Ambergris

98 AMBERGRIS Pearl, moonlight, mother-milk That is her skin ; Its swift caress Flits like an angel’s kiss in a dream ; remains The healing virtue ; from all sin, All ill, one touch sets free. My life is like a star—oh fool ! oh fool ! Is not thy back yet tender from the rod ? Is there no learning in the poet’s school ? Wilt thou achieve what were too hard for God ? I call Him to the battle ; ask of me When the hinds calve ? What of eternity When he built chaos ? Shall Leviathan Be drawn out with an hook ? Enough ; I see This I can answer—or Ernst Haeckel can ! Now, God Almighty, rede this mystery ! What of the love that is the heart of man ? Take stars and airs, and write it down ! Fill all the interstices of space With myriad verse—own Thy disgrace ! Diminish Thy renown ! Approve my riddle ! This Thou canst not do. 17. O living Rose ! O dowered with subtle dew Of love, the tiny eternities of time, Caught between flying seconds, are well filled With these futilities of fragrant rime ; In Love’s retort distilled, In sunrays of fierce loathing purified, In moonrays of pure longing tried, And gathered after many moons of labour Into the compass of a single day, And wrought into continuous tune, One laughter with one languor for its neighbour, One thought of winter with one word of June, Muddled and mixed in mere dismay, Chiselled with the cunning chisel fo despair, Found wanting, well aware Of its own fault, even insistent