Laurella and other poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

The awakened Earth, whom now fresh fingered May
Chaplets with flowers and living leaves, is dancing
Through odorous dew, to welcome the young day
In melody from the gates of dawn advancing;
Each moment, breathing rathe deliciousness,
Flies forth an airy herald, nothing coy
To utter its glad tiding, and possess
Things winter-pined with tale of Spring's success—
New victories of life and light and joy!

II.

Wide are the blissful chambers of the sky,
Ranged by blithe-wingèd winds!
The blue abyss of heaven, sweet as an eye
Instinct with vigilant love, tenderly binds
All things in the spell divine
Of its own tranquillity—
A spell serene, and yet intense,
Potent, I know not how or why,
To purge with fire each baser sense,
And bid all coward cares within me die.

III.

Spirit of Light! deign thy dew-drinking steeds,
Fresh from the lucid meadows of the dawn,
To ravish me from these bounds? My soul recedes,
Into the limitless ether far withdrawn,
Where sanctuaried in light,
Dim larks in rapturous flight
Make vocal the sunbeams.
I mount, I fly,
I tremblingly aspire,
On their immortal glee's wide-quivering streams,
To the dread fount of life, love, liberty!
Kindler of song! Lord of the new-born Day!
Make me a wingèd lyre,
And in wild music let thy masculine fire
Leap from its chords, to swell the breasts of May
With passion infinite;
That with the bards of thine ethereal choir
I may outpour my song of undismayed delight,
Of unabashed desire!

IV.

O that my song were like a violin's voice,
Soaring through life's tumultuous symphony
With weird prophetic cry!
That I might feel my music-shedding wings
Rush in the rushing blasts of modulation,

To thrill the world's despair with fierce vibration,
And work tempestuous change in mortal things;
That from the voiceless deep my venturous voice
Might rend all hearts with dread Promethean cry,
Bursting in its last agony
The gates of hell with one strong word: ‘Rejoice!’
Then should life be new-shaped, like eddying sand
In music's Orphean hand;
New-born in Love's divinest chastities,
That kindle and not freeze.

V.

O that my song were like a trumpet's tone,
Uplifted stern in thunderous proclamation
Of glory and scathing shame—
A wind sublime of holiest exaltation
In spirits pure, urging the heroic flame
To burn into that all-transcendent zone
Where crowned Ambition bleeds on Love's bright martyr-throne!
Then should the founts of homely joy outleap
From their lethargic sleep;
In poise intense of passionate self-control
Move the full-orbèd soul.

VI.

Alas! my song is all too weak a thing
For flight so wild: my soul is as a sod

Swept by a sky-fall'n lark's yet fluttering wing,
Warmed by its beating breast—the pulseless clod
Red with a martyr's passion! What were I
To mount so high in grace,
To bear the bliss of such redeeming agony?
Here let me find my place—
Where glad green buds flock out upon the boughs
To pasture on the bounties of the morn,
Where every turf draws strength from heaven's own face,
And, joying to be born,
Flowers gaze from the deep grass, lifting their brows
To her mild eyes, with eyes that fear no scorn.

VII.

O virgin-cheeked and mother-hearted May,
Madonna of the months! give me to know
The tender founts that in thy bosom flow,
The shy, sweet dreams thou dream'st as day by day
Thy gleaming smiles so wistfully come and go,
The sweet heart-shudderings veiled from vulgar guess
In thy lyric loveliness.

VIII.

Thanks; for thy being into mine has past,
I feel, and I expand in the glad feeling,
Thy growthful impulse working through the vast
Of tardy time; as through each sense come stealing

Yearnings wild, conceptions dim,
Bashful prophecies of June,
Vernal voices which forehymn
Some wondrous harvest's opulent boon.

IX.

Comfort ye, hearts that weep—be comforted!
Have I not wept? Take courage, ye who toil
In bitter fields! Have not I toiled, and shed
From my enslavèd soul, wingless and numb,
Red drops of anguish on the barren soil?
But now my hour is come!
I dare to raise the song, the song of joy—
The song of boundless hope I dare to raise—
Young martyr-thoughts on eager wings deploy
Through visionary ages, as I gaze;
Fire in their eyes, their faces onward bent,
Pale to the lips as the white flowers they bear,
Quickening the winds with light, they singing scare
The dull and stagnant world from base content.
No, no, they are not dead,
The loves by which we live,
The hopes for which we have bled,
Oft faint, oft vanquishéd,
The truths for which we toil, the light for which we strive!

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X.

No, though the winter of the world's despair
In tomblike night have shut us from the sun's
All-fostering face, still in our branches runs
The sap of lusty life; though sordid care
Cling round our buds like frost,
The blossom of delight lies nurturing there
In its cradle tempest-tost.

XI.

O by our wants, and by our winged desires,
And our hearts' quenchless fires,
By our wild prayers, our tears outpoured like dew
Upon the fields of life, and by those rare
Impulses of deep joy, which quicken us through
With Spring's divinest air;
By each epic deed unsung,
By the loves that find no tongue,
By the faith that never dies,
By its wrestlings, by its cries,
By each meek sufferer's blood—the blood
Of Earth's mysterious motherhood—
We exorcise despair!

XII.

Still Love shall raise and comfort wan-faced Hope,
And when Love bleeding lies,
Hope shall read clear her cloudy horoscope
With self-fulfilling prophecies.