The Bridegroom of Beauty

Who wears a singing-robe is richly dight,
Said Mabel; he is greater than a King.

I would I were a Poet borne on wings,
Up like a Lark i' the morning of the times,
To sing above the human harvesters;

Drop fancies, dainty-sweet, to cheer their toil,
And hurry out a ripe luxuriance
Of life in song, until my heart should break;

And sing them sweet and precious memories,
And golden promises, and throbbing hopes;

Hymn the great Future with its mystery,
That startles us from out the dark of time
With secrets numerous as a night of stars:

Those days hung round with loftier heavens, where move
The larger souls with grandly solemn pace:

Or send wronged Nations to the battle-field
With eyes that weep and burn — stir as with fire
The grand wild beast of Valour, till it leapt
The red Arena fiery for the fight:

Then bind with garlands brave the Patriot's brow.

Anon I would sing songs so sweetly pure,
That they might pillow a budding Maiden's cheek,
Like spirit-hands, and catch her tender tears;

Or nestle next her heart lapt up in love: —
Songs that in far lauds, under alien skies,
Should spring from English hearts like flowers of home.
I'd strive to bring down light from heaven to read
The records writ on Poverty's prison walls,
The signs of greatness limned in martyr blood,
And make worn faces glow with warmth of love
Into the lineaments of heavenly beauty.

Who wears a singing-robe is richly dight;
The Poet, he is greater than a King.
He plucks the veil from hidden loveliness:
His gusts of music stir the shadowing boughs,
To let in glory on the darkened soul.
Upon the hills of light he plants his feet
To lure the people up with harp and voice;
At humblest human hearths drops dews divine
To feed the violet virtues nestling there.
His hands adorn the poorest house of life
With rare abiding shapes of loveliness.
All things obey his soul's creative eye;
For him earth ripens fruit-like in the light;
Green April comes to him with smiling tears,
Like some sweet Maiden who transfigured stands
In dewy light of first love's rosy dawn,
And yields all secret preciousness, his Bride.
He reaps the Autumn without scythe or sickle;
And in the sweet low singing of the corn,
Hears coming Plenty hush the pining Poor.

The shows of things are but a robe o' the day,
His life down-deepens to the living heart,
And Sorrow shows him her wise mysteries.
He knoweth Life is but a longer year,
And it will blossom bright in other springs.

The soul of all things is invisible,
And nearest to that soul the Poet sings;

A sweet, shy Bird in darkling privacy.

He beckons not the Pleasures as they pass,
And lets the money-grubbing world go by.

He hath a towering life, but cannot climb
Out of the reach of sad calamity:

A many carking cares pluck at his skirts;

Wild, wandering words are hissing at his ear;

He runs the gauntlet of world- woes to reach
The inner sanctuary of better life.

But tho' the seas of sorrow flood his heart,
Some silent spring of roses blossoms there.

His spirit-wounds a precious balsam bleed.

The loveliest ministrants that visit him,
Rise veiled when his heart-fountains spring in tears.

And when this misty life hath rolled away
The turmoil husht; all foolish voices still;

The bonds that crusht his great heart shattered down,
And all his nature shines sublimely bare;

Death whitens many a stain of strife and toil,
And careful hands shall pluck away each weed
Around the spring that wells melodious life.

Many are called, Aurelia replied,
But few are crowned. I knew a Poet once;

One of the world's most marvellous might-have-beens j
A strange wild harper upon human heart-strings.

Life's morning-splendour round him prophesied
That he should win his garland in the game.

But he was lost for lack of that sweet thing,
A wife, to live his love's dear dream of beauty,
And wandered darkling in his dazzling dream.
Life's waters — troubled till that Angel comes —
Never grew calm above the jewel he sought,
Till in Death's harbour all their surges slept.

He was betrothed to Beauty ere his birth —
That silent Spirit of the universe,
Which seeks interpreters of her dumb shows,
'Mong human lovers whom she may not wed!

This Spirit arose from many things, as soars
The soul of harmony from many sounds.

She beckoned him for her Evangelist,
Out of the bye way of his lonely life,
And straightway he arose and followed her,
And in the shadow of her loveliness,
Or in her wake of glory, walkt the world.

