The sage enamoured and the honest lady

     I

     One fairest of the ripe unwedded left
     Her shadow on the Sage’s path; he found,
     By common signs, that she had done a theft. 
     He could have made the sovereign heights resound
     With questions of the wherefore of her state: 
     He on far other but an hour before
     Intent.  And was it man, or was it mate,
     That she disdained? or was there haply more?

     About her mouth a placid humour slipped
     The dimple, as you see smooth lakes at eve
     Spread melting rings where late a swallow dipped. 
     The surface was attentive to receive,
     The secret underneath enfolded fast. 
     She had the step of the unconquered, brave,
     Not arrogant; and if the vessel’s mast
     Waved liberty, no challenge did it wave. 
     Her eyes were the sweet world desired of souls,
     With something of a wavering line unspelt. 
     They hold the look whose tenderness condoles
     For what the sister in the look has dealt
     Of fatal beyond healing; and her tones
     A woman’s honeyed amorous outvied,
     As when in a dropped viol the wood-throb moans
     Among the sobbing strings, that plain and chide
     Like infants for themselves, less deep to thrill
     Than those rich mother-notes for them breathed round. 
     Those voices are not magic of the will
     To strike love’s wound, but of love’s wound give sound,
     Conveying it; the yearnings, pains and dreams. 
     They waft to the moist tropics after storm,
     When out of passion spent thick incense steams,
     And jewel-belted clouds the wreck transform.

     Was never hand on brush or lyre to paint
     Her gracious manners, where the nuptial ring
     Of melody clasped motion in restraint: 
     The reed-blade with the breeze thereof may sing. 
     With such endowments armed was she and decked
     To make her spoken thoughts eclipse her kind;
     Surpassing many a giant intellect,
     The marvel of that cradled infant mind. 
     It clenched the tiny fist, it curled the toe;
     Cherubic laughed, enticed, dispensed, absorbed;
     And promised in fair feminine to grow
     A Sage’s match and mate, more heavenly orbed.

     II

     Across his path the spouseless Lady cast
     Her shadow, and the man that thing became. 
     His youth uprising called his age the Past. 
     This was the strong grey head of laurelled name,
     And in his bosom an inverted Sage
     Mistook for light of morn the light which sank. 
     But who while veins run blood shall know the page
     Succeeding ere we turn upon our blank? 
     Comes Beauty with her tale of moon and cloud,
     Her silvered rims of mystery pointing in
     To hollows of the half-veiled