I am only a bodiless Voice, a Breath in the pulsative ether
Unseen impalpable Essence, a Breathing apart from a Breather
Afloat as a formless motion in midnight and auroras,
With the inarticulate thoughts of thy hundred mute adorers.
The voice of the many who love thee, O loved of the Earth and the Angles!
To utter in golden speech the song of their silent evangels.
From a hundred throbbing bosoms, and the dumb lips that invoke us,
By the magic of inspiration drain down to a fervid focus:
In the clear concentered influence I gather the word and the meaning,
And out of my pendulous cloud of invisible vapor leaning,
Pronounce the loves and the praises that, singly, none could fashion
In words to the rounded fullness of Love’s divinest passion.
Today is thy welcomed birthday with its natal rights recurring
The claim upon old affections to a wakened utterance stirring,
By privilege of the season the love-word frankly spoken
And gifts that, if haply humble, are ever a priceless token.
The thousand sweet reminders, and the little deeds unnoted,
That fall as dew drops on a rose, in the depths of a heart devoted.
All loyal thoughts and loving acts to the light of this day are coming,
As birds and bees in the budding trees, that spring sets singing and humming.
If I hear in a casual whisper the syllables “Eight and Forty”
I think it the startling era of Liberty’s futile sortie
When over the fields of Europe burned the fires of Revolution,
Soon quenched in the refluent tide of War, in blood and fierce confusion,
But never a hint concerning thee, O Lady of stately bearing,
With the free elastic vigor that the churlish years are sparing.
If they crown thee with royal ermine it is not as a rude denial
Of thy Girlhood’s buoyant nature surviving every trial;
It is rather Wisdom’s garland for a graceful hint intended
That ?? waste not, like a spendthrift, the gift of a physique splendid.
O, thou who art dear to many who share in thy sweet ministration,
Too prodigal of thy strength, obeying a warm heart’s inspiration,
Clear eye to the blind, strong, willing feat to weak limbs feebly moving,
And tenderly proud as a mother, of Babes that are thine by the loving:
As I hang in the ambient air as a formless Existence above thee
And share in the intimate motions of the beautiful spirits who love thee,
Lo, this is my Gift for thy Birthday: To bless thee in joy or affliction,
And to greet in thy ripe Womanhood the glory of time’s benediction!
The Years come marching steadily in a tireless, dumb procession,
Unbreaking waves of a sea that knows no shore nor retrogression,
If ye fling yourself with unreason on the crest of the heaving billow,
We are borne to your past serenely as a as a Lake on its cradle pillow
If ye struggle and strain against the tide in your slender cedar shallop
The ?? ?? like frantic ?? as your splintered wreck with gallop.
The anxious heart is a losing heart, on its natal forces feeding;
The heart resigned to its fate shall find a peace all hope exceeding!
So I, who am only a vail to breathe the wish of thy every lover,
Can bid thee spare thyself with care for the cheer of hearts that suffer.
A tortured nerve in thy bosom is a pang in the breast of another;
Seek then thy own life’s wholeness, for the healing of friend and brother;
No one is alone with gifts of his own whereof is no partaker,
For life is a unit, and heats through all the pulse of the Infinite Maker!
George Shepard Burleigh
