Athwart the sod which is treading for God * the poet paced with his splendid eyes;
Paradise-verdure he stately passes * to win to the Father of Paradise, Through the conscious and palpitant grasses * of inter-tangled relucent dyes.
The angels a-play on its fields of Summer * (their wild wings rustled his guides' cymars)
Looked up from disport at the passing comer, * as they pelted each other with handfuls of stars;
And the warden-spirits with startled feet rose, * hand on sword, by their tethered cars.
With plumes night-tinctured englobed and cinctured, * of Saints, his guided steps held on To where on the far crystelline pale * of that transtellar Heaven there shone The immutable crocean dawn * effusing from the Father's Throne.
Through the reverberant Eden-ways * the bruit of his great advent driven, Back from the fulgent justle and press * with mighty echoing so was given, As when the surly thunder smites * upon the clanged gates of Heaven.
Over the bickering gonfalons, * far-ranged as for Tartarean wars, Went a waver of ribbed fire *--as night-seas on phosphoric bars Like a flame-plumed fan shake slowly out * their ridgy reach of crumbling stars.
At length to where on His fretted Throne * sat in the heart of His aged dominions The great Triune, and Mary nigh, * lit round with spears of their hauberked minions, The poet drew, in the thunderous blue * involved dread of those mounted pinions.
As in a secret and tenebrous cloud * the watcher from the disquiet earth At momentary intervals * beholds from its ragged rifts break forth The flash of a golden perturbation, * the travelling threat of a witched birth;
Till heavily parts a sinister chasm, * a grisly jaw, whose verges soon, Slowly and ominously filled * by the on-coming plenilune, Supportlessly congest with fire, * and suddenly spit forth the moon:-
With beauty, not terror, through tangled error * of night-dipt plumes so burned their charge;
Swayed and parted the globing clusters * so,--disclosed from their kindling marge, Roseal-chapleted, splendent-vestured, * the singer there where God's light lay large.
Hu, hu! a wonder! a wonder! see, * clasping the singer's glories clings A dingy creature, even to laughter * cloaked and clad in patchwork things, Shrinking close from the unused glows * of the seraphs'
versicoloured wings.
A rhymer, rhyming a futile rhyme, * he had crept for convoy through Eden-ways Into the shade of the poet's glory, * darkened under his prevalent rays, Fearfully hoping a distant welcome * as a poor kinsman of his lays.
The angels laughed with a lovely scorning: *--"Who has done this sorry deed in The garden of our Father, God? * 'mid his blossoms to sow this weed in?
Never our fingers knew this stuff: * not so fashion the looms of Eden!"
The singer bowed his brow majestic, * searching that patchwork through and through, Feeling God's lucent gazes traverse * his singing-stoling and spirit too:
The hallowed harpers were fain to frown * on the strange thing come 'mid their sacred crew, Only the singer that was earth * his fellow-earth and his own self knew.
But the poet rent off robe and wreath, * so as a sloughing serpent doth, Laid them at the rhymer's feet, * shed down wreath and raiment both, Stood in a dim and shamed stole, * like the tattered wing of a musty moth.
"Thou gav'st the weed and wreath of song, * the weed and wreath are solely Thine, And this dishonest vesture * is the only vesture that is mine;
The life I textured, Thou the song *--MY handicraft is not divine!"
He wrested o'er the rhymer's head * that garmenting which wrought him wrong;
A flickering tissue argentine * down dripped its shivering silvers long:-
"Better thou wov'st thy woof of life * than thou didst weave thy woof of song!"
Never a chief in Saintdom was, * but turned him from the Poet then;
Never an eye looked mild on him * 'mid all the angel myriads ten, Save sinless Mary, and sinful Mary *--the Mary titled Magdalen.
"Turn yon robe," spake Magdalen, * "of torn bright song, and see and feel."
They turned the raiment, saw and felt * what their turning did reveal -
All the inner surface piled * with bloodied hairs, like hairs of steel.
"Take, I pray, yon chaplet up, * thrown down ruddied from his head."
They took the roseal chaplet up, * and they stood astonished:
Every leaf between their fingers, * as they bruised it, burst and bled.
"See his torn flesh through those rents; * see the punctures round his hair, As if the chaplet-flowers had driven * deep roots in to nourish there -
Lord, who gav'st him robe and wreath, * WHAT was this Thou gav'st for wear?"
"Fetch forth the Paradisal garb!" * spake the Father, sweet and low;
Drew them both by the frightened hand * where Mary's throne made irised bow -
"Take, Princess Mary, of thy good grace, * two spirits greater than they know."
