Natura naturans
88 lines✦
eside me, in the car, she sat,She spake not, no, nor looked to meFrom her to me, from me to her,What passed so subtly, stealthily?As rose to rose that by it blowsIts interchanged aroma flings;Or wake to sound of one sweet noteThe virtues of disparted strings. Beside me, nought but this! but this,That influent as within me dweltHer life, mine too within her breast,Her brain, her every limb she feltWe sat; while o’er and in us, moreAnd more, a power unknown prevailed,Inhaling, and inhaled, and still’Twas one, inhaling or inhaled. Beside me, nought but this; and passed;I passed; and know not to this dayIf gold or jet her girlish hair,If black, or brown, or lucid-greyHer eye’s young glance: the fickle chanceThat joined us, yet may join again;But I no face again could greetAs her’s, whose life was in me then. As unsuspecting mere a maidAs, fresh in maidhood’s bloomiest bloom,In casual second-class did e’erBy casual youth her seat assume;Or vestal, say, of saintliest clay,For once by balmiest airs betrayedUnto emotions too, too sweetTo be unlingeringly gainsaid: Unowning then, confusing soonWith dreamier dreams that o’er the glassOf shyly ripening woman-senseReflected, scarce reflected, pass,A wife may-be, a mother sheIn Hymen’s shrine recals not now,She first in hour, ah, not profane,With me to Hymen learnt to bow. Ah no! Yet owned we, fused in one,The Power which e’en in stones and earthsBy blind elections felt, in formsOrganic breeds to myriad births;By lichen small on granite wallApproved, its faintest feeblest stirSlow-spreading, strengthening long, at lastVibrated full in me and her. In me and her sensation strange!The lily grew to pendent head,To vernal airs the mossy bankIts sheeny primrose spangles spread,In roof o’er roof of shade sun-proofDid cedar strong itself outclimb,And altitude of aloe proudAspire in floreal crown sublime; Flashed flickering forth fantastic flies,Big bees their burly bodies swung,Rooks roused with civic din the elms,And lark its wild reveillez rung;In Libyan dell the light gazelle,The leopard lithe in Indian glade,And dolphin, brightening tropic seas,In us were living, leapt and played: Their shells did slow crustacea build,Their gilded skins did snakes renew,While mightier spines for loftier kindTheir types in amplest limbs outgrew;Yea, close comprest in human breast,What moss, and tree, and livelier thing,What Earth, Sun, Star of force possest,Lay budding, burgeoning forth for Spring. Such sweet preluding sense of oldLed on in Eden’s sinless placeThe hour when bodies human firstCombined the primal prime embrace,Such genial heat the blissful seatIn man and woman owned unblamed,When, naked both, its garden pathsThey walked unconscious, unashamed: Ere, clouded yet in mistiest dawn,Above the horizon dusk and dun,One mountain crest with light had tippedThat Orb that is the Spirit’s Sun;Ere dreamed young flowers in vernal showersOf fruit to rise the flower above,Or ever yet to young DesireWas told the mystic name of Love.
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