That shining Shape, in her sweet mystery, seemed
Some beauteous miracle of silent love.
Thro' smiles, and tears, he saw his visioned Bride,
With gorgeous grace, and twinkling limbs of light,
Aye dancing on in her delightsomeness.
His love-dream glided silent thro' his life,
Like rosy -handed Day 'twixt Earth and Night,
And came betwixt his mind and all its glooms;
Her sandals wet and fragant with Heaven's dew.
She set the barren thorns in jewelled glow,
And sowed the furrows of his life with flowers.
He followed with wild looks and heart a-fire,
And that rich mist of feeling in the eyes,
Whose alchymy half-creates the thing we S3e.

She rose at dawn in sparkling clouds of dew,
And kept the Morning's ruddy golden gates;

Stood high in sunrise on the mountain-top;

Or in her bower of the silvery air
Sat, shedding her rich beauty on the sea,
Which of her likeness took some trembly tints;

Voyaged like Venus in her car of cloud
About the sapphire heaven's lake of love,
Or danced on sunset streams to harp of gold:

Then twilight mists would robe more faint and fair
Her dim, delicious, dreamy loveliness.

The Flowers that startle at the voice of May
And open gamesome eyes, had been with her j
Their subtle smile said what they could reveal.
Among the boughs of balm rainbowed with bloom;
The coloured clouds that kindle and richly rise
From out the bosom of Earth's emerald sea;
Hedge-roses set in dewy radiance green;
The lush Laburnums, all a rain of gold;
She seemed to have fled and left her robe afloat.
An Ariel, soft she murmured in the pines;
He heard, but knew no magic word or wand.
A wavy Naiad, she rippled the cool brooks
That round her dallied, babbling in their dreams.
The fragrant feeling of the languorous air
Was as the soft endearment of her touch,
And wound him in a tremulous caress.

Not by appointment do we meet Delight
And Joy; they heed not our expectancy;
But round some corner in the streets of life,
They, on a sudden, clasp us with a smile.
So on him rose his visitant divine,
From many a magic mirror of the mind;

With elfin evanescence came and went.
When, thronged with life, the Year in beauty burst,
Lifted her lids, and blossomed from the trees,
She smiled in all the gateways of the spring.
In burnisht bark swam down the summer- tide
That floods the valleys, breaks o'er all the hills,
In sparkling spray of flowers, and leafy life.
She rooft the Autumn forests with the wealth
Of melted rainbows, caught from summer heaven.
And winter trees stretcht fingers weird to win
Her perfect pearl, and her white purity.

Where'er she went Earth lookt up with a smile.
Thro' Music's maze she glode at hide-and-seek;
Played with the Storm, then in her rainbow-shape
Laught from the purple skirts of Heaven, as laughs
Some radiant Child from Mother's hiding robe.
A down dim forest- windings he would peer;
Surprise his beautiful at her woodland bath,
And in a solemn hush of heart stand still
Like fixe"d flame! for lo, how softly glowed
Her dainty limbs in depth of dissolved pearl!
Then swift as runs a wind- wave over grass,
He saw her garments gleam in leafy light.
Were those love- whisperings among the leaves,
Or elvish laughters twitting thro' the trees?
Sometimes the boughs let in her haunting face;
But the old forest kept the secret still,
And husht it round with grave unconscious look.

In vernal nights so tender, calm, and cool,
When eerie Darkness lays its shadowy hands
On earth, and reads her sins with searching eyes,
Like a Confessor o'er a kneeling Nun;

He stood in God's wide whispering gallery,
And breathed his worship: down from visible heaven
Her influence fell, and thrilled in music thro'
The silences of space, and soothed his soul,
Till life was folded up brimfull of beauty,
As the flower folds its pearl and droops to dream.

At times, from out the curtains of the dark,
Her face would meet him thro' the glowing gloom.

Sometimes she passed; her rippling raiment toucht
His brows, and sphered him with diviner air,
Like honeysuckles brusht at dewy dusk.

The fragrance of her breath made old earth young.

Prom mystery to mystery, like a Bride,
The dainty-waisted darling led him on,
And dropt love-tokens in his pilgrim path.

The red Rose peering from its cool green leaves
Like warm Love lifting half its hiding veil,
Symbolled her soft red mouth held up to him.

A virgin whiteness in a dream of bloom,
Gave to her tender cheeks their taking tint.

Her eyes were orbs of thought that on him burned
Fervent as Hesper in the brow of Eve.

He walkt as in a clime of golden eves.
The vineyard of his life reeled lusty ripe;
He ached to press the wine upon her lips,
But aye she melted from his love's embrace,
To float him far away in faery lands.
The wooing wind would murmur of her fairness,
And round him breathe in many whispers sweet;
Bring dews of healing as from Her in on hill;

Creep to his burning heart with drink of life,
And cool him with her kisses. Oft he husht,
As one who pauses on a midnight heath,
To catch the footfall felt on Fancy's ear.

