The Unknown Eros

XIII.  DE NATURA DEORUM

   ‘Good-morrow, Psyche!  What’s thine errand now?What awful pleasure do thine eyes bespeak,What shame is in thy childish cheek,What terror on thy brow?Is this my Psyche, once so pale and meek?Thy body’s sudden beauty my sight oldStings, like an agile bead of boiling gold,And all thy life looks troubled like a tree’sWhose boughs wave many ways in one great breeze.’   ‘O Pythoness, to strangest story hark:A dreadful God was with me in the dark—’   ‘How many a Maid—Has never told me that!  And thou’rt afraid—’   ‘He’ll come no more,Or come but twice,Or thrice,Or only thrice ten thousand times thrice o’er!’   ‘For want of wishing thou mean’st not to miss.We know the Lover, Psyche, by the kiss!’   ‘If speech of honey could impart the sweet,The world were all in tears and at his feet!But not to tell of that in tears come I, but this:I’m foolish, weak, and small,And fear to fall.If long he stay away, O frightful dream, wise Mother,What keeps me but that I, gone crazy, kiss some other!’   ‘The fault were his!  But know,Sweet little Daughter sad,He did but feign to go;And never moreShall cross thy window-sill,Or pass beyond thy door,Save by thy will.He’s present now in some dim place apartOf the ivory house wherewith thou mad’st him glad.Nay, this I whisper thee,Since none is near,Or, if one were, since only thou could’st hear,That happy thing which makes thee flush and start,Like infant lips in contact with thy heart,Is He!’   ‘Yea, this I know, but never can believe!O, hateful light! when shall mine own eyes markMy beauty, which this victory did achieve?’   ‘When thou, like Gods and owls, canst see by dark.’   ‘In vain I cleanse me from all blurring error—’   ‘’Tis the last rub that polishes the mirror.’   ‘It takes fresh blurr each breath which I respire.’   ‘Poor Child, don’t cry so!  Hold it to the fire.’   ‘Ah, nought these dints can e’er do out again!’   ‘Love is not love which does not sweeter liveFor having something dreadful to forgive.’   ‘Sadness and change and painShall me for ever stain;For, though my blissful fateBe for a billion years,How shall I stop my tearsThat life was once so low and Love arrived so late!’   ‘Sadness is beauty’s savour, and pain isThe exceedingly keen edge of bliss;Nor, without swift mutation, would the heav’ns be aught.’   ‘How to behave with him I’d fain be taught.A maid, meseems, within a God’s embrace,Should bear her like a Goddess, or, at least, a Grace.’   ‘When Gods, to Man or Maid below,As men or birds appear,A kind ’tis of incognito,And that, not them, is what they choose we should revere.’   ‘Advise me what oblation vast to bring,Some least part of my worship to confess!’   ‘A woman is a little thing,And in things little lies her comeliness.’   ‘Must he not soon with mortal tire to toy?’   ‘The bashful meeting of strange Depth and HeightBreeds the forever new-born babe, Delight;And, as thy God is more than mortal boy,So bashful more the meeting, and so more the joy.’   ‘He loves me dearly, but he shakes a whipOf deathless scorpions at my slightest slip.Mother, last night he call’d me “Gipsy,” soRoughly it smote me like a blow!Yet, oh,I love him, as none surely e’er could loveOur People’s pompous but good-natured Jove.He used to send me stately overture;But marriage-bonds, till now, I never could endure!’   ‘How should great Jove himself do else than missTo win the woman he forgets to kiss;Or, won, to keep his favour in her eyes,If he’s too soft or sleepy to chastise!By Eros, her twain claims are ne’er forgot;Her wedlock’s marr’d when either’s miss’d:Or when she’s kiss’d, but beaten not,Or duly beaten, but not kiss’d.Ah, Child, the sweetContent, when we’re both kiss’d and beat!—But whence these wounds?  What Demon thee enjoinsTo scourge thy shoulders whiteAnd tender loins!’   ‘’Tis nothing, Mother.  Happiness at play,And speech of tenderness no speech can say!’   ‘How learn’d thou art!Twelve honeymoons profane had taught thy docile heartLess than thine Eros, in a summer night!’   ‘Nay, do not jeer, but help my puzzled plight:Because he loves so marvellously me,And I with all he loves in love must be,How to except myself I do not see.Yea, now that other vanities are vain,I’m vain, since him it likes, of being withalWeak, foolish, small!’   ‘How can a Maid forget her ornaments!The Powers, that hopeless doom the proud to die,Unask’d smile pardon upon vanity,Nay, praise it, when themselves are praised thereby.’   ‘Ill-match’d I am for a God’s blandishments!So great, so wise—’   ‘Gods, in the abstract, are, no doubt, most wise;But, in the concrete, Girl, they’re mysteries!He’s not with thee,At all less wise nor moreThan human Lover is with her he deigns to adore.He finds a fair capacity,And fills it with himself, and glad would dieFor that sole She.’   ‘Know’st thou some potion me awake to keep,Lest, to the grief of that ne’er-slumbering Bliss,Disgraced I sleep,Wearied in soul by his bewildering kiss?’   ‘The Immortals, Psyche, moulded men from sodsThat Maids from them might learn the ways of Gods.Think, would a wakeful Youth his hard fate weep,Lock’d to the tired breast of a Bride asleep?’   ‘Ah, me, I do not dream,Yet all this does some heathen fable seem!’   ‘O’ermuch thou mind’st the throne he leaves above!Between unequals sweet is equal love.’   ‘Nay, Mother, in his breast, when darkness blinds,I cannot for my life but talk and laughWith the large impudence of little minds!’   ‘Respectful to the Gods and meek,According to one’s lights, I grant’Twere well to be;But, on my word,Child, any one, to hear you speak,Would take you for a Protestant,(Such fish I do foreseeWhen the charm’d fume comes strong on me,)Or powder’d lackey, by some great man’s board,A deal more solemn than his Lord!Know’st thou not, Girl, thine Eros loves to laugh?And shall a God do anything by half?He foreknew and predestinated allThe Great must pay for kissing things so small,And ever loves his little Maid the moreThe more she makes him laugh.’   ‘O, Mother, are you sure?’   ‘Gaze steady where yon starless deep the gaze revolts,And say,Seest thou a Titan forging thunderbolts,Or three fair butterflies at lovesome play?And this I’ll add, for succour of thy soul:Lines parallel meet sooner than some think;The least part oft is greater than the whole;And, when you’re thirsty, that’s the time to drink.’   ‘Thy sacred words I ponder and revere,And thank thee heartily that some are clear.’   ‘Clear speech to men is mostly speech in vain.Their scope is by themselves so justly scann’d,They still despise the things they understand;But, to a pretty Maid like thee, I don’t mind speaking plain.’   ‘Then one boon more to her whom strange Fate mocksWith a wife’s duty but no wife’s sweet right:Could I at will but summon my Delight—’   ‘Thou of thy jewel art the dainty box;Thine is the charm which, any time, unlocks;And this, it seems, thou hitt’st upon last night.Now go, Child!  For thy sakeI’ve talk’d till this stiff tripod makes my old limbs ache.’

