Go, sister-songs, to that sweet sister-pairFor whom I have your frail limbs fashionèd,And framèd feateously;—For whom I have your frail limbs fashionèdWith how great shamefastness and how great dread,Knowing you frail, but not if you be fair,Though framèd feateously;Go unto them from me.Go from my shadow to their sunshine sight,Made for all sights’ delight;Go like twin swans that oar the surgy stormsTo bate with pennoned snows in candent air:Nigh with abasèd head,Yourselves linked sisterly, that sister-pair,And go in presence there;Saying—“Your young eyes cannot see our forms,Nor read the yearning of our looks aright;But time shall trail the veilings from our hair,And cleanse your seeing with his euphrasy,(Yea, even your bright seeing make more bright,Which is all sights’ delight),And ye shall know us for what things we be.
“Whilom, within a poet’s calyxed heart,A dewy love we trembled all apart;Whence it took riseBeneath your radiant eyes,Which misted it to music. We must long,A floating haze of silver subtile song,Await love-ladenAbove each maidenThe appointed hour that o’er the hearts of you—As vapours into dewUnweave, whence they were wove,—Shall turn our loosening musics back to love.”
Whenthe last stir of bubbling melodiesBroke as my chants sank underneath the waveOf dulcitude, but sank again to riseWhere man’s embaying mind those waters lave,(For music hath its OceanidesFlexuously floating through their parent seas,And such are these),I saw a vision—or may it beThe effluence of a dear desired reality?I saw two spirits high,—Two spirits, dim within the silver smokeWhich is for ever wokeBy snowing lights of fountained Poesy.Two shapes they were familiar as love;They were those souls, whereofOne twines from finest gracious daily things,Strong, constant, noticeless, as are heart-stringsThe golden cage wherein this song-bird sings;And the other’s sun gives hue to all my flowers,Which else pale flowers of Tartarus would grow,Where ghosts watch ghosts of blooms in ghostly bowers;—For we do knowThe hidden player by his harmonies,And by my thoughts I know what still hands thrill the keys.
And to these twain—as from the mind’s abyssesAll thoughts draw toward the awakening heart’s sweet kisses,With proffer of their wreathen fantasies,—Even so to theseI saw how many brought their garlands fair,Whether of song, or simple love, they were,—Of simple love, that makes best garlands fair.But one I marked who lingered still behind,As for such souls no seemly gift had he:He was not of their strain,Nor worthy of so bright beings to entertain,Nor fit compeer for such high company.Yet was he, surely, born to them in mind,Their youngest nursling of the spirit’s kind.Last stole this one,With timid glance, of watching eyes adread,And dropped his frightened flower when all were gone;And where the frail flower fell, it witherèd.But yet methought those high souls smiled thereon;As when a child, upstraining at your kneesSome fond and fancied nothings, says, “I give you these!”