Poem:  A Reading of Life — With The Persuader

     Who murmurs, hither, hither:  who
     Where nought is audible so fills the ear? 
     Where nought is visible can make appear
     A veil with eyes that waver through,
     Like twilight’s pledge of blessed night to come,
     Or day most golden?  All unseen and dumb,
     She breathes, she moves, inviting flees,
     Is lost, and leaves the thrilled desire
     To clasp and strike a slackened lyre,
     Till over smiles of hyacinth seas,
     Flame in a crystal vessel sails
     Beneath a dome of jewelled spray,
     For land that drops the rosy day
     On nights of throbbing nightingales.

     Landward did the wonder flit,
     Or heart’s desire of her, all earth in it. 
     We saw the heavens fling down their rose;
     On rapturous waves we saw her glide;
     The pearly sea-shell half enclose;
     The shoal of sea-nymphs flush the tide;
     And we, afire to kiss her feet, no more
     Behold than tracks along a startled shore,
     With brightened edges of dark leaves that feign
     An ambush hoped, as heartless night remain.

     More closely, warmly:  hither, hither! she,
     The very she called forth by ripened blood
     For its next breath of being, murmurs; she,
     Allurement; she, fulfilment; she,
     The stream within us urged to flood;
     Man’s cry, earth’s answer, heaven’s consent; O she,
     Maid, woman and divinity;
     Our over-earthly, inner-earthly mate
     Unmated; she, our hunger and our fruit
     Untasted; she our written fate
     Unread; Life’s flowering, Life’s root: 
     Unread, divined; unseen, beheld;
     The evanescent, ever-present she,
     Great Nature’s stern necessity
     In radiance clothed, to softness quelled;
     With a sword’s edge of sweetness keen to take
     Our breath for bliss, our hearts for fulness break.

     The murmur hushes down, the veil is rent. 
     Man’s cry, earth’s answer, heaven’s consent,
     Her form is given to pardoned sight,
     And lets our mortal eyes receive
     The sovereign loveliness of celestial white;
     Adored by them who solitarily pace,
     In dusk of the underworld’s perpetual eve,
     The paths among the meadow asphodel,
     Remembering.  Never there her face
     Is planetary; reddens to shore sea-shell
     Around such whiteness the enamoured air
     Of noon that clothes her, never there. 
     Daughter of light, the joyful light,
     She stands unveiled to nuptial sight,
     Sweet in her disregard of aid
     Divine to conquer or persuade. 
     A fountain jets from moss; a flower
     Bends gently where her sunset tresses shower. 
     By guerdon of her brilliance may be seen
     With eyelids unabashed the passion’s Queen.