 | English Roses |  |
ROSA MUNDI.
Rosa Mundi—Somewhere bright and somewhere sweet
With a nation at your feet;
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For a monarch fair and meet—
Rosa Mundi!
I shall never see that beauty
Which is just the dress of duty
Sitting on you softly, well;
In the bosom's swoon and swell,
And the shoulder
With a shaping white and innocent and bolder,
And the rounding of the dainty cheek and chin
Smooth and smiling beyond art
And a sculptor's power and part,
Beautiful to sense as sin;
Sitting on you truly, lightly,
As the colour on the flower,
As the moonshine on the tower,
As its lustre on the star—
Swaying slightly;
As the fire-bloom on the scar,
Brought by saintly souls who travelled down to hell
Just for others,
Virgin wives and maiden mothers,
And adventured right through the great burning bar
In the sureness
Of their pureness,
And came back serene and pale—
Living yet—to tell the tale.
But I never ask for vision
Of your face,
Or the falling of those feet
With their wanton indecision
And a miracle of grace,
Like the glow flakes
Of the snow flakes
Tinged by sunbeams coy and fleet,
Hesitating down to earth and dropping calm
On the upturned tiny palm
Of a baby's blessed hand;
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Shy simplicity of gestures
Waved about you like command,
And the stainlessness of priestly rites and vestures
By our outer world unmuddied.
No, I never
Wish to see you, Rosa Mundi;
Nor would I make one endeavour
To behold you ere the hour,
When the spirit bursts in flower
And puts off this clogging flesh,
As the passing moon and sun die
And we break in glory from our prison mesh.
If I were indeed admitted
Just to the half-showing haze
Of a dim and distant gaze
And the uttermost far court,
I should be a life unfitted
And a moment's toy and sport.
O the veiled and mystic flashes
Of your cruel comeliness and spotless charms
And the tyrannous proud arms,
Worse than lightning,
With their curtained breath and bright'ning
Ooze of splendour, would consume my heart to ashes.
But I would in no wise come where
You are throned,
And enzoned
With a worship worthy of your awful dower;
Yet I know that you are somewhere,
Beautiful and blest, a power
Summing in your central seat
All that can be delicate and most delicious,
Made of heavy gold-brown tresses
And the white-pink lovelinesses
Melting in the bosom's beat,
And the mouth of red propitious;
Somewhere crownèd
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As a Queen who doth inherit
Every goodness, every gift,
Which becomes a figure gownèd
Perfectly and not by thrift;
Just as if its pleasant robes
Were a portion
Of the exquisite pure bust and pouting lips,
Wedded as warm lips to lips,
Or as dusky lashes to their blue-gray globes—
And no milliner's distortion.
This is quite enough for me,
Rosa Mundi,
Fairer than fair Cleopatra
Or whoever now is, sweetest
And completely incompletest,
From the little isle of Lundy
To the furnace of Sumatra;
Just to know you are a living form and fragrance,
Moulded as no sculptor could
Carve in richest womanhood,
And a breathing
Pulse of passion's fiery vagrance
Bodied in a web of nerves
And most cunning hues and curves,
With a kind of halo's gentle dim enwreathing.
I can picture you at night,
In a terrible clear light
Making, breaking
Destinies of men and cities,
Not without immortal pities
Trembling in your dream-füll eyes,
Like the far gleam
And the star gleam
Of yet unarisen skies;
Acting history,
Turning nations and the individual's weakness
Into any show or shape,
As one might a silken cape—
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You, a mystery.
Sometimes in the sultry noon.
All ablaze with quivering light,
When great secret forces fight
(As not ever mortal men did)
Into open bounty of their languorous boon,
Fancy sees you,
Fancy flees you
Unapproachably removed and darkly splendid;
And a thousand thousand lustres
Speak and sparkle and contend
On your brow and scarlet lips
And from dazzling night of heavenly hair descend,
Till with coruscating clusters
On my soul drops down eclipse.
Love's own Lady,
In the gleams
Of a world of sunlit streams,
You are welcome, you are royal,
And they subject are and loyal;
While in shy retreats and shady
Corners, you are likewise fit
With your countless moods and modes
Quite beyond our common codes,
Fathomless and infinite.
Rosa Mundi,
Never shall your works begun die,
Though we ail and fail and falter
Ere the winnings,
Or faint-hearted pule and palter
With magnificence of sinnings;
You must carry
On the glorious labour as you only can,
Ministering to lonely man
By the beauty, by the bliss
Of the wedded clasp or kiss;
If you tarry
Now and then, and grudge those favours
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You are just what each one wishes,
Every mother's son is sure
(If no other joys endure)
You will satisfy his heart
With the honey-due soft dishes
Which love only may impart.
So you are most ripe and real,
Though ideal,
To the love-sick and forlorn
And will be to breasts unborn
Still the same,
Fuel of a deathless flame
In the temple of the universal soul,
Past the compass and the map of our control.
You are just what each one fancies,
Night or day,
Grave or gay,
The delight of his romances;
For his converse, at his call,
Staid and steady,
Romping-ready,
And the one desire of all.
In the darling of our choice,
In the burden of our voice
You are regnant;
We behold you
And enfold you.
In your naked charms and graces
Pure, yet pregnant
With the homage of unnumbered times and places;
Out of light and out of darkness
Shadowed, shining,
But refining
Whatso'er you touch or take—
Till the stoniest lot and starkness,
To a gentle life awake;
Proud or mild,
With the wisdom of the ages
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But not less a woman child;
Matron, maid
With her hidden passion blushing and afraid.
Ah, to me you are divinity
Clear, consummate, and my own;
Lovely, loveable, infinity,
Of my flesh and blood outgrown
Part and parcel, yet unknown
Whitest blossom of virginity;
Goddess, earthly, sole and separate and far
Up behind the dreadful bounds of many a bar,
While as near
As the laughter to the tear;
Shallow as a limpid brook,
Deeper than the Bay of Fundy
And the ocean's awful book—
Rosa Mundi.
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