Classic and Contemporary Poetry
HAVENED, by OLIVE TILFORD DARGAN Poet's Biography First Line: Come, flower of life, and lay thy beauty's rose Last Line: Upon my heart thy curls' beloved gold! Alternate Author Name(s): Burke, Fielding Subject(s): Beauty; Love | ||||||||
COME, Flower of Life, and lay thy beauty's rose Upon the breast that storm and thee divide; And like true knights whose queen no laggard knows, Forth gently shall my love-bid fancies ride To serve thy heart, and bring thy wishes in; And shuttling rhyme a web shall make thee then Whilst thou dost gaze, nor thy poor weaver chide. Sweet wonder lay upon my opening eyes That showed me in a gracious court of trees Whose leaves were clouds that caught and lost sunrise, And fell in mist upon a twirling breeze That traced the ground and to a river grew, Casting its tender spray in tinted dew As curved its silver way with laughing ease. I followed, forest deep, this wooing guide Through fragrant gloom of cliff and bower o'er-grown, Free as a fawn the stream 'twas born beside, Nor held my step with fear at sounds unknown, High murmurings among the cloudy leaves, As when some dull and dreamy throng receives Strange lyric stir from power not its own. And more and more the murmurs grew like song, Save that no song could drop such honey-rain; The lyre-god's self would do it unsweet wrong, Were he that golden sound to breathe again; And as my guide into a cave did pass, That closèd seemed, and yet unclosèd was, That airy cadence stooped and bore me in. Then wandered life from out my memory, Gone from desire, as ghost at last must go; Nor shadow fell, where shadow could not be, From those dark lures that make our worldly woe. O Sweet, forgive that my inconstant tongue Should dim the glories that I moved among With name of gloom that wrongs the world we know. The dome was fair as Heaven, or Heaven, in sooth, It might have been, but that there shone, The centre 'neath, a fountain-featured truth That might no rival of its radiance own. Ah, this was Heaven's heart, if Heaven be, And the bright dome but its gold boundary; Yet gleamèd here no crown or mounted throne. The music budded till it dropped soft showers; All things to other changed, though here no mage; Clouds turned to light, and light to sweeter powers, And chance and change to all was privilege; The air was full of phantom-stirring things, And I not breathed but that I touched new wings, And sent some dream on airy pilgrimage. Ere my delight had held me pausing long Beneath a cloud that rained me lilies cool, A stir awoke amid a ferny throng That leaned their trembling grace above a pool, And following the flutter of a song To feathery rest where blossoms minute-young Oped arms of vermeil soft, and dawning gule, Mine eye saw Love. White on a verge's mount, That swelled to show its burden dear, she lay; A sighing mist that partly filled the fount, And o'er the brink sought tenderly to stray, For her fair body pillowed soft the ground, Growing glad upward arms to clasp her round And of each grace take new and sweet account. In nymphlike mould her gentle figure ran, Though nymph so bright did never sport in dell; Her eyes an angel's were, if angels' can Be thousand times more fair than dream can tell; Unfalling tears they held, yet so could please They might have hermits made forget their knees And kings find out they had them, such their spell. Above her forehead hovered close a star, Like spirit guard, whose ever-changing ray Was fed with fires of sacrifice that are Love's life,the offerings earth lovers lay Upon her shrine, and as they pale or glow She smiles or droops as this true star doth show, Or dim or bright as serve we or betray. Beside her was an instrument of tune, Of changeful beauty as her couch of cloud, And as I looked she woke it to strange rune, As in low murmur moved her thoughts aloud, For all Love's thoughts are music,but to make That ditty o'er, what heart would undertake, And with a mortal chant her utterance shroud? Anear her stood a youth bare of all guise Save when a light enwrapped him in its flame; He bore the ages in his listening eyes, And prophecy there waited for a name; Joy loved him best, and gave eternity, And his lithe, lustrous being seemed to say "I am the aspiration of all dream." Upward he gazed as though he would read o'er The scroll of rising winds, the burst of suns, And listsah, might it be earth's shore Freed of her epic hates and tunèd groans! War's passion beat, and woe's sad chorus past, And all her song pure-winnowed, clear at last, Pouring the music of her happy moons! Then moved his lips, but yet unborn is he Who may with their resound make sweet his own; He who shall come as morning walks the sea, Mate of the Wind when all her harps are one; So much we know by frail yet quenchless light That creeps through shadows of our lute-poor night, The brave rose-glimmers of his singing dawn. Lo, every dream new-homing from far ways On silent wing or spirit wave of air, Came circling o'er his head in hovering maze, Seen not, nor heard, albeit I knew them there; But as each passed before his lifted face, They gleamed to sight, and grace so mounted grace My eyes seemed there anointed, though afar. Then radiant couriers shook the fountain Heart And turned me thither. Sweet and bold surprise Took all my being with such tremorous start I marvelled how aught else had held my eyes. I could not tell what the bright wonder was Whose garner-breast held every beauteous cause Makes earth remember, and forget, the skies. There shone the star that lit man's first desire, And there his hope that latest fluttered bare; One look translating made me as a lyre Swept with a joy the heart of Truth might share, Truth that is silent, wanting joy to sing, But ere I breathèd had for wondering, A face out-flashed wreathed with sun-flinging hair. Youth was the angel of that countenance, Where graces sprang in ever fairer throng; Yet she was old ere any star's birth-dance, If word of earthly time, or old or young, Means aught of eyes whose brooding splendour swept The silences when Uncreation slept And gave the dream that woke the suns in song. Each age that left a glory left it writ Upon her brow, as with a pen of light Whose track was pearls, and as each whiter lit The story there, the court grew softlier bright; Each dullsome thingOh, no thing there was dull! Flushed o'er itself with glow more beautiful, As might fair, sleeping gods wake to delight. Then all the wonder that made vague her form, Oped on a figure splendent so to view; Mine eyes an instant swooned; and as from storm Of warring rainbows it endearèd grew To shape of her who 'gan descending slow, Fair Love looked up, and Poesy knelt low: 'Twas Beauty's self, and mother of the two. Whilst yet I gazed all vanished were the three; And as a sighing shore no more may hold The mermaid wave that would go out to sea, So slipped the vision from my fancy bold. O Flower of Life, no rest for me but this, To dream awhile, and then awake to press Upon my heart thy curls' beloved gold! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE INVENTION OF LOVE by MATTHEA HARVEY TWO VIEWS OF BUSON by ROBERT HASS A LOVE FOR FOUR VOICES: HOMAGE TO FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN by ANTHONY HECHT AN OFFERING FOR PATRICIA by ANTHONY HECHT LATE AFTERNOON: THE ONSLAUGHT OF LOVE by ANTHONY HECHT A SWEETENING ALL AROUND ME AS IT FALLS by JANE HIRSHFIELD THE PATH-FLOWER by OLIVE TILFORD DARGAN |
|