The Unknown Eros. Coventry Patmore

      Well dost thou, Love, thy solemn Feast to hold

      In vestal February;

      Not rather choosing out some rosy day

      From the rich coronet of the coming May,

      When all things meet to marry!

         O, quick, praevernal Power

      That signall’st punctual through the sleepy mould

      The Snowdrop’s time to flower,

      Fair as the rash oath of virginity

      Which is first-love’s first cry;

      O, Baby Spring,

      That flutter’st sudden ’neath the breast of Earth

      A month before the birth;

      Whence is the peaceful poignancy,

      The joy contrite,

      Sadder than sorrow, sweeter than delight,

      That burthens now the breath of everything,

      Though each one sighs as if to each alone

      The cherish’d pang were known?

      At dusk of dawn, on his dark spray apart,

      With it the Blackbird breaks the young Day’s heart;

      In evening’s hush

      About it talks the heavenly-minded Thrush;

      The hill with like remorse

      Smiles to the Sun’s smile in his westering course;

      The fisher’s drooping skiff

      In yonder sheltering bay;

      The choughs that call about the shining cliff;

      The children, noisy in the setting ray;

      Own the sweet season, each thing as it may;

      Thoughts of strange kindness and forgotten peace

      In me increase;

      And tears arise

      Within my happy, happy Mistress’ eyes,

      And, lo, her lips, averted from my kiss,

      Ask from Love’s bounty, ah, much more than bliss!

         Is’t the sequester’d and exceeding sweet

      Of dear Desire electing his defeat?

      Is’t the waked Earth now to yon purpling cope

      Uttering first-love’s first cry,

      Vainly renouncing, with a Seraph’s sigh,

      Love’s natural hope?

      Fair-meaning Earth, foredoom’d to perjury!

      Behold, all-amorous May,

      With roses heap’d upon her laughing brows,

      Avoids thee of thy vows!

      Were it for thee, with her warm bosom near,

      To abide the sharpness of the Seraph’s sphere?

      Forget thy foolish words;

      Go to her summons gay,

      Thy heart with dead, wing’d Innocencies fill’d,

      Ev’n as a nest with birds

      After the old ones by the hawk are kill’d.

         Well dost thou, Love, to celebrate

      The noon of thy soft ecstasy,

      Or e’er it be too late,

      Or e’er the Snowdrop die!

         The wedded light and heat,

      Winnowing the witless space,

      Without a let,

      What are they till they beat

      Against the sleepy sod, and there beget

      Perchance the violet!

      Is the One found,

      Amongst a wilderness of as happy grace,

      To make Heaven’s bound;

      So that in Her

      All which it hath of sensitively good

      Is sought and understood

      After the narrow mode the mighty Heavens prefer?

      She, as a little breeze

      Following still Night,

      Ripples the spirit’s cold, deep seas

      Into delight;

      But, in a while,

      The immeasurable smile

      Is broke by fresher airs to flashes blent

      With darkling discontent;

      And all the subtle zephyr hurries gay,

      And all the heaving ocean heaves one way,

      ’Tward the void sky-line and an unguess’d weal;

      Until the vanward billows feel

      The agitating shallows, and divine the goal,

      And to foam roll,

      And spread and stray

      And traverse wildly, like delighted hands,

      The fair and feckless sands;

      And so the whole

      Unfathomable and immense

      Triumphing tide comes at the last to reach

      And burst in wind-kiss’d splendours on the deaf’ning beach,

      Where forms of children in first innocence

      Laugh and fling pebbles on the rainbow’d crest

      Of its untired unrest.

         I, singularly moved

      To love the lovely that are not beloved,

      Of all the Seasons, most

      Love Winter, and to trace

      The sense of the Trophonian pallor on her face.

      It is not death, but plenitude of peace;

      And the dim cloud that does the world enfold

      Hath less the characters of dark and cold

      Than warmth and light asleep,

      And correspondent breathing seems to keep

      With the infant harvest, breathing soft below

      Its eider coverlet of snow.

      Nor is in field or garden anything

      But, duly look’d into, contains serene

      The substance of things hoped for, in the Spring,

      And evidence of Summer not