Thursday, February 13, 2014

PAGE 41

THE WELL-BELOVED

I went by star and planet shine 
   Towards the dear one's home 
At Kingsbere, there to make her mine 
   When the next sun upclomb. 

I edged the ancient hill and wood 
   Beside the Ikling Way, 
Nigh where the Pagan temple stood 
   In the world's earlier day. 

And as I quick and quicker walked 
   On gravel and on green, 
I sang to sky, and tree, or talked 
   Of her I called my queen. 

- "O faultless is her dainty form, 
   And luminous her mind; 
She is the God-created norm 
   Of perfect womankind!" 

A shape whereon one star-blink gleamed 
   Slid softly by my side, 
A woman's; and her motion seemed 
   The motion of my bride. 

And yet methought she'd drawn erstwhile 
   Out from the ancient leaze, 
Where once were pile and peristyle 
   For men's idolatries. 

- "O maiden lithe and lone, what may 
   Thy name and lineage be, 
Who so resemblest by this ray 
   My darling?--Art thou she?" 

The Shape: "Thy bride remains within 
   Her father's grange and grove." 
- "Thou speakest rightly," I broke in, 
   "Thou art not she I love." 

- "Nay: though thy bride remains inside 
   Her father's walls," said she, 
"The one most dear is with thee here, 
   For thou dost love but me." 

Then I: "But she, my only choice, 
   Is now at Kingsbere Grove?" 
Again her soft mysterious voice: 
   "I am thy only Love." 

Thus still she vouched, and still I said, 
   "O sprite, that cannot be!" . . . 
It was as if my bosom bled, 
   So much she troubled me. 

The sprite resumed: "Thou hast transferred 
   To her dull form awhile 
My beauty, fame, and deed, and word, 
   My gestures and my smile. 

"O fatuous man, this truth infer, 
   Brides are not what they seem; 
Thou lovest what thou dreamest her; 
   I am thy very dream!" 

- "O then," I answered miserably, 
   Speaking as scarce I knew, 
"My loved one, I must wed with thee 
   If what thou say'st be true!" 

She, proudly, thinning in the gloom: 
   "Though, since troth-plight began, 
I've ever stood as bride to groom, 
   I wed no mortal man!"

Thereat she vanished by the lane
Adjoining Kingsbere town,
Near where, men say, once stood the Fane
To Venus, on the Down.

When I arrived and met my bride
her look was pinched and thin,
As if her soul had shrunk and died,
And left a waste within.

-o0o-

*SHELLEY'S SKYLARK

Somewhere afield here something lies
In Earth's oblivious eyeless trust
That moved a poet to prophecies -
A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust

The dust of the lark that Shelley heard,
And made immortal through times to be; -
Though it only lived like another bird,
And knew not its immortality.

Lived its meek life; then, one day, fell -
A little ball of feather and bone;
And how it perished, when piped farewell,
And where it wastes, are alike unknown.

Maybe it rests in the loam I view,
Maybe it throbs in a myrtle's green,
Maybe it sleeps in the coming hue
Of a grape on the slopes of yon inland scene.

Go find it, faeries, go and find
That tiny pinch of priceless dust,
And bring a casket silver-lined,
And framed of gold that gems encrust;

And we will lay it safe therein,
And consecrate it to endless time;
For it inspired a bard to win
Ecstatic heights in thought and rhyme. 

* Hardy was inspired to write that by Shelley's "To a Skylark" the poem which begins with these lines:

Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert - 
That from heaven or near it
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

-o0o-

THE WOUND

I climbed to the crest,
   And, fog-festooned,
The sun lay west
   Like a crimson wound:

Like that wound of mine
   Of which none knew,
For I'd given no sign
   That it pierced me through.

-o0o-

More poems next Thursday

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

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