 | Poems by a Painter |  |
42
FIORDESPINA.
I
'Twas on a bright and breezy autumn morn,When hill and vale reeled purple-flusht with wine,
By immemorial Tiber thou wert born,
A creature all divine!
Nurst on the breast of Poesy: the child
Of ever-young Romance—warm, beautiful, and wild.
II
No earthly sire was thine, mysterious maiden!Thy dark-eyed mother thridding by the moon
Some antique wood with wonder-dreams o'erladen,
Lapt in a golden swoon,
Like vestal Rhea in the sacred grove,
Blest some immortal lover with a mortal's love.
43
III
And—when (the sweet moons past) the mellow year,Beloved of Pan, her honeyed fruits brought forth—
Dying, amid the sunlight warm and clear,
Left thee alone on earth:
Alone on earth, a weird, supernal thing,
Full of still, trancèd joy and dreamy sorrowing:
IV
Alone on earth, in virgin majestyThroned where the torch of Eros fears to burn;
Like a lone sunbeam o'er a darksome sea,
Where'er thy pure eyes turn,
Shedding a halo of divinest light,
Wherein thou movest veiled in rapture of delight;
V
An all-embracing aureole of high thought:Shadows from out the past, and wandering gleams
Of the evolving future, dimly caught
In sleep from saintly dreams:
44
For which thy spirit yearns with many an unshed tear.
VI
A sphere where Love and Innocence are one,Where Truth and star-eyed Reason walk assoyled
From ban; where Thought undazzled eyes the sun;
Where Passion, undefiled
By earth, becomes Religion; where to Thee
I might become what here, alas! I cannot be.
VII
She hears me not! but evermore doth speakWith low, soft, eager voice; her wide, black eyes
Gleam to the stars; her poor unconscious cheek
Upon my bosom lies,
Fevered and flusht amid the dewy air
That laves along my lips the dark tide of her hair.
45
VIII
What hear'st thou in the rushing of the river,That thus with trancèd ear thou listenest?
What seest thou in those filmy bars that quiver
Low in the shadowing west?
The Beautiful of old yet live! And thou
Dost hold mysterious converse with them even now!
IX
They float around thee from the sylvan nooks,From out the wide domes of the twilight air;
All gentle demons with sweet, wondering looks
And forms for ever fair:
Phantasms who linger yet by many a shore,
Though man's dull eyes behold their beauty now no more.
X
They float around thee, to thy soul serene,Primeval Truth, on earth forgotten long,
Chanting in charmèd numbers; and between
46
Trip the rare ether to the silvery tone
Of dithyrambic timbrels, heard by thee alone!
XI
They lure thee hence! And shall we trace no moreThe leafy caverns of the summer wood!
No more together by the midnight shore
Hear voices of the flood
Muttering to heaven the ancient mysteries
Hid in the unresting bosom of the doomful seas!
XII
No more as now, together, in the soft,Still, odorous darkness of the summer even,
Watch pale Silene wander forth aloft
Through the wide wastes of heaven,
Seeking and finding not—like thee! like me!
Like all who breathe the breath of sad mortality!
47
XIII
They lure thee hence! Thou fadest from my view!Even while I clasp thee, my belovèd one,
Thou fadest from me!—as a tear of dew,
Kissed by the wakening sun
From off the argent eyelids of the morn,
Seeks the blue-vaulted void—ah! never to return!
XIV
Yes, thou must seek thy native land—to die!And I once more tread life's rough track—alone!
Nay! to my spirit thou wilt still be nigh,
Though from this bosom flown;
Still shine as heretofore, my pilot star,
Sphered in the heaven of thought where the immortal are.
XV
The wandering odours of the vernal wood,The mournful music of the winter sea,
The city's roar, the hush of solitude,
48
Death cannot part us. In the realm of dreams
We yet shall meet and love, whate'er the wise world deems!
XVI
Then let me kiss the tremor from thy brow,And dry the tears from those wan eyelids starting.
Nay, weep not!—why should earthly weakness throw
Its shadow on this parting!—
Kiss me! Oh, closer, closer!—'tis the last.
God keep thee! Morning breaks: our dream of life is past.
| Poems by a Painter | |