Ambergris

AMBERGRIS 91 3. In vain the solemn stars pour their pale dews Upon my trembling spirit ; their caress Leaves me moon-rapt in waves of loveliness All thine, O rose, O wrought of many a must In Music, O thou strength of ecstasy Incarnate in a woman-form, create Of her own rapture, infinite, ultimate, Not to be seen, not grasped, not even imaginable, But known of one, by virtue of that spell Of thy sweet will toward him : thou, unknown, Untouched, grave mistress of the sunlight throne Of thine own nature ; known not even of me, But of some spark of woven eternity Immortal in this bosom. Phosphor paled And in the grey upstarted the dread veiled Rose light of dawn. Sun-shaped shone thy spears Of love forth darting into myriad spheres, Which I the poet called this light, that flower, This knowledge, that illumination, power This and love that, in vain, in vain, until Thy beauty dawned, all beauty to distil Into one drop of utmost dew, one name Choral as floral, one thin, subtle flame Fitted to a shaft of love, to pierce, to endue My trance-rapt spirit with the avenue Of perfect pleasures, radiating far Up and up yet to where thy sacred star Burned in its brilliance : thence the storm was shed A passion of great calm about this head, This head no more a poet’s ; since the dream Of beauty gathered close into a stream Of tingling light, and, gathering ever force From thine own love, its unextended source, Became the magic utterance that makes Me, Dissolving self into the starless sea That makes one lake of molten joy, one pond Steady as light and hard as diamond ; One drop, one atom of constraint intense, Of elemental passion corning sense,