 | Poems and Sonnets |  |
54
ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON.
I saw a couple courting—and her face
Was beautiful, and she was half afraid,
And he, the stronger, rather roughly played
With fears of hers, and caught in his embrace
Her form eluding him with lissom grace,
And clasped again the waist that forward swayed;
And so they toyed together, man and maid,
And filled with sunny love the quiet place
Where they were seated; and I looked and thought,
“She is seated on love's ladder—it is true,
Her love, but much remaineth yet to do
Before love's hand the flower of love has wrought,
And to the ladder's summit she is brought,
Proceeding rung by rung the stages through!”
Was beautiful, and she was half afraid,
And he, the stronger, rather roughly played
With fears of hers, and caught in his embrace
Her form eluding him with lissom grace,
And clasped again the waist that forward swayed;
And so they toyed together, man and maid,
And filled with sunny love the quiet place
Where they were seated; and I looked and thought,
“She is seated on love's ladder—it is true,
Her love, but much remaineth yet to do
Before love's hand the flower of love has wrought,
And to the ladder's summit she is brought,
Proceeding rung by rung the stages through!”
55
II
But most I marked that strange consenting “Nay”Of womanhood, at once her choicest gift,
The power by which God meant her high to lift
Our manhood, the sweet power of giving way,
And chiefest peril; many a weary day
Will pass before we learn to reverence
Those lips of hers that bid a man “go hence”
While all the time they whisper “Sweetheart stay”
By something than mere words more potent far—
Before we learn to reverence the yielding,
And meet it on our side by courtly shielding
Of woman from her own malignant star,
Not caring that her very grace should mar
Beauty that otherwise she should be wielding.
56
III
It is so beautiful, that readinessTo yield herself unquestioning, so fair,
That doubled twenty times should be the care
With which we harder men ourselves address
To the task of coaxing forth the coy caress
That woos us as a blossom woos the air,
Half fearful yet half eager—it is there,
But grasp it rudely, it is there the less.
Experiments in love for all the ages
We have been making, and we see our way
At last to somewhat of a clearer day,
To the fresh unfolding of some final pages
Of Love's portfolio; its final sway
In utmost Beauty God himself engages;
57
IV
In utmost Beauty, Purity as well—Twin sisters these, they traverse hand in hand
The lengthy avenues of Love's long land,
And great as is the fall from heaven to hell
The loss is if a man would either quell
To worship one alone; the latter wears
A white rose in her bosom, and she bears,
Her sister, set upon her lips to tell
Her fragrance unto each she deigns to kiss,
A red rose—in the future we shall know
That Beauty hath a breast as white as snow,
That lips of Purity with passionate bliss
Are rosy as her sister's, and that this,
This combination, hath the sunset glow,
58
V
The fire of the scarlet evening air,All its intensity made more intense
By dazzling clearness free from all offence,
And not made colourless, but made more fair,
More beautiful, more passionately rare
By the white rose petals; more to be desired
Than kisses of a cheek by passion fired
Is such a sweet unbinding of the hair
Of Beauty; in that kiss and here alone
King Passion hath his rights and Beauty too,
For otherwise she maketh much ado,
Queen Beauty, roughly hurled from off her throne
And crushed beneath his gauntlet; but a few
Have both the Monarch and his Lady known,
59
VI
And found them fair, she soft as eventide,He burly with the blushes of the noon,
For ever humming forth some lusty tune,
Ready to kiss her if she only sighed,
She—one with whom it would be sweet to ride
Beneath an early rising of the moon,
Or listen to the ripple all in tune
The March Triumphant of a flowing tide;
But let us grasp the hands of King and Queen,
And be with her on silent summer eves,
And run a race with Passion 'mid the sheaves,
The golden sheaves of Autumn in between
At molten noonday, yea, and after, glean
With her the ears that he the reckless leaves.
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