The Poetical Works of George Barlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

Not with the autumnal leaves so red and golden
Nor with the autumnal light
Crowned art thou, Venus, when strong suns embolden
Thy coming yet more bright.

Thou art not springlike, nor of mortal seeming,
Nor must thy bridegroom wear
The buds of April, tender, soft and gleaming,
Within gold spring-blown hair.

Thou art as summer. When thy June around thee
Burns splendid through the blue
We know that then the fervent year has found thee
Robed in thy raiment new.

128

And then thy bridegroom, weary of the daughters
Of earth though sweet they be,
Yearneth for thy gold locks beside the waters
Of thine own amorous sea.

And he must mix his soul with summer glory,—
Not craving for cool shades,
Or autumn hues, brown, radiant, gold and gory,
Or springlike colonnades.

Thy mouth is summer: and thy bridegroom knowing
The flower so strange and fair
Must kiss the amorous gorgeous petals glowing
Against the torrid air.

Not ever again can common loves content him:
This is his sad great doom!
Now that thine arrow of golden love hath rent him,
Point-poisoned from thy bloom.

But evermore, until his spirit find thee,
He wanders and must seek,
Weary and mad till love again may bind thee:
Weary and pale and weak.

129

Thou liftest up for him thy soft long lashes
And gazest in his eyes
And o'er him the wild sense of summer dashes
And light of summer skies.

Thou holdest him in arms that know no limit
To pleasure of embrace:—
With mouth that hath nor age nor death to dim it
And deathless queenlike face

Thou liftest him to regions past man's dreaming
And makest him sublime;
Inspiring all the swift thoughts that whirl streaming
Along the tides of rhyme.

Equal with thee in majesty of yearning
Must he, thy bridegroom, be;
Loves lesser than thine awful one love spurning
Like the contemptuous sea.

This is the doom of him who loving summer
Knew not the summer's charm,
But thought to hold her like a frail new-comer
By force of mortal arm.

130

Not knowing that the sweet June's very favour
Is death to him who breathes
The intoxicating sweet month's flower-fed savour,
Or dallies with its wreaths.

For Venus in the sweet air spreads her pinions
Whose plumage sways and flows,
And flowers she hath for ministers and minions,
A slave in every rose:

So that her breath enchanting and entrancing
Saddens and hurts and slays;
Man cannot bear her shield of sunlight glancing
Across the bright-helmed days.

Autumn we bear; but not the summer's brightness
And not the summer's bloom.
Sorrow we bear; but not love's perfect whiteness
And tender close perfume.

So, truly, when the queen of all love's splendour,
Venus, takes in her arms,
More than all earthly tenderest women tender,
A mortal spirit and charms

131

And chains him, he must reach through strength of passion
And kingly force of will,
Loving in limitless immortal fashion,
Heaven's heights,—or love must kill.

But, whether slain or unslain, let love find us,
And with her sunlike hair
Enchant and ravish and pervade and bind us,—
For love alone is fair.

May, 1881.