The In-Gathering Cimon and Pero: A Chain of Sonnets: Sebastopol etc. By John A. Heraud |
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THE MYTHOS OF THE PLANT. |
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THE MYTHOS OF THE PLANT.
I
Beautiful the Religion, whose Creed teachesMan yielded Immortality for Love;
And beautiful the Faith, that still beseeches
The lost gift back, in happier realms above.
II
There lives a Myth that man hath little heeded,Though in Love's Paradise no miracle.
See where the Flower hath to the Leaf succeeded,
An orb of Light, transfigured by a spell.
III
Lo, how with polar impulse now it thrilleth,And now its rays impregn the pistil's germ.
Ah, rapturous impulse!—but the rapture killeth;
And now the Plant begins its mortal term.
IV
O, who can look on Beauty, and not cherishThe arrow that destroyeth in his heart?
We tremble as we gaze, and loving perish,
Fear to embrace, and linger loth to part.
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V
Yet both must be, the meeting and the parting,The ecstasy of gladness and of grief:
But while the bosom with the stroke is smarting,
The Love that pained sends also the relief.
VI
'Tis sweet to die, when Love inflicts the anguishOf the dear wound whereof the Plant must fade.
We love to note the vision, as we languish,
Of the armed hand that grasps the lifted blade.
VII
We greet the point that, in the heart it pierceth,Leaveth the image of the form beloved,
And Life reneweth in the corse it hearseth,
Quickening the slain by magic unreproved.
VIII
Thus Parents in their Children live for ever,And generations still their tale repeat;
How Love survives, and how Corruption never
The Soul may see, in deathless arms complete.
IX
Love smiles, while Danger threatens, and, 'midst Terror,Laughs at the tumult; and, deep in the dark,
Gleaming amidst the clouds of sin and error,
Discerns far-off the small and embryon spark.
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X
Wooes it from out its birthplace in the distance,And brings it close, enlarging as it nears,
Till, like the day-star, it subdues resistance,
And light immortal gleams in human tears.
XI
On Man or Woman's cheek alike they glisten,Globules, or deathless worlds, howe'er concealed;
Hide in their fountain till the touched Heart listen,
Then in their glory sudden are revealed.
XII
Thus Love wins back for Man the long lost treasure,His Immortality, though forfeit erst,
And endless blessings, boundless in their measure,
Make Second Eden better than the First.
[Note.—At the moment when the two cosmic principles of the plant have attained to their intensest polarity, a dormant chemical process is awakened by an electrical process; the plant thrills with self-excited motion; but at that moment the plant begins to expire.—Oken's System of Nature. translated by J. B. Stallo.]
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