When I was seven years old I had a primer:
The immaculate bosom of the mother-tongue
Flowed milkily in mercy to the young,
Dispensing balsam to the infant dreamer.
How delicately did the silver skimmer
Of natural love select the cream along
The honied surface of that stream of song!
That cup of pearls dissolving into dimmer!
That breast of twin benevolent moons! That conduit
Whose veins are threaded with pellucid truth!
Into the hungry coffin and beyond it
A single uncorrupted drop of youth
Must live in elegy upon my lips
When I and chaos shall have come to grips.
I would that my possessions were the proper
And polished coinage of the stars and suns;
But for the earth I give you farthing bronze,
And for the planets I return you copper.
Fumes fallen from your ceremonial supper
Made aromatic harmony which once
Refreshed my childhood: even now it runs
Between our skies, the lower and the upper.
Oh, who was I to be so bravely suckled
At the early wells of English undefiled,
And by your grace, whose sacred hand unbuckled
Extreme Castalia for a careless child?
Yet this I grant the creature of uncommon;
She is your vassal while she is a woman.
That creature is your vassal ever since:
Perceiving the device upon your standard
To be the sign her infancy had pondered,
Her spirit was impulsive to convince.
If her opinion perishes or wins;
Be her fidelity approved or slandered;
The event is set: the woman never wandered
In vile devotion to a lesser prince.
Profuse and fabulous appeared the page
On which your youngest lessons were emblazoned:
Enchantments that unlock a crystal cage;
An alphabet with astral fire seasoned;
These are the characters of that largesse
Which gives the lavish greater to the less.
For that her blood is valiant and noble
I thank the language at her leaping source;
At best essential heaven; at bitter worse
A witch's brew of strong fantastic trouble:
But for your courtesy my thanks are double,
Who, as a matter of munificent course,
Diverted waves of influential force.
To shape for me a rainbow-coloured bubble,
An innocent bird, an iridescent music,
To be my own for all the rest of living.
Oh, this was nourishment and wine and physic!
This was a proud extravagance of giving!
And I have nothing to return in kind
Save the dull mortal homage of the mind.
The immaculate bosom of the mother-tongue
Flowed milkily in mercy to the young,
Dispensing balsam to the infant dreamer.
How delicately did the silver skimmer
Of natural love select the cream along
The honied surface of that stream of song!
That cup of pearls dissolving into dimmer!
That breast of twin benevolent moons! That conduit
Whose veins are threaded with pellucid truth!
Into the hungry coffin and beyond it
A single uncorrupted drop of youth
Must live in elegy upon my lips
When I and chaos shall have come to grips.
I would that my possessions were the proper
And polished coinage of the stars and suns;
But for the earth I give you farthing bronze,
And for the planets I return you copper.
Fumes fallen from your ceremonial supper
Made aromatic harmony which once
Refreshed my childhood: even now it runs
Between our skies, the lower and the upper.
Oh, who was I to be so bravely suckled
At the early wells of English undefiled,
And by your grace, whose sacred hand unbuckled
Extreme Castalia for a careless child?
Yet this I grant the creature of uncommon;
She is your vassal while she is a woman.
That creature is your vassal ever since:
Perceiving the device upon your standard
To be the sign her infancy had pondered,
Her spirit was impulsive to convince.
If her opinion perishes or wins;
Be her fidelity approved or slandered;
The event is set: the woman never wandered
In vile devotion to a lesser prince.
Profuse and fabulous appeared the page
On which your youngest lessons were emblazoned:
Enchantments that unlock a crystal cage;
An alphabet with astral fire seasoned;
These are the characters of that largesse
Which gives the lavish greater to the less.
For that her blood is valiant and noble
I thank the language at her leaping source;
At best essential heaven; at bitter worse
A witch's brew of strong fantastic trouble:
But for your courtesy my thanks are double,
Who, as a matter of munificent course,
Diverted waves of influential force.
To shape for me a rainbow-coloured bubble,
An innocent bird, an iridescent music,
To be my own for all the rest of living.
Oh, this was nourishment and wine and physic!
This was a proud extravagance of giving!
And I have nothing to return in kind
Save the dull mortal homage of the mind.