University of Virginia Library

The multitudinous light oppress'd me not,
But smiled subdued, as a young mother smiles,
When fearful lest the sunbeam of the smile
Trouble the eyelids of the babe asleep.

As Ocean murmurs when the storm is past
And keeps the echoed thunders many days,
My solitude was troublous for a time:
Wherefore I should have harden'd; but the clay
Grew to my touch, and brighten'd, and assumed
Fantastic images of natural things,
Which, melting as the fleecy vapours melt
Around the shining cestus of the moon,
Made promise of the special shape I loved.
Withdrawing back, I gazed. The unshaped stone
Took outline in the dusk, as rocks unhewn
Seen from afar thro' floating mountain mists
Gather strange forms and human lineaments.
And thus mine eye was filled with what I sought
As with a naked image, thus I grew
Self-credulous of the form the stone would wear,
And creeping close I strove to fashion clay
After the vision. Day and night, I drew
New comfort from my grief; my tears became
As honey'd rain that makes the woodbine sweet,
Until my task assumed a precious strength
Wherewith I fortified mine inner ear
Against the pleadings of the popular tongue
That babbled at my door; and when there dawn'd
A hand as pure as milk and cold as snow,
A small white hand, a little radiant hand,
That peep'd out perfect from the changing mass,
And seem'd a portion of some perfect shape
Unfreed, imprison'd in the stone,—I wept
Warm tears of utter joy, and kiss'd the hand,
As sweet girl-mothers kiss the newly born,
Weak as a mother. Then I heard no more
The murmurous swarm beneath me, women and men;
But, hoarded in my toil, I counted not
The coming and the going of the sun:
Save when I swoon'd to sleep before the stone,
And dream'd, and dreaming saw the perfect shape
Emblazon'd, like the rainbow in a stream,
On the transparent tapestry of sleep.

Ah me, the joy, the glory, and the dream,
When like a living wonder senseless stone
Smiles to the beating of a heart that hangs
Suspended in the tumult of the blood!
To the warm touch of my creating hand
The marble was as snow; and like the snow
Whereon the molten sunshine gleams as blood,
It soften'd, glow'd, and changed. As one who stands
Beneath the cool and rustling dark to watch
The shadow of his silently beloved
Cross o'er the lighted cottage blind and feel
The brightness of the face he cannot see,
So stood I, trembling, while the shape unborn
Darken'd across the white and milky mass
And left the impress of its loveliness
To glorify and guide me. As I wrought
The Past came back upon me, like the ghost
Of the To-Come. Whate'er was pure and white,
Soft-shining with a snow-like chastity,
Came back from childhood, and from that dim land
Which lies behind the horizon of the sense,
Felt though forgotten; vanishings divine
Of the strange vapours many-shaped and fair
Which moisten sunrise when the eye of heaven
Openeth dimly from the underworld:
Faint instincts of the helpless babe that smiles
At the sweet pictures in its mother's eyes
And lieth with a halo round its head
Of beauty uncompleted: memories
Of young Love's vivid heaven-enthronëd light,
By whose moist rays the pensive soul of youth
Was troubled at the fountains, like a well
Wherein the mirror'd motion of a star
Lies dewy and deep;—and, amid all, there dwelt
A vaguer glory, deeper sense of power,
Scarce conscious of itself yet ruling all,
Like the hid heart which rocks the jaded blood,
Brightens the cheek, throbs music to the brain.
Yet dwells within the breast scarce recognised,
Save when our pulses warn us and in fear
We pause to listen.—Even so at times
Those visions tranced me to a dumb dismay,
And, sudden music thronging in mine ears,
I hearken'd for that central loveliness
Whose magic guided and created all.

Then languor balmier than the blood i' the veins
When youth and maiden mingle and the moon
Breathes on the odorous room wherein they lie
Chamber'd as in a folded rose's leaves,
Oppress'd me, and a lover's rapture fill'd
My soul to swooning. Lo, I kiss'd the stone,
And toy'd with the cold hand, and look'd for light
In the dim onward-looking marble eyes,
And smooth'd the hair until it seem'd to grow
Soft as the living ringlets tingling warm
Against a heaving bosom. At her feet
I knelt, and tingled to the finger-tips
To gaze upon her breathless loveliness—
Like one who, shuddering, gazes on a shrine
From human eyes kept holy.

Then at last,
Fair-statured, noble, like an awful thing
Frozen upon the very verge of life,
And looking back along eternity
With rayless eyes that keep the shadow Time,
She rose before me in the milky stone,
White-limb'd, immortal; and I gazed and gazed
Like one that sees a vision, and in awe
Half hides his face, yet looks, and seems to dream.