The Unknown Eros

Well dost thou, Love, thy solemn Feast to hold

In vestal February;

Not rather choosing out some rosy day

From the rich coronet of the coming May,

When all things meet to marry!

O, quick, praevernal Power

That signall'st punctual through the sleepy mould

The Snowdrop's time to flower,

Fair as the rash oath of virginity

Which is first-love's first cry;

O, Baby Spring,

That flutter'st sudden 'neath the breast of Earth

A month before the birth;

Whence is the peaceful poignancy,

The joy contrite,

Sadder than sorrow, sweeter than delight,

That burthens now the breath of everything,

Though each one sighs as if to each alone

The cherish'd pang were known?

At dusk of dawn, on his dark spray apart,

With it the Blackbird breaks the young Day's heart;

In evening's hush

About it talks the heavenly-minded Thrush;

The hill with like remorse

Smiles to the Sun's smile in his westering course;

The fisher's drooping skiff

In yonder sheltering bay;

The choughs that call about the shining cliff;

The children, noisy in the setting ray;

Own the sweet season, each thing as it may;

Thoughts of strange kindness and forgotten peace

In me increase;

And tears arise

Within my happy, happy Mistress' eyes,

And, lo, her lips, averted from my kiss,

Ask from Love's bounty, ah, much more than bliss!

Is't the sequester'd and exceeding sweet

Of dear Desire electing his defeat?

Is't the waked Earth now to yon purpling cope

Uttering first-love's first cry,

Vainly renouncing, with a Seraph's sigh,

Love's natural hope?

Fair-meaning Earth, foredoom'd to perjury!

Behold, all-amorous May,

With roses heap'd upon her laughing brows,

Avoids thee of thy vows!

Were it for thee, with her warm bosom near,

To abide the sharpness of the Seraph's sphere?

Forget thy foolish words;

Go to her summons gay,

Thy heart with dead, wing'd Innocencies fill'd,

Ev'n as a nest with birds

After the old ones by the hawk are kill'd.

Well dost thou, Love, to celebrate

The noon of thy soft ecstasy,

Or e'er it be too late,

Or e'er the Snowdrop die!

The wedded light and heat,

Winnowing the witless space,

Without a let,

What are they till they beat

Against the sleepy sod, and there beget

Perchance the violet!

Is the One found,

Amongst a wilderness of as happy grace,

To make Heaven's bound;

So that in Her

All which it hath of sensitively good

Is sought and understood

After the narrow mode the mighty Heavens prefer?

She, as a little breeze

Following still Night,

Ripples the spirit's cold, deep seas

Into delight;

But, in a while,

The immeasurable smile

Is broke by fresher airs to flashes blent

With darkling discontent;

And all the subtle zephyr hurries gay,

And all the heaving ocean heaves one way,

'Tward the void sky-line and an unguess'd weal;

Until the vanward billows feel

The agitating shallows, and divine the goal,

And to foam roll,

And spread and stray

And traverse wildly, like delighted hands,

The fair and feckless sands;

And so the whole

Unfathomable and immense

Triumphing tide comes at the last to reach

And burst in wind-kiss'd splendours on the deaf'ning beach,

Where forms of children in first innocence

Laugh and fling pebbles on the rainbow'd crest

Of its untired unrest.

I, singularly moved

To love the lovely that are not beloved,

Of all the Seasons, most

Love Winter, and to trace

The sense of the Trophonian pallor on her face.

It is not death, but plenitude of peace;

And the dim cloud that does the world enfold

Hath less the characters of dark and cold

Than warmth and light asleep,

And correspondent breathing seems to keep

With the infant harvest, breathing soft below

Its eider coverlet of snow.

Nor is in field or garden anything

But, duly look'd into, contains serene

The substance of things hoped for, in the Spring,

And evidence of Summer not yet seen.

On every chance-mild day

That visits the moist shaw,

The honeysuckle, 'sdaining to be crost

In urgence of sweet life by sleet or frost,

'Voids the time's law

With still increase

Of leaflet new, and little, wandering spray;

Often, in sheltering brakes,

As one from rest disturb'd in the first hour,

Primrose or violet bewilder'd wakes,

And deems 'tis time to flower;

Though not a whisper of her voice he hear,

The buried bulb does know

The signals of the year,

And hails far Summer with his lifted spear.

The gorse-field dark, by sudden, gold caprice,

Turns, here and there, into a Jason's fleece;

Lilies, that soon in Autumn slipp'd their gowns of green,

And vanish'd into earth,

And came again, ere Autumn died, to birth,

Stand full-array'd, amidst the wavering shower,

And perfect for the Summer, less the flower;

In nook of pale or crevice of crude bark,

Thou canst not miss,

If close thou spy, to mark

The ghostly chrysalis,

That, if thou touch it, stirs in its dream dark;

And the flush'd Robin, in the evenings hoar,

Does of Love's Day, as if he saw it, sing;

But sweeter yet than dream or song of Summer or Spring

Are Winter's sometime smiles, that seem to well

From infancy ineffable;

Her wandering, languorous gaze,

So unfamiliar, so without amaze,

On the elemental, chill adversity,

The uncomprehended rudeness; and her sigh

And solemn, gathering tear,

And look of exile from some great repose, the sphere

Of ether, moved by ether only, or

By something still more tranquil.