Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO THE URANIAN APHRODITE, by NEWMAN HOWARD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO THE URANIAN APHRODITE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: My days pass wreathed in dreams while time's dim room
Last Line: Hope's rainbow gleamed through foam of troubled seas.
Subject(s): Aphrodite; Fate; Flowers; Love; Mythology - Classical; Time; Destiny


MY days pass wreathed in dreams, while Time's dim room,
With bygone years like withered rushes strown,
Hums with the music of Life's shuttle, thrown
'Twixt warps of death, on Aphrodite's loom;
And in my dreams, I hear amid the gloom
Love sing, and shift her framework, and anon
Cast off some wealth of beauty wov'n thereon,
Some blush of art, some plenitude of bloom.
Love! while I lay and watched thy wing'd hand move
Meshed in thy threads, a bright embosked dove,
Thy casement opened wide, and Dawn's light shone
From that far orient sea whence thou hadst flown.
Still let me lie within thy lap, Great Love!
For I have gazed too long where light is none.

Yea, I have seen Care's pestilent river creep
Through meadows made for mirth, and fret a bank
Fair with sweet flags and daffodils, which drank
Poison, and perished; I have watched Death reap
June's rarest flowers; and Fate, the tyrant, heap
Gold crowns on churls, on heroes chains which clank,
Thorns on grand brows, and stripes when brave men sank
Bowed with great burdens; wherefore I did weep.
Yet, as the darkling cells in leaves transmute
Rays caught by those frail hands to flower and fruit,
So, when woes touch thy light, O love, they rank
As earth's best beauties; so thy loom doth prank
Gold threads with gray; and still the shuttle shoot
A growing splendour, though the warp be blank.

Behold yon moon, the Latmian dreamer's bride,
Fling out one silver kiss, and then grow dim,
Hiding in fleecy clouds until their rim
Glows with her smile again! So thou dost hide
Thy empyreal countenance, and I abide
The loveliness wherein my senses swim.
But ah, when led by Fate's four warders grim
I pass to darkness -- what shall then betide?
Loss, Solitude, and Pain, dull scouts of Death,
Wait at Time's porch, and moan with tremulous breath
"Trust not Urania's smile! A wanton's whim,
Flown, it shall leave worn nerve and aching limb
Sport for Death's playtime." Wherewithal Love saith:
"He also is my servant; go to him:

"He hangs my warp; he wards my palace gate;
Within his healing founts the wounded year
Bathes with her swift young Hours, before they bear
Laughing through all the land, in frolic state,
Flowers for the feet of Spring, to celebrate
The day my feet kissed earth, and fanned her air
Azure with winnowing plumes; yea, all things fair
He lulls and laves that I may re-create.
The prism he holds, and I the dazzling light;
Which shattered falls in colours, not in night:
He beards the ravening Anguish in his lair,
Stills the loud Hate, and slays the remorseless Care,
Makes black the heavens to show the stars are bright,
And builds Eternal Hope from Time's despair."

Love ceased her song of Death, and as I lay
Lapt in my dreams, her swift hand I beheld
Shifting the woof of wondrous times of eld.
Florence, Rome, Salem, Athens, in array
Passed, like brave pictures, decking still our day;
And many mourned by man, by fate debelled,
Whose strength upholds our walls, like oak trees felled,
Their beauty gone like leaves to trampled clay.
And affluent arts which waxed and waned I saw
Tattered or mildewed, once without a flaw;
And some like frozen bloom, or founts which welled
Poisoned, or barren brides at nuptials knelled;
The grace earth aches for, gone to glut the maw
Of Erebus; whereat my heart rebelled.

Then Love to a garden led me, near her grange,
Busying her hands with herbs of myriad hue;
Wing'd bees and zephyrs wafted there to woo --
Deft artisans who draped with patterns strange
Fantastic bridal chambers, sweet to range.
Love, architect of every flower which grew,
Shaped all those minarets and columns new,
Touched by her wizard wands of Chance and Change.
Watching these things, O Love! I seemed to be
A mariner borne across a pathless sea,
And Life a freighted ship which onward flew
Around bright capes, but not one bourne in view, --
Holding her course, full-sailed, and helmed by thee,
White pinions mirrored in the unfathomed blue.

When day droops, and with purple plumage furled
Dives like an ocean bird in waves of night,
I see thee steadfast, clothed with inward light,
Pilot o'er perilous deeps the enchanted world.
Into the gloom I gaze: salt spray breaks pearled,
Lashing the labouring prow, whose instant might
Is given of fate. Though siren shoals invite,
Though tempests track, and Life be headlong hurled
On some hid reef beneath the Eternal main,
Hearts by thy white arm holpen shall sustain
The surge insufferable and the wreck's affright,
And wrest from anguish ease, from dread delight,
Havens from hurricanes, from Death's disdain
Life, and Eternity from Time's despite.

The dream fades, and again thy shape I see
By mountain, heath, and glen, o'er blossoms bent,
Filling Earth's lips with song, her breath with scent,
Her lap with flowers which borrow sweets from thee:
The rose to praise the blush of chastity,
Dure heath for swains, lilies for brides unshent,
Myrtle for hardy mariners; all intent
To assuage rough toil, and Time's asperity.
And to each hour thy hands new grace impart
From Earth's largesse, and Life's florescence, Art,
As dames for growing maids new smocks invent;
And both, like herbs in fallow acres sprent,
Increase where'er Apollo hurls his dart:
Till Love's close garden grows a firmament.

Dreams wreathe my days, while thou, Love, fashionest
The flame-tipped weeds, and green deep-shadowed trees,
Enkindlest stars like bloom on summer leas,
And mak'st eve's saffron sky a couch of rest.
Man yearns toward thee with hunger and heaving breast,
And hymns thee in all choirs and symphonies.
Thine are his altars, thine his sanctities;
The spheres lie at his feet who lives thy guest.
When I lacked thee my thoughts tossed evermore
Like boughs on turgid streams when tempests roar;
But when thy white hands' touch had brought me ease
Time's casement opened, in the morning breeze,
And lo! upon the dim Eternal shore
Hope's rainbow gleamed through foam of troubled seas.





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