Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO NAUSIKAA, by VIRGINIA TAYLOR MCCORMICK


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO NAUSIKAA, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Nausikaa, running with your slender maidens
Last Line: For summer's spent magnificence.
Subject(s): Spring


Nausikaa, running with your slender maidens,
White limbed and lovely, fair
As the hepaticas of northern spring
That stand half hidden where
The snow-fed streamlets sing
Their rythmic song of quiet, mellow cadence, --
Here by the wine-dark, rippling sea
Do you not feel a stir of memory?
Here, like the flush of passion, quick and warm,
Spring mantles over winter like a storm
Of tropic splendour, -- colour, strange perfume
And languor . . . . Nausikaa, have you
No adumbrated longings from the tomb
Of buried grandsires to imbue
Your soul with deep, hereditary desire
To build upon the hearthstone faggot-fire?
To kneel before it while the evening breaks
The darkening sky in golden, streaked flakes,
Eclipsing day where spring is fragrant, cool
And gradual in its coming to those lands;
Bending to see her face in mountain pool,
Touching the earth with white, virginal hands;
Each sense alert for love, yet in retreat,
Walking on palpitant and light-shod feet
Before too eager summer, from the south,
Coming with hot crushed flowers and grape-stained mouth?
Ah, Nausikaa, in northern springs love does not go
Like dead leaves on the tide, with passion's death:
A nobler palimpsest for Calypso,
And calmed by winter's frost-hung vital breath,
With those cool hands Spring sets upon your hair
A wreath of pale hepaticas that hold
A balm for Ithaca, -- the splendid flare
Of tropic suns, and in her nights so cold
And clear you find a recompense
For summer's spent magnificence.





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