At length to where on His fretted Throne sat in the heart…

At length to where on His fretted Throne * sat in the heart of His aged dominions The great Triune, and Mary nigh, * lit round with spears of their hauberked minions, The poet drew, in the thunderous blue * involvèd dread of those mounted pinions.

As in a secret and tenebrous cloud * the watcher from the disquiet earth At momentary intervals * beholds from its raggèd rifts break forth The flash of a golden perturbation, * the travelling threat of a witchèd birth;

Till heavily parts a sinister chasm, * a grisly jaw, whose verges soon, Slowly and ominously filled * by the on-coming plenilune, Supportlessly congest with fire, * and suddenly spit forth the moon:—

With beauty, not terror, through tangled error * of night-dipt plumes so burned their charge; Swayed and parted the globing clusters * so,—disclosed from their kindling marge, Roseal-chapleted, splendent-vestured, * the singer there where God’s light lay large.

Hu, hu! a wonder! a wonder! see, * clasping the singer’s glories clings A dingy creature, even to laughter * cloaked and clad in patchwork things, Shrinking close from the unused glows * of the seraphs’ versicoloured wings.

A rhymer, rhyming a futile rhyme, * he had crept for convoy through Eden-ways Into the shade of the poet’s glory, * darkened under his prevalent rays, Fearfully hoping a distant welcome * as a poor kinsman of his lays.

The angels laughed with a lovely scorning: *—“Who has done this sorry deed in The garden of our Father, God? * ’mid his blossoms to sow this weed in? Never our fingers knew this stuff: * not so fashion the looms of Eden!”

The singer bowed his brow majestic, * searching that patchwork through and through, Feeling God’s lucent gazes traverse * his singing-stoling and spirit too: The hallowed harpers were fain to frown * on the strange thing come ’mid their sacred crew, Only the singer that was earth * his fellow-earth and his own self knew.

But the poet rent off robe and wreath, * so as a sloughing serpent doth, Laid them at the rhymer’s feet, * shed down wreath and raiment both, Stood in a dim and shamèd stole, * like the tattered wing of a musty moth.

“Thou gav’st the weed and wreath of song, * the weed and wreath are solely Thine, And this dishonest vesture * is the only vesture that is mine; The life I textured, Thou the song *—my handicraft is not divine!”

He wrested o’er the rhymer’s head * that garmenting which wrought him wrong; A flickering tissue argentine * down dripped its shivering silvers long:— “Better thou wov’st thy woof of life * than thou didst weave thy woof of song!”