They who her sway withstand a sea defy, At every point of juncture must be proof;Nor look for mercy from the incessant surge Her forces mixed of craft and passion urge For the one whelming wave to spring aloof.
She, tenderness, is pitiless to them Resisting in her godhead nature's truth.
No flower their face shall be, but writhen stem;Their youth a frost, their age the dirge for youth.
These miserably disinclined, The lamentably unembraced, Insult the Pleasures Earth designed To people and beflower the waste.
Wherefore the Pleasures pass them by:
For death they live, in life they die.
Her head the Goddess from them turns, As from grey mounds of ashes in bronze urns.
She views her quivering couples unconsoled, And of her beauty mirror they become, Like orchard blossoms, apple, pear and plum, Free of the cloud, beneath the flood of gold.
Crowned with wreaths that burn in dew, Her couples whirl, sun-satiated, Athirst for shade, they sigh, they wed, They play the music made of two:
Oldest of earth, earth's youngest till earth's end:
Cunninger than the numbered strings, For melodies, for harmonies, For mastered discords, and the things Not vocable, whose mysteries Are inmost Love's, Life's reach of Life extend.
Is it an anguish overflowing shame And the tongue's pudency confides to her, With eyes of embers, breath of incense myrrh, The woman's marrow in some dear youth's name, Then is the Goddess tenderness Maternal, and she has a sister's tones Benign to soothe intemperate distress, Divide despair from hope, and sighs from moans.
Her gentleness imparts exhaling ease To those of her milk-bearer votaries As warm of bosom-earth as she; of the source Direct; erratic but in heart's excess;Being mortal and ill-matched for Love's great force;Like green leaves caught with flames by his impress.
And pray they under skies less overcast, That swiftly may her star of eve descend, Her lustrous morning star fly not too fast, To lengthen blissful night will she befriend.
Unfailing her reply to woman's voice In supplication instant. Is it man's, She hears, approves his words, her garden scans, And him: the flowers are various, he has choice.
Perchance his wound is deep; she listens long;Enjoys what music fills the plaintive song;And marks how he, who would be hawk at poise Above the bird, his plaintive song enjoys.
She reads him when his humbled manhood weeps To her invoked: distraction is implored.
A smile, and he is up on godlike leaps Above, with his bright Goddess owned the adored.
His tales of her declare she condescends;Can share his fires, not always goads and rends:
Moreover, quits a throne, and must enclose A queenlier gem than woman's wayside rose.
She bends, he quickens; she breathes low, he springs Enraptured; low she laughs, his woes disperse;Aloud she laughs and sweeps his varied strings.
'Tis taught him how for touch of mournful verse Rarely the music made of two ascends, And Beauty's Queen some other way is won.
Or it may solve the riddle, that she lends Herself to all, and yields herself to none, Save heavenliest: though claims by men are raised In hot assurance under shade of doubt:
And numerous are the images bepraised As Beauty's Queen, should passion head the rout.
Be sure the ruddy hue is Love's: to woo Love's Fountain we must mount the ruddy hue.
That is her garden's precept, seen where shines Her blood-flower, and its unsought neighbour pines.
Daughter of light, the joyful light, She bids her couples face full East, Reflecting radiance, even when from her feast Their outstretched arms brown deserts disunite, The lion-haunted thickets hold apart.
In love the ruddy hue declares great heart;High confidence in her whose aid is lent To lovers lifting the tuned instrument, Not one of rippled strings and funeral tone.
