INVOCATION—AND REPLY

Hear me, brave words,
You who of old
Came singing birds
To a poet’s call:
“Many have called us, yet we served not all.”
Come words of jade
To make green eyes
Of a little maid,
Come words that sing
And let her linnet speech now softly ring.
Ivory words
Denote her breasts,
Two fluttering birds
That sit and sing
For joy of some unseen delicious spring.
Dusky words weave
Her falling hair,
The world bereave
Of shadows long
And shake them in a sombre tangled throng.
Come you most durable
Shining words,
’Gainst the incurable
Drift of Time
Guard me her sweetness safe within a rhyme.
Is that thy need?—Truly the all-complete
Imperious need of every mortal lover
Since life was lived in Time and Time was rover—
To carve the image of that passing-sweet
Swift withering flower of Beauty naméd Love;
To crystallize a moment’s grace for ever.
(“The old old plea yet that is not enough!”
Words whisper); to seize Joy; to stay the river
Of ever-flowing water bearing down
To shadowy oceans all we crave to mind us
Of Beauty and her heart of perfect peace.
Words, aid me! Set your Time-defying crown
On all my heart would never more release.
Where wait ye, words? Here. Come! No, poet, find us!