Dithyrambics

I TEMPEST     Wrapped round of the night, as a monster is wrapped of the ocean,     Down, down through vast storeys of darkness, behold, in the tower     Of the heaven, the thunder! on stairways of cloudy commotion,     Colossal of tread, like a giant, from echoing hour to hour     Goes striding in rattling armor ...     The Nymph, at her billow-roofed dormer     Of foam; and the Sylvan--green-housed--at her window of leaves appears;     --As a listening woman, who hears     The approach of her lover, who comes to her arms in the night;     And, loosening the loops of her locks,     With eyes full of love and delight,     From the couch of her rest in ardor and haste arises.--     The Nymph, as if breathed of the tempest, like fire surprises     The riotous bands of the rocks,     That face with a roar the shouting charge of the seas.     The Sylvan,--through troops of the trees,     Whose clamorous clans with gnarly bosoms keep hurling     Themselves on the guns of the wind,--goes wheeling and whirling.     The Nymph, of the waves' exultation upheld, her green tresses     Knotted with flowers of the hollow white foam, dives screaming;     Then bounds to the arms of the storm, who boisterously presses     Her hair and wild form to his breast that is panting and streaming.     The Sylvan,--hard-pressed by the wind, the Pan-footed air,--     On the violent backs of the hills,--     Like a flame that tosses and thrills     From peak to peak when the world of spirits is out,--     Is borne, as her rapture wills,     With glittering gesture and shout:     Now here in the darkness, now there,     From the rain-like sweep of her hair,--     Bewilderingly volleyed o'er eyes and o'er lips,--     To the lambent swell of her limbs, her breasts and her hips,     She flashes her beautiful nakedness out in the glare     Of the tempest that bears her away,--     That bears me away!     Away, over forest and foam, over tree and spray,     Far swifter than thought, far swifter than sound or than flame.     Over ocean and pine,     In arms of tumultuous shadow and shine ...     Though Sylvan and Nymph do not     Exist, and only what     Of terror and beauty I feel and I name     As parts of the storm, the awe and the rapture divine     That here in the tempest are mine,--     The two are the same, the two are forever the same. II CALM     Beautiful-bosomed, O night, in thy noon     Move with majesty onward! bearing, as lightly     As a singer may bear the notes of an exquisite tune,     The stars and the moon     Through the clerestories high of the heaven, the firmament's halls;     Under whose sapphirine walls,     June, hesperian June,     Robed in divinity wanders. Daily and nightly     The turquoise touch of her robe, that the violets star,     The silvery fall of her feet, that lilies are,     Fill the land with languorous light and perfume.--     Is it the melody mute of burgeoning leaf and of bloom?     The music of Nature, that silently shapes in the gloom     Immaterial hosts     Of spirits that have the flowers and leaves in their keep,     That I hear, that I hear?     Invisible ghosts,--     Who whisper in leaves and glimmer in blossoms and hover     In color and fragrance and loveliness, breathed from the deep     World-soul of the mother,     Nature;--who, over and over,     Both sweetheart and lover,     Goes singing her songs from one sweet month to the other,--     That appear, that appear?     In forest and field, on hill-land and lea,     As crystallized harmony,     Materialized melody,     An uttered essence peopling far and near     The hyaline atmosphere?...     Behold how it sprouts from the grass and blooms from flower and tree!     In waves of diaphanous moonlight and mist,     In fugue upon fugue of gold and of amethyst,     Around me, above me it spirals; now slower, now faster,     Like symphonies born of the thought of a musical master.--     --O music of Earth! O God who the music inspired!     Let me breathe of the life of thy breath!     And so be fulfilled and attired     In resurrection, triumphant o'er time and o'er death!