Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE VIGIL OF VENUS, by ANONYMOUS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE VIGIL OF VENUS, by                    
First Line: To-morrow - what news of to-morrow?
Last Line: "loved, love anew, / to-morrow! - to-morrow!"
Subject(s): Fantasy;love;spring


TO-MORROW—What news of to-morrow?
Now learn ye to love who loved never—now ye who have loved, love anew!
It is Spring, it is chorussing Spring; 'tis the birthday of Earth, and for you!
It is Spring; and the Loves and the birds wing together and woo to accord
Where the bough to the rain has unbraided her locks as a bride to her lord.
For she walks—she our Lady, our Mistress of Wedlock—the woodlands
atween,
And the bride-bed she weaves them, with myrtle enlacing, with curtains of green.
Look aloft! list the law of Dione, sublime and enthroned in the blue:
Now learn ye to love who loved never—now ye who have loved, love anew!
Time was that a rain-cloud begat her, impregning the heave of the deep,
'Twixt hooves of sea-horses a-scatter, stampeding the dolphins as sheep.
Lo! arose of that bridal Dione, rainbow'd and besprent of its dew!
Now learn ye to love who loved never—now ye who have loved, love anew!
She, she, with her gem-dripping finger enamels the wreath of the year;
She, she, when the maid-bud is nubile and swelling, winds—whispers anear,
Disguising her voice in the Zephyr's—'So secret the bed! And thou shy?'
She, she, thro' the hush'd humid Midsummer night draws the dew from on high;
Dew bright with the tears of its origin, dew with its weight on the bough,
Misdoubting and clinging and trembling—'Now, now must I fall? Is it now?'
Star-fleck'd on the stem of the brier as it gathers and falters and flows,
Lo! its trail runs a ripple of fire on the nipple it bids be a rose,
Yet englobes it diaphanous, veil upon veil in a tiffany drawn
To bedrape the small virginal breasts yet unripe for the spousal of dawn;
Till the vein'd very vermeil of Venus, till Cupid's incarnadine kiss,
Till the ray of the ruby, the sunrise, ensanguine the bath of her bliss;
Till the wimple her bosom uncover, a tissue of fire to the view,
And the zone o'er the wrists of the lover slip down as they reach to undo.
Now learn ye to love who loved never—now ye who have loved, love anew!
'Go, maidens,' Our Lady commands, 'while the myrtle is green in the groves,
Take the Boy to your escort.' 'But ah!' cry the maidens, 'what trust is in
Love's
Keeping holiday too, while he weareth his archery, tools of his trade?'
'Go! he lays them aside, an apprentice released; ye may wend unafraid.
See, I bid him disarm, he disarms; mother-naked I bid him to go,
And he goes mother-naked. What flame can he shoot without arrow or bow?'
Yet beware ye of Cupid, ye maidens! Beware most of all when he charms
As a child: for the more he runs naked, the more he's a strong man-at-arms.
Now learn ye to love who loved never—now ye who have loved, love anew!
'Lady Dian'—Behold how demurely the damsels approach her and sue—
'Hear Venus her only petition! Dear maiden of Delos, depart!
Let the forest be bloodless to-day, unmolested the roe and the hart!
Holy huntress, thyself she would bid be her guest, could thy chastity stoop
To approve of our revels, our dances—three nights that we weave in a troop
Arm-in-arm thro' thy sanctu'ries whirling, till faint and dispersed in the grove
We lie with thy lilies for chaplets, thy myrtles for arbours of love:
And Apollo, with Ceres and Bacchus to chorus—song, harvest, and wine—
Hymns thee dispossess'd, "'Tis Dione who reigns! Let Diana resign!"
O, the wonderful nights of Dione! dark bough, with her star shining thro'!'
Now learn ye to love who loved never—now ye who have loved, love anew!

She has set up her court, has Our Lady, in Hybla, and deckt it with
blooms:—
With the Graces at hand for assessors Dione dispenses her dooms.
Now burgeon, O Hybla! put forth and abound, till Proserpina's field
To the foison thy lap overflowing its laurel of Sicily yield.
Call, assemble the nymphs—hamadryad and dryad—the echoes who court
From the rock, who the rushes inhabit, in ripples who swim and disport.
'I admonish you maids—I, his mother, who suckled the scamp ere he
flew—
An ye trust to the Boy flying naked, some pestilent prank ye shall rue.'
Now learn ye to love who loved never—now ye who have loved, love anew!

She has coax'd her the shade of the hazel to cover the wind-flower's birth,
Since the day the Great Father begat it, descending in streams upon Earth;
When the Seasons were hid in his loins, and the Earth lay recumbent, a wife,
To receive in the searching and genital shower the soft secret of life.
As the terrible thighs drew it down, and conceived, as the embryo ran
Thoro' blood, thoro' brain, and the Mother gave all to the making of man,
She, she, our Dione, directed the seminal current to creep,
Penetrating, possessing, by devious paths all the height, all the deep.
She, of all procreation procuress, the share to the furrow laid true;
She, she, to the womb drave the knowledge, and open'd the ecstasy through.
Now learn ye to love who loved never—now ye who have loved, love anew!

Her favour it was fill'd the sail of the Trojan for Latium bound;
Her favour that won her Æneas a bride on Laurentian ground,
And anon from the cloister inveigled the Virgin, the Vestal, to Mars;
As her wit by the wild Sabine rape recreated her Rome for its wars,
With the Ramnes, Quirites, together ancestrally proud as they drew
From Romulus down to our Cæsar—last, best of that bone, of that thew.
Now learn ye to love who loved never—now ye who have loved, love anew!

Pleasure planteth a field; it conceives to the passion, the pang, of his joy.
In a field was Dione in labour delivered of Cupid the Boy;
And the field in its fostering lap from her travail received him: he drew
Mother's milk from the delicate kisses of flowers; and he prosper'd and
grew—
Now learn ye to love who loved never—now ye who have loved, love anew!

Lo! behold ye the bulls, with how lordly a flank they besprawl on the
broom!—
Yet obey the uxorious yoke, and are tamed to Dione her doom.
Or behear ye the sheep, to the husbanding rams how they bleat to the shade!
Or behear ye the birds, at the Goddess' command how they sing unafraid!
Be it harsh as the swannery's clamour that shatters the hush of the lake,
Be it dulcet as where Philomela holds darkling the poplar awake,
So melting her soul into music, you'd vow 'twas her passion, her own,
She plaineth—her sister forgot, with the Daulian crime long-agone.
Hark! Hush! Draw around to the circle...Ah, loitering Summer! Say when
For me shall be broken the charm, that I chirp with the swallow again?
I am old; I am dumb; I have waited to sing till Apollo withdrew—
So Amyclæ a moment was mute, and for ever a wilderness grew.
Now learn ye to love who loved never—now ye who have loved, love anew,
To-morrow!—to-morrow!





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