells, misty hoods
Every leaf that shone;
Sets thy daisy-fondled feet
Twinkling to be gone;
Down the ways and up the ways,
Hope-fleet, trampling care
As curling buds,
Iris goal joy-near;
Then a-creep on praying knees,
Frail shoulders bent to bear
Heaven's falling sphere.
Ah, not yet, heart's wonder!
A little hour we'll stay,
And thou wilt give me grace of dawn
For travelled, dusk array.
This gown of mottled years,
By noon and gnome-light spun,
Enchant me to surrender
To Ariel ministers;
Here poised with thee before
Thy summer world's wide door,
And glory that is hers;
This soft, unclamorous sky
That makes a lotus ship of every eye
Upventuring; song's sail that pilotless
Drifts down, a wing's caress
On billowed field and climbing shore
Whose veiny tidelets beat and cling,
Bloom-labouring,
Invincibly sweet and far,
Up looming cone and scaur,
And clambering spill
To lap of ledge and aproned hill
The heaped and whispering greenery
Of beauty's burden that unburdens me!
And thou, the fairest thing
In this fair shaman-ring,
Shall my sore magic loose thee wandering?
Has Life such faltering need,
Mid outlands where she runs,
She cannot reach the suns
Save thou dost bleed?
Shall she go fleet,
With heart of stouter cheer,
Because thou givest her
Thy little, bruised feet?
Thou'dst earn thy Heaven? Dear, I know
Heaven must not ban thee shining so!
Why shouldst thou laden bow,
And climb, and slip, and toil,
And blanch thy cheek to keep thy soul as white,
Inviolate as now?
O, we have dreams we shall not put away
Till earth be fair as they;
When all this work-night coil
Shall be unwound by wizard fingers bright
That send our own to play;
And wisdom, wiser than we know, shall find
The birth trail to the mind;
Nor spirit waver, panting here and yon
Seeking sun-vantage, for all heights are won.
Shall not we then be as the flowers,
Drinking dew dowers
As now thou dost?
Glad petals that unclose
About Life's heart,--at last the perfect Rose?
Sweet, I will trust
Love and the morn;
Fold here the wakeful wand,
Leave thee in dewy bond
Of blossomy sleep.
Who knows but thou hast won the steep
By silent, angel way,
Hidden and heavenly,
That leaves no trace of thorn?
Star-flower, keep thy sky;
If man must climb, let him go up to thee;
A daisy may be nearer God than he--
Than I.