To The Dove

1

Thy mellow passioning amid the leaves Trembles around me in the summer dusk That falls along the oatlands' sallow sheaves And haunts above the runnel's voice a-husk With plashy willow and bold-wading reed. The solitude's dim spell it breaketh not, But softer mourns unto me from the mead Than airs within the dead primrose's heart, Or breath of silences in dells begot To soothe some grief-wan maid with love a-mort.

2

On many sylvan eves of childhood thou Didst woo my homeward path with tenderness, Woo till the awing owlet ceased to cow With his chill screech of quavering distress. At phantom midnight wakened I have heard Thy mated dreams from the wind-eerie elm, And as a potion medicined and myrrhed, As an enchantment's runic utterance, It would draw sleep back to her lulling realm Over my lids till day should disentrance.

3

A priestess art thou of Simplicity, Who hath one fane--the heaven above thy nest; One incense--love; one stealing litany Of peace from rivered vale and upland crest. Yea, thou art Hers, who makes prayer of the breeze, Hope of the cool upwelling from sweet soils, Faith of the dark'ning distance, charities Of vesper scents, and of the glow-worm's throb Joy whose first leaping rends the care-wound coils That would earth of its heavenliness rob.

4

But few, how few her worshippers! For we Cast at a myriad shrines our souls, to rise Beliefless, unanointed, bound not free, To sacrificing a vain sacrifice! Let thy lone innocence then quickly null Within our veins doubt-led and wrong desire Or drugging knowledge that but fills o'erfull Of feverous mystery the days we drain! Be thy warm notes like an Orphean lyre To lead us to life's Arcady again!