ELEANORE. THY dark eyes opened not, Nor first revealed themselves to English air, For there is nothing here, Which, from the outward to the inward brought, Moulded thy baby thought. Far off from human neighborhood, Thou wert born, on a summer morn, A mile beneath the cedar-wood. Thy bounteous forehead was not fanned With breezes from our oaken glades, But thou wert nursed in some delicious land Of lavish lights, and floating shades: And flattering thy childish thought The oriental fairy brought, At the moment of thy birth, From old well-heads of haunted rills, And shadowed coves on a sunny shore, The choicest wealth of all the earth, Jewel or shell, or starry ore, To deck thy cradle, Eleänore. Or the yellow-banded bees, Coming in the scented breeze, Fed thee, a child, lying alone, With whitest honey in fairy gardens culled A glorious child, dreaming alone, In silk-soft folds, upon yielding down, With the hum of swarming bees Into dreamful slumber lulled. Who may minister to thee? Summer herself should minister To thee, with fruitage golden-rinded With many a deep-hued bell-like flower Of fragrant trailers, when the air And the crag that fronts the Even, All along the shadowing shore, Crimsons over an inland mere, Eleänore! How may full-sailed verse express, Of thy swan-like stateliness, Eleänore? The luxuriant symmetry Of thy floating gracefulness, Eleanore? Every turn and glance of thine, Eleänore, And the steady sunset glow, That stays upon thee? For in thee Is nothing sudden, nothing single; Like two streams of incense free From one censer, in one shrine, Thought and motion mingle, To one another, even as though To an unheard melody, Which lives about thee, and a sweep Of richest pauses, evermore I stand before thee, Eleänore; I see thy beauty gradually unfold, Slowly, as from a cloud of gold, The languors of thy love-deep eyes Float on to me. I would I were So tranced, so rapt in ecstasies, To stand apart, and to adore, Serene, imperial Eleänore! Sometimes, with most intensity Gazing, I seem to see Thought folded over thought, smiling asleep, Slowly awakened, grow so full and deep But am as nothing in its light: As though a star, in inmost heaven set, Should slowly round his orb, and slowly grow To a full face, there like a sun remain Fixed-then as slowly fade again, And draw itself to what it was before; Thought seems to come and go As thunder-clouds that, hung on high, Roofed the world with doubt and fear, In thee all passion becomes passionless, In a silent meditation, Falling into a still delight, VOL. I. And luxury of contemplation: 17 |