Classic Poem

( NEAR GAPLAND )

" The fairy spring wells up from sands,
Beneath the mountain's heavy hands,
And from its pebbly basin's bath
A brook's white feet have worn a path,
While circling round, old beech trees dream,
Like eunuchs guarding an hareme;
So close beneath the mountain bowed
It seems a lakelet in a cloud. "

Lionel said so, bending him
Over the percolating brim
Whose many sources flash and cease
With effervescing, silent peace:

" Could I some elf-appointment make,
At midnight, by this spring-starred lake,
Imaginations might arise
Like to these twinkling, fluvial eyes
Within my fluent cells of brain
That fill with thoughts like springs of rain! "

A pheasant boomed his thought away,
A crow called downward " stay! stay! stay! "
Lionel bathed him in the pool
And, lying down, with life blood cool,
Fell into sleep, till midnight drew
Between the peaks her baldric blue.

Lionel woke. The fairy lin
Spirits effulgenTheld within;
From every vortex whirled a sprite,
A quivering lily, chemised white,
A lady toiletted for night.
He thought the Dunker maids, baptized,
Had lingered here ethercalized,
From the near settlement sedate
On Love feast night to recreate;
But as he sidled round the rim
Their white arms flashed to signal him,
Their voices like the cascade sing:
" Thou hast desired us at the spring. "

Lionel old drew near to list:
The first young maid he ever kissed
Dandled upon a silver jet —
He breathed the osculation yet;
She said, " My love, our love was brief,
As in my eddy spins a leaf! "
Another nymph Lionel sprayed,
A different and a country maid:
Sighing " beneath a bridge at dark
You were my daring city spark! "
Another Naiad's voice liquate
Flowed, " Love came to us through a gate! "
A fourth with rhythm like a rune,
" Lionel, once in my ripe June
I lower'd my eyes that flashed a dart
Into thy uncourageous heart! "
" We never touched, " said one, " our lips,
Only our trembling finger tips,
But they remembered it till dead! "
Another, " Love, we rioted,
Like these swoll'n sources after storm:
Long have I banqueted the worm! "
" Widow am I, than thou more old, —
Thou would'st have wed me when boy-bold! "
" Lionel, I am one, whose grief,
At my cold hearthstone, for relief,
Fled to thee like a maniac:
Thou wert a friend and led me back! "
" I, one illiterate, in a mart
Who read thy exile with her heart! "
" I am the Nun whose holiday
Thy touch made everlasting May! "
" I, twinkling from this spiral sill,
Am she whose action was thy Will! "
" And I, thou called Rose beauteous
And would have twisted from her pride,
For womanhood lived duteous
And scenting Virtue for thee, died! "

Thus, from the mountain syphon rise
To Amoroso's faded eyes,
His nymphs, who in life's sources moved,
Exhilarated, bubbled, loved;
Returned in hydrostatic power —
They were a hundred in an hour, —
Flowing from Lionel's brain cells
And from the menstruum of the wells;
Earth's drip from ouTher cavern chasm
And waste of parent protoplasm, —
The saturation of life's plant
And spill of Pluto's adamant.
Upon the sand-baked mountain's lymph
Glides each liquescent, fluent nymph;
And each one, had it vorticed well,
Might have been dame to Lionel!
Each had combined with his some part,
'Livened some recess of his heart,
To its pain's ache her balsam lent
And purled away its sediment.

The constellations over pass
And in the Spring a period glass,
Each shattered in the short embrace
By life's resurging in its face.

Life's active Spring, pneumatic strong,
Retains no orb's impression long,
No dalliance can make it glow,
Like energy of birth below.

The pressure of the life to be,
On everything lies equally;
And like the bubbles, which escape,
One or another takes our shape.
For momentary is love's touch,
The hungry one his food must clutch,
The pair that float adown the stream
Give and receive the instant's gleam!
Lionel felt that all was good,
And man's refreshment, womanhood;
Love's every passing chemistry
Had left some immortality.
The scent of its capricious hours,
Was still like banks of graveyard flowers;
She who in myrtle's streamlets lies
And sends up tendrils of blue bell,
Entwined our instant's destinies
And kissed our heart up from a well.

The camps of stars put out their lights;
Day breakfasted upon the heights
And sowed with gold the furrowland;
Lionel's hand was in some hand:
" What were they, husband? " said his wife.
" Bubbles, once beautiful, of life! "