poor night,--
The brave rose-glimmers of his singing dawn.

Lo, every dream new-homing from far ways
On silent wing or spirit wave of air,
Came circling o'er his head in hovering maze,
Seen not, nor heard, albeit I knew them there;
But as each passed before his lifted face,
They gleamed to sight, and grace so mounted grace
My eyes seemed there anointed, though afar.

Then radiant couriers shook the fountain Heart
And turned me thither. Sweet and bold surprise
Took all my being with such tremorous start
I marvelled how aught else had held my eyes.
I could not tell what the bright wonder was
Whose garner-breast held every beauteous cause
Makes earth remember, and forget, the skies.

There shone the star that lit man's first desire,
And there his hope that latest fluttered bare;
One look translating made me as a lyre
Swept with a joy the heart of Truth might share,--
Truth that is silent, wanting joy to sing,--
But ere I breathed had for wondering,
A face out-flashed wreathed with sun-flinging hair.

Youth was the angel of that countenance,
Where graces sprang in ever fairer throng;
Yet she was old ere any star's birth-dance,
If word of earthly time, or old or young,
Means aught of eyes whose brooding splendour swept
The silences when Uncreation slept
And gave the dream that woke the suns in song.

Each age that left a glory left it writ
Upon her brow, as with a pen of light
Whose track was pearls, and as each whiter lit
The story there, the court grew softlier bright;
Each dullsome thing--Oh, no thing there was dull!
Flushed o'er itself with glow more beautiful,
As might fair, sleeping gods wake to delight.

Then all the wonder that made vague her form,
Oped on a figure splendent so to view;
Mine eyes an instant swooned; and as from storm
Of warring rainbows it endeared grew
To shape of her who 'gan descending slow,
Fair Love looked up, and Poesy knelt low:
'Twas Beauty's self, and mother of the two.

Whilst yet I gazed all vanished were the three;
And as a sighing shore no more may hold
The mermaid wave that would go out to sea,
So slipped the vision from my fancy bold.
O Flower of Life, no rest for me but this,
To dream awhile, and then awake to press
Upon my h