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XXVII
The New Persephone

What power in Nature dwells that so
Herself & us can restore.
And senses drooping long ago
Make fresh from Eden's primal store.
New were the heavens; the stars were new
And in an amplitude of night,
Deep over deep of fleckless blue,
The moon was silent with delight.
Beneath the leaves the breezes slept,
The leaves were sound asleep as they,
And o'er the lawn the shadows crept
Denser & drowsier than by day.
It seemed not night, it was not day;
But lustre mixed for us alone
As in the Land of Faraway
That makes a weather of its own.
Fair Talbot spoke: the voice was sweet
And steeped in moonlight like the scene,
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Yet summoned, from the past's retreat,
Of England's war the armoured sheen.
And in its ring I seemed to hear
Softer vibrating of that lance
Which cost the Sainted Maid so dear
And dimmed the oriflamme of France.
“Come!” said the voice & on we went
Through grasses gray with moonlit dew
To where in midnight's hushed content
Wide-eyed the countless marguerites grew.
How purely beautiful they were,
Those discs of unimpassioned snow,
Moored fast to earth, afloat on air!
How should their calm teaze fancy so?
Like tiny moons they swim at ease
While every one its moonthirst slakes,
And Dian joyed as when she sees
Her image in a thousand lakes.
Still on our leader strode to where
They thickened to a Milky Way
And there we plucked what seems more fair
More large & whiter than by day.
The moon beams wandering from the blue,
Her ancient self she seems to see
When with her nymphs, a lithelimbed crew,
She tracked the glades of Arcady.
“That step secure, that highpoised brow,
Almost to cheat me had sufficed;
But no Actaeon fears me now,
Ungoddessed & astronomized.
‘A basket at her elbow swings,
Some new Persephone is this?
And, of those two black-vistured things
That follow her, can one be Dis?
‘The gloomy gods perhaps are left,
Since Science spares the unbenign;
But me, of moral passions reft,
It wearies, banished here to shine.’
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Thus Dian to herself, or so
My fancy caught it word for word,
And 'gan to feel myself de trop,
A tête-à-tête's obtrusive third.
Our pannier heaped we homeward turn
Across the moon-enchanted field,
Then through the close where roses burn
Like those that reddened for Crianhield.
Some, basking in the moonlight, mused
Of murmurs from Damascus blown,
And some, exiled in shade diffused
A fainter moonlight of their own.
And all the air with rose breath flushed
As they with passion red or pale
Leaned forth & listened as if hushed
With descent of the nightingale.
Ah, though the days be brief & few,
Droutty with prose & void of ease,
It would not matter if we knew
Some charm to lengthen nights like these.
But the chimes ‘you must go,’
And chiller grows the midnight's breath,
We are Time's puppets, high & low
Part when he bids in life & death.
The sorcery fades from earth & air,
And from our feet the sense of wings,
The moon is but a lantern's flare
Lighting us back to common things.
O'er Ashridge's embattled walls,
Ablaze with hospitable light,
Gray as of sudden aging falls
When we return to men & night.
Long may its Lord & Dame control
Their happy realm of field & hill
And to the body & the soul
Of countless friends bid welcome still.
But, ah, to me return no more
Such lunacies with such a guide
For Dis was there & shortly bore
Away with him a happy bride.
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