And frowns across the immeasurable main, Venus among her cloudy sunset flowers Woke; and earth melted into heaven again.
For even the City"s immemorial towers Were tinted into secret tone and time, Like old forgotten tombs that age embowers
With m.u.f.fling roses and with mossy rime Until they seem no monument of ours, But one more note in earth"s accordant chime.
O Love, Love, Love, all dreams, desires and powers, Were but as chords of that ineffable psalm; And all the long blue lapse of summer hours,
And all the breathing sunset"s golden balm By that aeonian sorrow were resolved As dew into the music"s infinite calm,
Through which the suns and moons and stars revolved According to the song"s divine decree, Till Time was but a tide of intervolved
And interweaving worlds of melody; _In other worlds I loved you, long ago_,-- The angelic citoles fainted o"er the sea;
And seraph citerns answered, sweet and low, From where the sunset and the moonrise blend,-- _In other worlds I loved you, long ago_;
_Love that hath no beginning hath no end_; O Love, Love, Love, the bitter City of Pain Bidding the golden echoes westward wend,
Chimed in accordant undertone again: Though every grey old tower rose like a tomb To mock the glory of the sh.o.r.eless main
They could but strike such discords as illume The music with strange gleams of utter light And hallow all the valley"s rosy gloom.
And there, though greyly sinking out of sight Before the wonders of the sky and sea, Back through the valley, back into the night,
While mystery melted into mystery, The City still rebuffed the far sweet West That dimmed her sorrows with infinity;
Yet sometimes yearning o"er the sea"s bright breast To that remote Avilion would she gaze Where all lost loves and weary warriors rest.
Then she remembered, through that golden haze, (Oh faint as flowers the rose-white waves resound) Her Arthur whom she loved in the dead days,
And how he sailed to heal him of his wound, And how he lives and reigns eternally Where now that unknown love is throned and crowned
Who laid his bleeding head against her knee And loosed the bitter breast-plate and unbound His casque and brought him strangely o"er the sea,
And how she reigns beside him on that sh.o.r.e For ever (Yrma, queen, bend down to me) And they twain have no sorrow any more.
III
They have forgotten all that vanished away When life"s dark night died into death"s bright day They have forgotten all except the gleam Of light when once he kissed her in a dream Once on the lips and once upon the brow In the white orb of G.o.d"s transcendent Now; And even then he knew that, long before, Their eyes had met upon some distant sh.o.r.e; Yea; that most lonely and immortal face Which dwells beyond the dreams of time and s.p.a.ce Bowed down to him from out the happy place And whispered to him, low and sweet and low _In other worlds I loved you, long ago_; And then he knew his love could never die Because his queen was throned beyond the sky And called him to his own immortal sphere Forgetting Launcelot and Guinevere.
So Yrma reigns with Arthur, and they know They loved on earth a million years ago; And watched the sea-waves wistfully westward wend; And heard a voice whispering in their flow, And calling through the silent sunset-glow, _Love that hath no beginning hath no end._
IV
It was about the dawn of day I heard Etain and Anwyl say The waving ferns are a fairy forest, It is time, it is time to wander away;
For the dew is bright on the heather bells, And the breeze in the clover sways and swells, As the waves on the blue sea wake and wander, Over and under the braes and dells.
She was eight years old that day, Full of laughter and play; Eight years old and Anwyl nine,-- Two young lovers were they.
Two young lovers were they, Born in the City of Pain; There was never a song in the world so gay As the song of the child, Etain;
There was never a laugh so sweet With the ripple of fairy bells, And never a fairy foot so fleet Dancing down the woodland dells!
She was eight years old that day, Two young lovers were they.
There was never a sea of mystical gleams Glooming under enchanted skies Deep as the dark miraculous dreams In Anwyl"s haunted eyes.
There was never a glory of light Around the carolling lark As Etain"s eyes were brave and bright To daunt the coming dark.
Two young lovers were they Born in the City of Pain; There was never a song in the world so gay As the song of the child, Etain;
Blithe as the wind in the trees, Blithe as the bird on the bough, Blithe as the bees in the sweet Heart"s-ease Where Love lies bleeding now.
V
And G.o.d sighed in the sunset; and the sea Forgot her sorrow, and all the breathless West Grew quiet as the blue tranquillity
That clad the broken mountain"s brilliant breast, Over the City, with deep heather-bloom Heaving from crag to crag in sweet unrest,
A sea of dim rich colour and warm perfume Whose billows rocked the drowsy honey-bee Among the golden isles of gorse and broom
Like some enchanted ancient argosy Drunkenly blundering over seas of dream Past unimagined isles of mystery, Over whose yellow sands the soft waves cream, And sunbeams float and toss across the bare Rose-white arms and perilous b.r.e.a.s.t.s that gleam
Where sirens wind their glossy golden hair; Oh, miles on miles, the honeyed heather-bloom Heaving its purple through the high bright air
Rolled a silent glory of gleam and gloom From mossy crag to crag and crest to crest Untroubled by the valley"s depth of doom.
The hawk dropped down into the pine-forest And, far below, the lavrock ruffled her wings Blossomwise over her winsome secret nest.
Then suddenly, softly, as when a fairy sings Out of the heart of a rose in the heart of the fern, Or in the floating starlight faintly rings
The frail blue hare-bells--turn again, and turn, Under and over, the silvery crescents cry To where the crimson fox-glove belfries burn
And with a deeper softer peal reply, There came a ripple of music through the roses That rustled on the dimmest rim of sky
Where many a frame of fretted leaves encloses For lovers wandering in the fern-wet wood An arch of summer sea that softly dozes
As if all mysteries were understood: Yrma, my queen, what love could understand That faint sweet music, _G.o.d saith all is good_,
As those two children, hand in sunburnt hand, Over the blithe blue hills and far away Wandered into their own green fairyland?
VI
For the song is lost that shook the dew Where the wild musk-roses glisten, When the sunset dreamed that a dream was true And the birds were hushed to listen.