Oh, but the heavenly grammar did I hold Of that high speech which angels' tongues turn gold!
So should her deathless beauty take no wrong, Praised in her own great kindred's fit and cognate tongue.
Or if that language yet with us abode.
Which Adam in the garden talked with God!
But our untempered speech descends--poor heirs!
Grimy and rough-cast still from Babel's bricklayers:
Curse on the brutish jargon we inherit, Strong but to damn, not memorise, a spirit!
A cheek, a lip, a limb, a bosom, they Move with light ease in speech of working-day;
And women we do use to praise even so.
But here the gates we burst, and to the temple go.
Their praise were her dispraise; who dare, who dare, Adulate the seraphim for their burning hair?
How, if with them I dared, here should I dare it?
How praise the woman, who but know the spirit?
How praise the colour of her eyes, uncaught While they were coloured with her varying thought How her mouth's shape, who only use to know What tender shape her speech will fit it to?
Or her lips' redness, when their joined veil Song's fervid hand has parted till it wore them pale?
If I would praise her soul (temerarious if!), All must be mystery and hieroglyph.
Heaven, which not oft is prodigal of its more To singers, in their song too great before;
By which the hierarch of large poesy is Restrained to his once sacred benefice;
Only for her the salutary awe Relaxes and stern canon of its law;
To her alone concedes pluralities, In her alone to reconcile agrees The Muse, the Graces, and the Charities;
To her, who can the trust so well conduct To her it gives the use, to us the usufruct.
What of the dear administress then may I utter, though I spoke her own carved perfect way?
What of her daily gracious converse known, Whose heavenly despotism must needs dethrone And subjugate all sweetness but its own?
Deep in my heart subsides the infrequent word, And there dies slowly throbbing like a wounded bird.
What of her silence, that outsweetens speech?
What of her thoughts, high marks for mine own thoughts to reach?
Yet (Chaucer's antique sentence so to turn), Most gladly will she teach, and gladly learn;
And teaching her, by her enchanting art, The master threefold learns for all he can impart.
Now all is said, and all being said,--aye me!
There yet remains unsaid the very She.
Nay, to conclude (so to conclude I dare), If of her virtues you evade the snare, Then for her faults you'll fall in love with her.
Alas, and I have spoken of her Muse -
Her Muse, that died with her auroral dews!
Learn, the wise cherubim from harps of gold Seduce a trepidating music manifold;
But the superior seraphim do know None other music but to flame and glow.
So she first lighted on our frosty earth, A sad musician, of cherubic birth, Playing to alien ears--which did not prize The uncomprehended music of the skies -
The exiled airs of her far Paradise.
But soon from her own harpings taking fire, In love and light her melodies expire.
Now Heaven affords her, for her silenced hymn, A double portion of the seraphim.
At the rich odours from her heart that rise, My soul remembers its lost Paradise, And antenatal gales blow from Heaven's shores of spice;
I grow essential all, uncloaking me From this encumbering virility, And feel the primal sex of heaven and poetry:
And parting from her, in me linger on Vague snatches of Uranian antiphon.
How to the petty prison could she shrink Of femineity?--Nay, but I think In a dear courtesy her spirit would Woman assume, for grace to womanhood.
Or, votaress to the virgin Sanctitude Of reticent withdrawal's sweet, courted pale, She took the cloistral flesh, the sexual veil, Of her sad, aboriginal sisterhood;
The habit of cloistral flesh which founding Eve indued.
Thus do I know her: but for what men call Beauty--the loveliness corporeal, Its most just praise a thing unproper were To singer or to listener, me or her.
She wears that body but as one indues A robe, half careless, for it is the use;
Although her soul and it so fair agree, We sure may, unattaint of heresy, Conceit it might the soul's begetter be.
The immortal could we cease to contemplate, The mortal part suggests its every trait.
God laid His fingers on the ivories Of her pure members as on smoothed keys, And there out-breathed her spirit's harmonies I'll speak a little proudly:- I disdain To count the beauty worth my wish or gaze, Which the dull daily fool can covet or obtain.
I do confess the fairness of the spoil, But from such rivalry it takes a soil.
For her I'll proudlier speak:- how could it be That I should praise the gilding on the psaltery?
'Tis not for her to hold that prize a prize, Or praise much praise, though proudest in its wise, To which even hopes of merely women rise.
Such strife would to the vanquished laurels yield, Against HER suffered to have lost a field.
