Collected Works (Vol. III)

VARIOUS MEASURES t17 So swift the air she seems to skim One’s senses dazzle ; wonder glows Warm in one’s veins like love-—who knows? One follows till one’s eyes are dim My little lady light 0’ limb. LAGE D’ATIRAIN. FRESH in the savage vivour of the time, The golden youth stands in the golden prime, Erect, acute, astrain. We look and long For those bronze lips to blossom into song. He is silent. We reflect. Ourselves grown old Yearn somewhat toward that sensuous glow of gold. All this is folly. Rodin made him so, Evoked the strength, the goodliness, the glow. The form is little: in the mind there dwells Force to avail the childish heart that swells With aught that is. The golden prime is past— Aye! but a nobler gain is ours at last Who see man weary, but within our span The perfect promise of the overman. FAUNESSE. THE veil o’ th’ mist of the quiet wood is lifted to the seer’s gaze; He burns athwart the murky maze beyond into beatitude. A solemn rapture holds the faun: an holy joy sucks up the secr Within its rose-revolving sphere, the orient oval of the dawn. Light’s graven old cartouche is sealed upon the forest: groves are gray With filtered glamours of the day, the steely ray flung off his shield. She kneels, yon spirit of the earth; she kneels and looks toward the east. In her gray eyes awakes the beast from slumber into druid mirth. She is amazed, she eager, she, exotic orchid of the glade ! waits the ripe, exultant blade, life tempered by eternity. She And I who witness am possessed by awe grown crimson with desire, Its iron image wrapped in fire and branded idly on my breast. Her face is bronze, her skin is grecn, as woods and suns would have it so. Her secret wonders grow and glow, limned in the luminous vatine. Worship, the sculptor’s, clean forgot in worship of her body lithe, And time forgotten with his scythe, and thought, the Witenagemot. Confused in rapture: peace is culled a flower from the arboreal root, The vision dulled, the singer mute, shattered the lute, the song annulled.