When he awoke in Dreamland, 'twas to find
He had been floated thro' some starry dark,
Far from earth's shore, on an enchanted sea:

And he lay pillowed 'twixt her white warm breasts,
In glowing arms of glorifying love:

A light of love-dreams on her features shone,
And she had laid her daylight mask aside;

All the sweet soul of things lay bare, as lies
The mirrored moon in silver sleeping seas.

A shimmering splendour from the By-gone broke,
As the ship leaves a luminous wake behind;

And, looking back, his Childhood's world she ringed
With rich auroral hues of summer dawns.

When weird, dark shapes of sorrow hunted nigh
With their slow solemn eyes, and silent aim,
She dropt the gold cloud of her tresses round him.

When o'er him hung the night of adverse fate,
She was a light along his perilous path,
And thro' the darkness of his soul there broke
A heaven of worlds all tenderness and peace.

At times he walkt with glad and dauntless step,
As inner wings to heroic music moved;

And men who read his lighted look might deem
His life a summer story told in flowers.

But often he would falter weeping-weak,
With clasped hands, and very lowly heart.

Then she rose radiant in finer light,
Seen thro' the altar-smoke and mist of tears.

So his life grew to beauty silently,
And shaped his soul into an orb of song.

He sang of Her his beautiful Unknown!

And to his music she would coyly come;

He ceased — to look on her — and she was gone.

He sang of Her his beautiful Unknown,
Heart-wild, as some glad bird that sings of spring,
And all Earth's voices rang a rich refrain.

Pie would have made the world her worshipper:

The sceptic world that flung him Christ's old crown.

One day our passionate pilgrim sat him down
JBy the wayside of life, and thus he sang.

" LIKE a tree beside the river
Of her life that runs from me,
Do I lean me, murmuring ever
In my love's idolatry.
Lo, I reach out hands of blessing;

Lo, I stretch out hands of prayer;
And. with passionate caressing,
Pour my life upon the air.
In my ears the siren river
Sing, and smiles up in my face;
But for ever, and for ever,
Runs from my embrace.

" Spring by spring the branches duly
Clothe themselves in tender flower;
And for her sweet sake as truly
All their fruit and fragrance shower.
But the stream, with careless laughter,
Runs irr merry beauty by,
And it leaves me yearning after,
Lorn to droop and lone to die.

In my ears the siren river
Sings and smiles up in my face;

But for ever, and for ever,
Buns from my embrace.

" I stand mazed in the moonlight,
O'er its happy face to dream;
I am parched in the moonlight
By that cool and brimming stream:
I am dying by the river
Of her life that runs from me,
And it sparkles by me ever,
With its cool felicity.
In my ears the siren river
Sings, and smiles up in my face;
But for ever, and for ever,
Runs from my embrace."

" O THOU Beloved! O thou Beautiful!
On our perfection throned for pedestal:
O spirit as the lightning wild and bright,
Come from thy palace of the purple light.
Come down to mortal arms a living form,
"With heavenly height of brow, and bosom warm.
Glow human from the mist, thou Shape of Grace;
Thou tender wonder, fold me face to face.
Art thou not mine, thou delicate Delight?
Hast thou not visited me noon and night?
Freighted with my dead Hopes I follow thee,
Like some Norse sea-king flaming out to sea.
Say, are the pleasant bowers far away,
Deckt by thy dear hands for our marriage- day,
Where we the gardens of delight shall roam
In endless love? When wilt thou lead me home,
To find our bliss in heaven's honeyed heart;
Live secret soul to soul, never to part?

" O awful Glory, felt, but never found;
I have but seen thy Shadow on life's ground.
I know thee now, Immortal! show the way
To thine Elysium, I could die to-day.
Break into wings this chrysalis of my life,
That I may soar to thee my spirit -wife.
Thy dark bower-door, the Grave, gives me no fear;
When I emerge beyond, thou wilt be near."

O'er all his face the sudden splendour smiled,
Sweet as first love, and sad as wailing winds.

His soul had rent the veil 'twixt life and life.

Slowly the shining vapours orb a Star,
By fine degrees before his fixe"d eyes.

The spirit he had sought thro' all the world,
Turned full upon him face to face at last.

She laid her hand upon his throbbing harp;

She prest her lips upon his passionate life;

And both stood still. He found his Bride in death.