A spell of adoring April fell on him Mazed with the dark freshness of the evening light While the filling oak made its ghostly silhouette alone Swooning with midnight above a starry ground 5 Of crocus buds, until, enlivened by the haunting moon, His every trembling vein flushed bright the skin And he lay in tumbling sleep, reddened by the night. Tumultuous dreams that in his waking soul Were long kept burdened by the disdain of day 10 Leapt like tigers at the approach of night And sped to his dazed consciousness again, Seeking their rapturous release. Wild images and untamed thoughts first kept The night with him, unveiling strangeness 15 In their fantastic change from mundaner memory, Flashing matches into torrents of reigning fire Or enduing the noon passage of a bird into the sun To flame the bewildered horizon with phoenixes; Interfusing chance with diviner substances 20 He found a realer fate in accidents That happened to him. Then a kneeling girl Appeared, with no rose penumbra or mystic light, Touching his sleeping ear. He seemed to wake And stretched half-lifted to her moving lips, 25 For even as he was stirred and stricken By the dawning beauty her aspect imposed, She lent his hearing wreckless unerring visions She had, in some angel's hibernation, composed: "Respire as spirits of former time-- 30 Tempering justice in tranquillity, inventing Themes for espousing night to improvise on In angel's meditation of unabating soul; ignite! Claim the perilous grace of divinest liberty! Thy soul, in blood profound, imbues splendor 35 In afferent traceries of nurturent veins, Enthralling thrown infinities here forever, Where one scarlet touch inscribes eternities Against a face chastely serene, now lit With unrepentant love in spun regard 40 Evadeless ecstasies endow and bless." She bent, pursuing some darker aching part Of her enchanting story, and further still pursued The unwinding of her vision in his streaming eyes Until, her inwept paradise unburdened, 45 They kissed, exchanging subtle breaths. He bent upwards against her, as when joy Overtakes some dread state in exultation Transmuting the possessed. And then, as swift As lightning leaves the vacant sky to shake 50 Unlighted with sorrowing thunder, she fled And left no footprint on the swelling seam Of his vacant brain, astonished as the skies. Nothing in the darkness answered the compelling cries Torn from his mouth; his eyes in wretchedness shone. 55 He pored across the landscape, holding fast To any fainting detail imagination might Misconstrue as hers. He closed his eyes, and there! Her voice pursued him into the unlidded dark, Calm as the sovereign thoughts she chanted of. 60 Many hours he passed in awed silence thus, Or perhaps half speaking as he heard, Listening to the everliving lays of heaven Kindle once again with a contented smile. "The poet's lips, straining the unbelieving air, 65 Disclose a gasp, and, murmuring astonishment, Speak what his own unlived dreams have given him."
From the collection "A Volcano Island"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.