XIV.  PSYCHE’S DISCONTENT

   ‘Enough, enough, ambrosial plumed Boy!My bosom is aweary of thy breath.Thou kissest joyTo death.Have pity of my clay-conceived birthAnd maiden’s simple mood,Which longs for ether and infinitude,As thou, being God, crav’st littleness and earth!Thou art immortal, thou canst ever toy,Nor savour lessThe sweets of thine eternal childishness,And hold thy godhead bright in far employ.Me, to quite other custom life-inured,Ah, loose from thy caress.’Tis not to be endured!Undo thine arms and let me see the sky,By this infatuating flame obscured.O, I should feel thee nearer to my heartIf thou and IShone each to each respondently apart,Like stars which one the other trembling spy,Distinct and lucid in extremes of air.O, hear me pray—’                    ‘Be prudent in thy prayer!A God is bond to her who is wholly his,And, should she ask amiss,He may not her beseeched harm deny.’   ‘Not yet, not yet!’Tis still high day, and half my toil’s to do.How can I toil, if thus thou dost renewToil’s guerdon, which the daytime should forget?The long, long night, when none can work for fear,Sweet fear incessantly consummated,My most divinely Dear,My Joy, my Dread,Will soon be here!Not, Eros, yet!I ask, for Day, the use which is the Wife’s:To bear, apart from thy delight and thee,The fardel coarse of customary life’sExceeding injucundity.Leave me awhile, that I may shew thee clearHow Goddess-like thy love has lifted me;How, seeming lone upon the gaunt, lone shore,I’ll trust thee near,When thou’rt, to knowledge of my heart, no moreThan a dream’s heedOf lost joy track’d in scent of the sea-weed!Leave me to pluck the incomparable flowerOf frailty lion-like fighting in thy name and power;To make thee laugh, in thy safe heaven, to seeWith what grip fellI’ll cling to hope when life draws hard to hell,Yea, cleave to thee when me thou seem’st to slay,Haply, at close of some most cruel day,To find myself in thy reveal’d arms clasp’d,Just when I say,My feet have slipp’d at last!But, lo, while thus I store toil’s slow increase,To be my dower, in patience and in peace,Thou com’st, like bolt from blue, invisibly,With premonition none nor any sign,And, at a gasp, no choice nor fault of mine,Possess’d I am with theeEv’n as a sponge is by a surge of the sea!’   ‘Thus irresistibly by Love embracedIs she who boasts her more than mortal chaste!’   ‘Find’st thou me worthy, then, by day and night,But of this fond indignity, delight?’   ‘Little, bold Femininity,That darest blame Heaven, what would’st thou have or be?’   ‘Shall I, the gnat which dances in thy ray,Dare to be reverent?  Therefore dare I say,I cannot guess the good that I desire;But this I know, I spurn the gifts which HellCan mock till which is which ’tis hard to tell.I love thee, God; yea, and ’twas such assaultAs this which made me thine; if that be fault;But I, thy Mistress, merit should thine ireIf aught so little, transitory and lowAs this which made me thineShould hold me so.’   ‘Little to thee, my Psyche, is this, but much to me!’   ‘Ah, if, my God, that be!’   ‘Yea, Palate fine,That claim’st for thy proud cup the pearl of price,And scorn’st the wine,Accept the sweet, and say ’tis sacrifice!Sleep, Centre to the tempest of my love,And dream thereof,And keep the smile which sleeps within thy faceLike sunny eve in some forgotten place!’

XV.  PAIN

   O, Pain, Love’s mystery,Close next of kinTo joy and heart’s delight,Low Pleasure’s opposite,Choice food of sanctityAnd medicine of sin,Angel, whom even they that will pursuePleasure with hell’s whole gustFind that they mustPerversely woo,My lips, thy live coal touching, speak thee true.Thou sear’st my flesh, O Pain,But brand’st for arduous peace my languid brain,And bright’nest my dull view,Till I, for blessing, blessing give again,And my roused spirit isAnother fire of bliss,Wherein I learnFeelingly how the pangful, purging fireShall furiously burnWith joy, not only of assured desire,But also present joyOf seeing the life’s corruption, stain by stain,Vanish in the clear heat of Love irate,And, fume by fume, the sick alloyOf luxury, sloth and hateEvaporate;Leaving the man, so dark erewhile,The mirror merely of God’s smile.Herein, O Pain, abides the praiseFor which my song I raise;But even the bastard good of intermittent easeHow greatly doth it please!With what reposeThe being from its bright exertion glows,When from thy strenuous storm the senses sweepInto a little harbour deepOf rest;When thou, O Pain,Having devour’d the nerves that thee sustain,Sleep’st, till thy tender food be somewhat grownagain;And how the lullWith tear-blind love is full!What mockery of a man am I express’dThat I should wait for theeTo woo!Nor even dare to love, till thou lov’st me.How shameful, too,Is this:That, when thou lov’st, I am at first afraidOf thy fierce kiss,Like a young maid;And only trust thy charmsAnd get my courage in thy throbbing arms.And, when thou partest, what a fickle mindThou leav’st behind,That, being a little absent from mine eye,It straight forgets thee what thou art,And ofttimes my adulterate heartDallies with Pleasure, thy pale enemy.O, for the learned spirit without attaintThat does not faint,But knows both how to have thee and to lack,And ventures many a spell,Unlawful but for them that love so well,To call thee back.

XVI.  PROPHETS WHO CANNOT SING

   Ponder, ye just, the scoffs that frequent goFrom forth the foe:   ‘The holders of the Truth in VerityAre people of a harsh and stammering tongue!The hedge-flower hath its song;Meadow and tree,Water and wandering cloudFind Seers who see,And, with convincing music clear and loud,Startle the adder-deafness of the crowdBy tones, O Love, from thee.Views of the unveil’d heavens alone forth bringProphets who cannot sing,Praise that in chiming numbers will not run;At least, from David until Dante, none,And none since him.Fish, and not swim?They think they somehow should, and so they try;But (haply ’tis they screw the pitch too high)’Tis still their fatesTo warble tunes that nails might draw from slates.Poor Seraphim!They mean to spoil our sleep, and do, but all their gainsAre curses for their pains!’   Now who but knowsThat truth to learn from foesIs wisdom ripe?Therefore no longer let us stretch our throatsTill hoarse as frogsWith straining after notesWhich but to touch would burst an organ-pipe.Far better be dumb dogs.

