The phantom any breeze blows out of form;
A thirst's delusion, a defeated aim.

The rapture shed the torture weaves;
The direst blow on human heart she deals:

The pain to know the seen deceives;
Nought true but what insufferably feels.

And stabs of her delicious note,
That is as heavenly light to hearing, heard

Through shelter leaves, the laughter from her throat,
We answer as the midnight's morning's bird.

She laughs, she wakens gleeful cries;
In her deliciouslaughter part revealed;

Yet mother is she more of moans and sighs,
For longings unappeased and wounds unhealed.

Yet would she bless, it is her task to bless:
Yon folded couples, passing under shade,

Are her rich harvest; bidden caress, caress,
Consume the fruit in bloom; not disobeyed.

We dolorous complainers had a dream,
Wrought on the vacant air from inner fire,

We saw stand bare of her celestial beam
The glorious Goddess, and we dared desire.

Thereat are shown reproachful eyes, and lips
Of upward curl to meanings half obscure;

And glancing where a wood-nymph lightly skips
She nods: at once that creature wears her lure.

Blush of our being between birth and death:
Sob of our ripened blood for its next breath:

Her wily semblancenought of her denies;
Seems it the Goddess runs, the Goddess hies,

The generous Goddess yields. And she can arm
Her dwarfed and twisted with her secret charm;

Benevolent as Earth to feed her own.
Fully shall they be fed, if they beseech.

But scorn she has for them that walk alone;
Blanched men, starved women, whom no arts can pleach.

The men as chief of criminals she disdains,
And holds the reason in perceptive thought.

More pitiable, like rivers lacking rains,
Kissing cold stones, the women shrink for drought.

Those faceless discords, out of nature strayed,
Rank of the putrefaction ere decayed,

In impious singles bear the thorny wreaths:
Their lives are where harmonious Pleasure breathes

For couples crowned with flowers that burn in dew.
Comes there a tremor of night's forest horn

Across her garden from the insaner crew,
She darkens to malignity of scorn.

A shiver courses through her garden-grounds:
Grunt of the tusky boar, the baying hounds,

The hunter's shouts, are heard afar, and bring
Dead on her heart her crimsoned flower of Spring.

These, the irreverent of Life's design,
Division between natural and divine

Would cast; these vaunting barrenness for best,
In veins of gathered strength Life's tide arrest;

And these because the roses flood their cheeks,
Vow them in nature wise as when Love speaks.

With them is war; and well the Goddess knows
What undermines the race who mount the rose;

How the ripe moment, lodged in slumberous hours,
Enkindled by persuasion overpowers:

Why weak as are her frailer trailing weeds,
The strong when Beauty gleams o'er Nature's needs,

And timely guile unguarded finds them lie.
They who her sway withstand a sea defy,

At every point of juncture must be proof;
Nor look for mercy from the incessant surge

Her forces mixed of craft and passion urge
For the one whelming wave to spring aloof.

She, tenderness, is pitiless to them
Resisting in her godhead nature's truth.

No flower their face shall be, but writhen stem;
Their youth a frost, their age the dirge for youth.

These miserably disinclined,
The lamentably unembraced,

Insult the Pleasures Earth designed
To people and beflower the waste.

Wherefore the Pleasures pass them by:
For death they live, in life they die.

Her head the Goddess from them turns,
As from grey mounds of ashes in bronze urns.

She views her quivering couples unconsoled,
And of her beauty mirror they become,

Like orchard blossoms, apple, pear and plum,
Free of the cloud, beneath the flood of gold.

Crowned with wreaths that burn in dew,
Her couples whirl, sun-satiated,

Athirst for shade, they sigh, they wed,
They play the music made of two:

Oldest of earth, earth's youngest till earth's end:
Cunninger than the numbered strings,

For melodies, for harmonies,
For mastered discords, and the things

Not vocable, whose mysteries
Are inmost Love's, Life's reach of Life extend.

Is it an anguish overflowing shame
And the tongue's pudency confides to her,

With eyes of embers, breath of incense myrrh,
The woman's marrow in some dear youth's name,

Then is the Goddess tenderness
Maternal, and she has a sister's tones

Benign to soothe intemperate distress,
Divide despair from hope, and sighs from moans.

Her gentleness imparts exhaling ease
To those of her milk-bearer votaries

As warm of bosom-earth as she; of the source
Direct; erratic but in heart's excess;

Being mortal and ill-matched for Love's great force;
Like green leaves caught with flames by his impress.

And pray they under skies less overcast,
That swiftly may her star of eve descend,

Her lustrous morning star fly not too fast,
To lengthen blissful night will she befriend.

Unfailing her reply to woman's voice
In supplication instant. Is it man's,

She hears, approves his words, her garden scans,
And him: the flowers are various, he has choice.

Perchance his wound is deep; she listens long;
Enjoys what music fills the plaintive song;

And marks how he, who would be hawk at poise
Above the bird, his plaintive song enjoys.

She reads him when his humbled manhood weeps
To her invoked: distraction is implored.

A smile, and he is up on godlike leaps
Above, with his bright Goddess owned the adored.

His tales of her declare she condescends;
Can share his fires, not always goads and rends:

Moreover, quits a throne, and must enclose