A PROLOGUE.

As a young Child, whose Mother, for a jest,
To his own use a golden coin flings down,
Devises blythe how he may spend it best,
Or on a horse, a bride-cake, or a crown,
Till, wearied with his quest,
Nor liking altogether that nor this,
He gives it back for nothing but a kiss,
Endow’d so I
With golden speech, my choice of toys to buy,
And scanning power and pleasure and renown,
Till each in turn, with looking at, looks vain,
For her mouth’s bliss,
To her who gave it give I it again. 
   Ah, Lady elect,
Whom the Time’s scorn has saved from its respect,
Would I had art
For uttering this which sings within my heart! 
But, lo,
Thee to admire is all the art I know. 
My Mother and God’s; Fountain of miracle! 
Give me thereby some praise of thee to tell
In such a Song
As may my Guide severe and glad not wrong
Who never spake till thou’dst on him conferr’d
The right, convincing word! 
Grant me the steady heat
Of thought wise, splendid, sweet,
Urged by the great, rejoicing wind that rings
With draught of unseen wings,
Making each phrase, for love and for delight,
Twinkle like Sirius on a frosty night! 
Aid thou thine own dear fame, thou only Fair,
At whose petition meek
The Heavens themselves decree that, as it were,
They will be weak! 
   Thou Speaker of all wisdom in a Word,
Thy Lord! 
Speaker who thus could’st well afford
Thence to be silent;—­ah, what silence that
Which had for prologue thy ’Magnificat?’—­
O, Silence full of wonders
More than by Moses in the Mount were heard,
More than were utter’d by the Seven Thunders;
Silence that crowns, unnoted, like the voiceless blue,
The loud world’s varying view,
And in its holy heart the sense of all things ponders! 
That acceptably I may speak of thee,
Ora pro me! 
   Key-note and stop
Of the thunder-going chorus of sky-Powers;
Essential drop
Distill’d from worlds of sweetest-savour’d flowers
To anoint with nuptial praise
The Head which for thy Beauty doff’d its rays,
And thee, in His exceeding glad descending, meant,
And Man’s new days
Made of His deed the adorning accident! 
Vast Nothingness of Self, fair female Twin
Of Fulness, sucking all God’s glory in! 
(Ah, Mistress mine,
To nothing I have added only sin,
And yet would shine!)
Ora pro me! 
   Life’s cradle and death’s tomb! 
To lie within whose womb,
There, with divine self-will infatuate,
Love-captive to the thing He did create,
Thy God did not abhor,
No more
Than Man, in Youth’s high spousal-tide,
Abhors at last to touch
The strange lips of his long-procrastinating Bride;
Nay, not the least imagined part as much! 
Ora pro me! 
   My Lady, yea, the Lady of my Lord,
Who didst the first descry
The burning secret of virginity,