Prologue to A Very Woman

Swift music made of passion's changeful power,     Sweet as the change that leaves the world in flower     When spring laughs winter down to deathward, rang     From grave and gracious lips that smiled and sang     When Massinger, too wise for kings to hear     And learn of him truth, wisdom, faith, or fear,     Gave all his gentler heart to love's light lore,     That grief might brood and scorn breed wrath no more.     Soft, bright, fierce, tender, fitful, truthful, sweet,     A shrine where faith and change might smile and meet,     A soul whose music could but shift its tune     As when the lustrous year turns May to June     And spring subsides in summer, so makes good     Its perfect claim to very womanhood.     The heart that hate of wrong made fire, the hand     Whose touch was fire as keen as shame's own brand     When fraud and treason, swift to smile and sting,     Crowned and discrowned a tyrant, knave or king,     False each and ravenous as the fitful sea,     Grew gently glad as love that fear sets free.     Like eddying ripples that the wind restrains,     The bright words whisper music ere it wanes.     Ere fades the sovereign sound of song that rang     As though the sun to match the sea's tune sang,     When noon from dawn took life and light, and time     Shone, seeing how Shakespeare made the world sublime,     Ere sinks the wind whose breath was heaven's and day's,     The sunset's witness gives the sundawn praise.