Soul of beauty, young and everlasting,
Am I, and yet older than beginning;
Vexing Chaos with my radiant winning,
Golden newness with gray night contrasting,
Bearing on life’s conquest gally.
Masked, it may be, in the wild and fearful,
Still I govern and compel allegiance,
Even as here amid the peopled regions
Where the hum of merry work makes cheerful
All the waste we conquer daily.
Stars that wander in the black abysses
Down the sky-world’s unillumined canyons,
In a mad waltz lead their dark companions,
Where the dream of it a quick brain dizzies
Like a landsman swung by ocean;
Not a movement of that swift gyration
Can escape the sovereign rule of order,
Not a planet leaps the unseen border
To rush reinless from my ministration
That still rounds their frenzied motion.
Little dewdrops in the grass a-quiver,
Glimpsing star-like through the leafy shadows,
Sparkling gally in the dawn-light meadows,
Happy service for my crown deliver,
For they are my loyal lieges;
Mine the ripples of the dancing water
Where the cool brook trembles through the rushes,
And the slant sun kisses, till she blushes,
Maiden Alder, who for sweets I brought her
Holds aloft her leafy ægis.
I have set the dauntless dandelion,
Armed with golden bucklers deftly graven,
Million hosted o’er the lawn unshaven,
As if there the star-capped nymphs of Dian
Cast their crowns, by dawn affrighted;
Sunrise marches with my saffron banner,
Sunset bears it streaked with glowing crimson,
Autumn’s bark my sea of splendor swims on,
Whom gay summer, with my breath to fan her,
Freights for winter’s heart delighted.
Oh, and still the ermine mantled Winter
Is a baron of my empire’s glory;
Proudly flaunting beard and tresses hoary
Where their granite shields his lance-blows splinter,
Fighting back the Jötun forays;
White and crimson revellers of Valhalla –
Making pale the unsettling constellations –
Flame the north-light’s mystic fluctuations,
Round his throne, as round the throne of Allah
Dance the rainbow-kirtled Houris.
Sun-born Iris with her tints celestial
Paints the bastions of my boreal fortress,
Towers whereof eternal Frost is portress,
Over spires and pinnacles of crystal
Draws in light my summer symbol;
Deep in cloud-land I have set my standard
Piled the mountains where in gloomy gorges
The red fire-fiends hold their midnight orgies,
Wave their burning brands and leap out landward,
Then leap back with elfish gambol!
All the white-fleece flocks of air obey me;
Me, their shepherdess, they in silence follow,
As Thessalian herds the fair Apollo;
In their sun-dyed sheddings I array me –
Tatters caught by jagg’d sierras; –
Mine the wild rack tossing, darkly splendid –
Smoke from axles of the thunder-chariot,
Or black storm-steeds leashed by lightning’s lariat,
Their dark manes with desert dust whirls blended,
I too, ride with their terrors!
Aye, and deep in subterranean chambers
Where the lime rock on its dusty bosom
Wears full many a white, petrific blossom,
Well I work as where your rose-tree clambers
With a flower-kiss to your casement.
Living sparkles of the dead volcanos
Caught I featly, and, while yet they glistened,
In the diamond and the ruby prisoned,
And flung broad-cast o’er the burning llanos,
Kindling rapture and amazement.
Beauty a Creative Spirit