Natura naturans

Beside me, in the car, she sat, She spake not, no, nor looked to me From her to me, from me to her, What passed so subtly, stealthily? As rose to rose that by it blows Its interchanged aroma flings; Or wake to sound of one sweet note The virtues of disparted strings.

Beside me, nought but this! but this, That influent as within me dwelt Her life, mine too within her breast, Her brain, her every limb she felt We sat; while o’er and in us, more And more, a power unknown prevailed, Inhaling, and inhaled, and still ’Twas one, inhaling or inhaled.

Beside me, nought but this; and passed; I passed; and know not to this day If gold or jet her girlish hair, If black, or brown, or lucid-grey Her eye’s young glance: the fickle chance That joined us, yet may join again; But I no face again could greet As her’s, whose life was in me then.

As unsuspecting mere a maid As, fresh in maidhood’s bloomiest bloom, In casual second-class did e’er By casual youth her seat assume; Or vestal, say, of saintliest clay, For once by balmiest airs betrayed Unto emotions too, too sweet To be unlingeringly gainsaid:

Unowning then, confusing soon With dreamier dreams that o’er the glass Of shyly ripening woman-sense Reflected, scarce reflected, pass, A wife may-be, a mother she In Hymen’s shrine recals not now, She first in hour, ah, not profane, With me to Hymen learnt to bow.

Ah no! Yet owned we, fused in one, The Power which e’en in stones and earths By blind elections felt, in forms Organic breeds to myriad births; By lichen small on granite wall Approved, its faintest feeblest stir Slow-spreading, strengthening long, at last Vibrated full in me and her.

In me and her sensation strange! The lily grew to pendent head, To vernal airs the mossy bank Its sheeny primrose spangles spread, In roof o’er roof of shade sun-proof Did cedar strong itself outclimb, And altitude of aloe proud Aspire in floreal crown sublime;

Flashed flickering forth fantastic flies, Big bees their burly bodies swung, Rooks roused with civic din the elms, And lark its wild reveillez rung; In Libyan dell the light gazelle, The leopard lithe in Indian glade, And dolphin, brightening tropic seas, In us were living, leapt and played:

Their shells did slow crustacea build, Their gilded skins did snakes renew, While mightier spines for loftier kind Their types in amplest limbs outgrew; Yea, close comprest in human breast, What moss, and tree, and livelier thing, What Earth, Sun, Star of force possest, Lay budding, burgeoning forth for Spring.

Such sweet preluding sense of old Led on in Eden’s sinless place The hour when bodies human first Combined the primal prime embrace, Such genial heat the blissful seat In man and woman owned unblamed, When, naked both, its garden paths They walked unconscious, unashamed:

Ere, clouded yet in mistiest dawn, Above the horizon dusk and dun, One mountain crest with light had tipped That Orb that is the Spirit’s Sun; Ere dreamed young flowers in vernal showers Of fruit to rise the flower above, Or ever yet to young Desire Was told the mystic name of Love.