XVII.  THE CHILD’S PURCHASE

A PROLOGUE   As a young Child, whose Mother, for a jest,To his own use a golden coin flings down,Devises blythe how he may spend it best,Or on a horse, a bride-cake, or a crown,Till, wearied with his quest,Nor liking altogether that nor this,He gives it back for nothing but a kiss,Endow’d so IWith golden speech, my choice of toys to buy,And scanning power and pleasure and renown,Till each in turn, with looking at, looks vain,For her mouth’s bliss,To her who gave it give I it again.   Ah, Lady elect,Whom the Time’s scorn has saved from its respect,Would I had artFor uttering this which sings within my heart!But, lo,Thee to admire is all the art I know.My Mother and God’s; Fountain of miracle!Give me thereby some praise of thee to tellIn such a SongAs may my Guide severe and glad not wrongWho never spake till thou’dst on him conferr’dThe right, convincing word!Grant me the steady heatOf thought wise, splendid, sweet,Urged by the great, rejoicing wind that ringsWith draught of unseen wings,Making each phrase, for love and for delight,Twinkle like Sirius on a frosty night!Aid thou thine own dear fame, thou only Fair,At whose petition meekThe Heavens themselves decree that, as it were,They will be weak!   Thou Speaker of all wisdom in a Word,Thy Lord!Speaker who thus could’st well affordThence to be silent;—ah, what silence thatWhich had for prologue thy ‘Magnificat?’—O, Silence full of wondersMore than by Moses in the Mount were heard,More than were utter’d by the Seven Thunders;Silence that crowns, unnoted, like the voiceless blue,The loud world’s varying view,And in its holy heart the sense of all things ponders!That acceptably I may speak of thee,Ora pro me!   Key-note and stopOf the thunder-going chorus of sky-Powers;Essential dropDistill’d from worlds of sweetest-savour’d flowersTo anoint with nuptial praiseThe Head which for thy Beauty doff’d its rays,And thee, in His exceeding glad descending, meant,And Man’s new daysMade of His deed the adorning accident!Vast Nothingness of Self, fair female TwinOf Fulness, sucking all God’s glory in!(Ah, Mistress mine,To nothing I have added only sin,And yet would shine!)Ora pro me!   Life’s cradle and death’s tomb!To lie within whose womb,There, with divine self-will infatuate,Love-captive to the thing He did create,Thy God did not abhor,No moreThan Man, in Youth’s high spousal-tide,Abhors at last to touchThe strange lips of his long-procrastinating Bride;Nay, not the least imagined part as much!Ora pro me!   My Lady, yea, the Lady of my Lord,Who didst the first descryThe burning secret of virginity,We know with what reward!Prism wherebyAlone we seeHeav’n’s light in its triplicity;Rainbow complexIn bright distinction of all beams of sex,Shining for ayeIn the simultaneous sky,To One, thy Husband, Father, Son, and Brother,Spouse blissful, Daughter, Sister, milk-sweet Mother;Ora pro me!   Mildness, whom God obeys, obeying thyselfHim in thy joyful Saint, nigh lost to sightIn the great gulfOf his own glory and thy neighbour light;With whom thou wast as else with husband noneFor perfect fruit of inmost amity;Who felt for theeSuch rapture of refusal that no kissEver seal’d wedlock so conjoint with bliss;And whose good singular eternally’Tis now, with nameless peace and vehemence,To enjoy thy married smile,That mystery of innocence;Ora pro me!   Sweet Girlhood without guile,The extreme of God’s creative energy;Sunshiny Peak of human personality;The world’s sad aspirations’ one Success;Bright Blush, that sav’st our shame from shamelessness;Chief Stone of stumbling; Sign built in the wayTo set the foolish everywhere a-bray;Hem of God’s robe, which all who touch are heal’d;To which the outside Many honour yieldWith a reward and graceUnguess’d by the unwash’d boor that hails Him to His face,Spurning the safe, ingratiant courtesyOf suing Him by thee;Ora pro me!   Creature of God rather the sole than first;Knot of the cordWhich binds together all and all unto their Lord;Suppliant Omnipotence; best to the worst;Our only Saviour from an abstract ChristAnd Egypt’s brick-kilns, where the lost crowd plods,Blaspheming its false Gods;Peace-beaming Star, by which shall come enticed,Though nought thereof as yet they weet,Unto thy Babe’s small feet,The Mighty, wand’ring disemparadised,Like Lucifer, because to theeThey will not bend the knee;Ora pro me!   Desire of Him whom all things else desire!Bush aye with Him as He with thee on fire!Neither in His great Deed nor on His throne—O, folly of Love, the intenseLast culmination of Intelligence,—Him seem’d it good that God should be alone!Basking in unborn laughter of thy lips,Ere the world was, with absolute delightHis Infinite reposed in thy Finite;Well-match’d: He, universal being’s Spring,And thou, in whom are gather’d up the ends of everything!Ora pro me!   In season due, on His sweet-fearful bed,Rock’d by an earthquake, curtain’d with eclipse,Thou shar’d’st the rapture of the sharp spear’s head,And thy bliss paleWrought for our boon what Eve’s did for our bale;Thereafter, holding a little thy soft breath,Thou underwent’st the ceremony of death;And, now, Queen-Wife,Sitt’st at the right hand of the Lord of Life,Who, of all bounty, craves for only feeThe glory of hearing it besought with smiles by thee!Ora pro me!   Mother, who lead’st me still by unknown ways,Giving the gifts I know not how to ask,Bless thou the workWhich, done, redeems my many wasted days,Makes white the murk,And crowns the few which thou wilt not dispraise.When clear my Songs of Lady’s graces rang,And little guess’d I ’twas of thee I sang!   Vainly, till now, my pray’rs would thee compelTo fire my verse with thy shy fame, too longShunning world-blazon of well-ponder’d song;But doubtful smiles, at last, ’mid thy denials lurk;From which I spell,‘Humility and greatness grace the taskWhich he who does it deems impossible!’

