And now, thou elder nursling of the nest;Ere all the intertangled west Be one magnificence Of multitudinous blossoms that o'errun The flaming brazen bowl o' the burnished sun Which they do flower from, How shall I 'stablish THY memorial?
Nay, how or with what countenance shall I come To plead in my defence For loving thee at all?
I who can scarcely speak my fellows' speech, Love their love, or mine own love to them teach;A bastard barred from their inheritance, Who seem, in this dim shape's uneasy nook, Some sun-flower's spirit which by luckless chance Has mournfully its tenement mistook;When it were better in its right abode, Heartless and happy lackeying its god.
How com'st thou, little tender thing of white, Whose very touch full scantly me beseems, How com'st thou resting on my vaporous dreams, Kindling a wraith there of earth's vernal green?
Even so as I have seen, In night's aerial sea with no wind blust'rous, A ribbed tract of cloudy malachite Curve a shored crescent wide;And on its slope marge shelving to the night The stranded moon lay quivering like a lustrous Medusa newly washed up from the tide, Lay in an oozy pool of its own deliquious light.
Yet hear how my excuses may prevail, Nor, tender white orb, be thou opposite!
Life and life's beauty only hold their revels In the abysmal ocean's luminous levels.
There, like the phantasms of a poet pale, The exquisite marvels sail:
Clarified silver; greens and azures frail As if the colours sighed themselves away, And blent in supersubtile interplay As if they swooned into each other's arms;Repured vermilion, Like ear-tips 'gainst the sun;And beings that, under night's swart pinion, Make every wave upon the harbour-bars A beaten yolk of stars.
But where day's glance turns baffled from the deeps, Die out those lovely swarms;And in the immense profound no creature glides or creeps.
Love and love's beauty only hold their revels In life's familiar, penetrable levels: