Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
Edmund Gosse. b. 1849845. Revelation
INTO the silver night | |
She brought with her pale hand | |
The topaz lanthorn-light, | |
And darted splendour o’er the land; | |
Around her in a band, | 5 |
Ringstraked and pied, the great soft moths came flying, | |
And flapping with their mad wings, fann’d | |
The flickering flame, ascending, falling, dying. | |
Behind the thorny pink | |
Close wall of blossom’d may, | 10 |
I gazed thro’ one green chink | |
And saw no more than thousands may,— | |
Saw sweetness, tender and gay,— | |
Saw full rose lips as rounded as the cherry, | |
Saw braided locks more dark than bay, | 15 |
And flashing eyes decorous, pure, and merry. | |
With food for furry friends | |
She pass’d, her lamp and she, | |
Till eaves and gable-ends | |
Hid all that saffron sheen from me: | 20 |
Around my rosy tree | |
Once more the silver-starry night was shining, | |
With depths of heaven, dewy and free, | |
And crystals of a carven moon declining. | |
Alas! for him who dwells | 25 |
In frigid air of thought, | |
When warmer light dispels | |
The frozen calm his spirit sought; | |
By life too lately taught | |
He sees the ecstatic Human from him stealing; | 30 |
Reels from the joy experience brought, | |
And dares not clutch what Love was half revealing. |