XVIII.  DEAD LANGUAGE

   ‘Thou dost not wisely, Bard.A double voice is Truth’s, to use at will:One, with the abysmal scorn of good for ill,Smiting the brutish ear with doctrine hard,Wherein She strives to look as near a lieAs can comport with her divinity;The other tender-soft as seemThe embraces of a dead Love in a dream.These thoughts, which you have sungIn the vernacular,Should be, as others of the Church’s are,Decently cloak’d in the Imperial Tongue.Have you no fearsLest, as Lord Jesus bids your sort to dread,Yon acorn-munchers rend you limb from limb,You, with Heaven’s liberty affronting theirs!’So spoke my monitor; but I to him,‘Alas, and is not mine a language dead?’

AMELIA, ETC

AMELIA

Whene’er mine eyes do my Amelia greetIt is with such emotionAs when, in childhood, turning a dim street,I first beheld the ocean.   There, where the little, bright, surf-breathing town,That shew’d me first her beauty and the sea,Gathers its skirts against the gorse-lit downAnd scatters gardens o’er the southern lea,Abides this MaidWithin a kind, yet sombre Mother’s shade,Who of her daughter’s graces seems almost afraid,Viewing them ofttimes with a scared forecast,Caught, haply, from obscure love-peril past.Howe’er that be,She scants me of my right,Is cunning careful evermore to balkSweet separate talk,And fevers my delightBy frets, if, on Amelia’s cheek of peach,I touch the notes which music cannot reach,Bidding ‘Good-night!’Wherefore it came that, till to-day’s dear date,I curs’d the weary months which yet I have to waitEre I find heaven, one-nested with my mate.   To-day, the Mother gave,To urgent pleas and promise to behaveAs she were there, her long-besought consentTo trust Amelia with me to the graveWhere lay my once-betrothed, Millicent:‘For,’ said she, hiding ill a moistening eye,‘Though, Sir, the word sounds hard,God makes as if He least knew how to guardThe treasure He loves best, simplicity.’   And there Amelia stood, for fairness shewnLike a young apple-tree, in flush’d arrayOf white and ruddy flow’r, auroral, gay,With chilly blue the maiden branch between;And yet to look on her moved less the mindTo say ‘How beauteous!’ than ‘How good and kind!’   And so we went aloneBy walls o’er which the lilac’s numerous plumeShook down perfume;Trim plots close blownWith daisies, in conspicuous myriads seen,Engross’d each oneWith single ardour for her spouse, the sun;Garths in their glad arrayOf white and ruddy branch, auroral, gay,With azure chill the maiden flow’r between;Meadows of fervid green,With sometime sudden prospect of untoldCowslips, like chance-found gold;And broadcast buttercups at joyful gaze,Rending the air with praise,Like the six-hundred-thousand-voiced shoutOf Jacob camp’d in Midian put to rout;Then through the Park,Where Spring to livelier gloomQuicken’d the cedars dark,And, ’gainst the clear sky cold,Which shone afarCrowded with sunny alps oracular,Great chestnuts raised themselves abroad like cliffs of bloom;And everywhere,Amid the ceaseless rapture of the lark,With wonder newWe caught the solemn voice of single air,‘Cuckoo!’   And when Amelia, ’bolden’d, saw and heardHow bravely sang the bird,And all things in God’s bounty did rejoice,She who, her Mother by, spake seldom word,Did her charm’d silence doff,And, to my happy marvel, her dear voiceWent as a clock does, when the pendulum’s off.Ill Monarch of man’s heart the Maiden whoDoes not aspire to be High-Pontiff too!So she repeated soft her Poet’s line,‘By grace divine,Not otherwise, O Nature, are we thine!’And I, up the bright steep she led me, trod,And the like thought pursuedWith, ‘What is gladness without gratitude,And where is gratitude without a God?’And of delight, the guerdon of His laws,She spake, in learned mood;And I, of Him loved reverently, as Cause,Her sweetly, as Occasion of all good.Nor were we shy,For souls in heaven that beMay talk of heaven without hypocrisy.   