Natura naturans

Beside me, in the car, she sat,     She spake not, no, nor looked to me     From her to me, from me to her,     What passed so subtly, stealthily?     As rose to rose that by it blows     Its interchanged aroma flings;     Or wake to sound of one sweet note     The virtues of disparted strings.     Beside me, nought but this! but this,     That influent as within me dwelt     Her life, mine too within her breast,     Her brain, her every limb she felt     We sat; while oer and in us, more     And more, a power unknown prevailed,     Inhaling, and inhaled, and still     Twas one, inhaling or inhaled.     Beside me, nought but this; and passed;     I passed; and know not to this day     If gold or jet her girlish hair,     If black, or brown, or lucid-grey     Her eyes young glance: the fickle chance     That joined us, yet may join again;     But I no face again could greet     As hers, whose life was in me then.     As unsuspecting mere a maid     As, fresh in maidhoods bloomiest bloom,     In casual second-class did eer     By casual youth her seat assume;     Or vestal, say, of saintliest clay,     For once by balmiest airs betrayed     Unto emotions too, too sweet     To be unlingeringly gainsaid:     Unowning then, confusing soon     With dreamier dreams that oer the glass     Of shyly ripening woman-sense     Reflected, scarce reflected, pass,     A wife may-be, a mother she     In Hymens shrine recals not now,     She first in hour, ah, not profane,     With me to Hymen learnt to bow.     Ah no! Yet owned we, fused in one,     The Power which een in stones and earths     By blind elections felt, in forms     Organic breeds to myriad births;     By lichen small on granite wall     Approved, its faintest feeblest stir     Slow-spreading, strengthening long, at last     Vibrated full in me and her.     In me and her sensation strange!     The lily grew to pendent head,     To vernal airs the mossy bank     Its sheeny primrose spangles spread,     In roof oer roof of shade sun-proof     Did cedar strong itself outclimb,     And altitude of aloe proud     Aspire in floreal crown sublime;     Flashed flickering forth fantastic flies,     Big bees their burly bodies swung,     Rooks roused with civic din the elms,     And lark its wild reveillez rung;     In Libyan dell the light gazelle,     The leopard lithe in Indian glade,     And dolphin, brightening tropic seas,     In us were living, leapt and played:     Their shells did slow crustacea build,     Their gilded skins did snakes renew,     While mightier spines for loftier kind     Their types in amplest limbs outgrew;     Yea, close comprest in human breast,     What moss, and tree, and livelier thing,     What Earth, Sun, Star of force possest,     Lay budding, burgeoning forth for Spring.     Such sweet preluding sense of old     Led on in Edens sinless place     The hour when bodies human first     Combined the primal prime embrace,     Such genial heat the blissful seat     In man and woman owned unblamed,     When, naked both, its garden paths     They walked unconscious, unashamed:     Ere, clouded yet in mistiest dawn,     Above the horizon dusk and dun,     One mountain crest with light had tipped     That Orb that is the Spirits Sun;     Ere dreamed young flowers in vernal showers     Of fruit to rise the flower above,     Or ever yet to young Desire     Was told the mystic name of Love.