And now, when we drew nearThe low, gray Church, in its sequester’d dell,A shade upon me fell.Dead Millicent indeed had been most sweet,But I how little meetTo call such graces in a Maiden mine!A boy’s proud passion free affection blunts;His well-meant flatteries oft are blind affronts;And many a tearWas Millicent’s before I, manlier, knewThat maidens shineAs diamonds do,Which, though most clear,Are not to be seen through;And, if she put her virgin self asideAnd sate her, crownless, at my conquering feet,It should have bred in me humility, not pride.Amelia had more luck than Millicent:Secure she smiled and warm from all mischanceOr from my knowledge or my ignorance,And glow’d contentWith my—some might have thought too much—superior age,Which seem’d the gageOf steady kindness all on her intent.Thus nought forebade us to be fully blent.   While, therefore, nowHer pensive footstep stirr’dThe darnell’d garden of unheedful death,She ask’d what Millicent was like, and heardOf eyes like her’s, and honeysuckle breath,And of a wiser than a woman’s brow,Yet fill’d with only woman’s love, and howAn incidental greatness character’dHer unconsider’d ways.But all my praiseAmelia thought too slight for Millicent,And on my lovelier-freighted arm she leant,For more attent;And the tea-rose I gave,To deck her breast, she dropp’d upon the grave.‘And this was her’s,’ said I, decoring with a bandOf mildest pearls Amelia’s milder hand.‘Nay, I will wear it for her sake,’ she said:For dear to maidens are their rivals dead.   And so,She seated on the black yew’s tortured root,I on the carpet of sere shreds below,And nigh the little mound where lay that other,I kiss’d her lips three times without dispute,And, with bold worship suddenly aglow,I lifted to my lips a sandall’d foot,And kiss’d it three times thrice without dispute.Upon my head her fingers fell like snow,Her lamb-like hands about my neck she wreathed.Her arms like slumber o’er my shoulders crept,And with her bosom, whence the azalea breathed,She did my face full favourably smother,To hide the heaving secret that she wept!   Now would I keep my promise to her Mother;Now I arose, and raised her to her feet,My best Amelia, fresh-born from a kiss,Moth-like, full-blown in birthdew shuddering sweet,With great, kind eyes, in whose brown shadeBright Venus and her Baby play’d!   At inmost heart well pleased with one another,What time the slant sun lowThrough the plough’d field does each clod sharply shew,And softly fillsWith shade the dimples of our homeward hills,With little said,We left the ‘wilder’d garden of the dead,And gain’d the gorse-lit shoulder of the downThat keeps the north-wind from the nestling town,And caught, once more, the vision of the wave,Where, on the horizon’s dip,A many-sailed shipPursued alone her distant purpose grave;And, by steep steps rock-hewn, to the dim streetI led her sacred feet;And so the Daughter gave,Soft, moth-like, sweet,Showy as damask-rose and shy as musk,Back to her Mother, anxious in the dusk.And now ‘Good-night!’Me shall the phantom months no more affright.For heaven’s gates to open well waits heWho keeps himself the key.