Ode on Beauty.
By Edward Shanks
Infinite peace is hanging in the air,
Infinite peace is resting on mine eyes,
That just an hour ago learnt how to bear
Seeing your body's flaming harmonies.
The grey clouds flecked with orange are and gold,
Birds unto rest are falling, falling, falling,
And all the earth goes slowly into night,
Steadily turning from the harshly bright
Sunset.And now the wind is growing cold
And in my heart a hidden voice is calling.
Say, is our sense of beauty mixed with earth
When lip on lip and breast on breast we cling,
When ecstasy brings short bright sobs to birth
And all our pulses, both our bodies sing?
When through the haze that gathers on my sight
I see your eyelids, know the eyes behind
See me and half not see me, when our blood
Goes roaring like a deep tremendous flood,
Calm and terrific in unhasty might,
Is then our inner sight sealed up and blind?
Or could it be that when our blood was colder
And side by side we sat with lips disparted
I saw the perfect line of your resting shoulder,
Your mouth, your peaceful throat with fuller-hearted,
More splendid joy?Ah poignant joys all these!
And rest can stab the heart as well as passion.
Yea, I have known sobs choke my heart to see
Your honey-coloured hair move languorously,
Ruffled, not by my hands, but by the breeze,
And I have prayed the rough air for compassion.
Yea, I have knelt to the unpiteous air
And knelt to gods I knew not, to remove
The viewless hands whose sight I could not bear
Out of the wind-blown head of her I love.
Ecstasy enters me and cannot speak,
Seizes my hands and smites my fainting eyes
And sends through all my veins a dim despair
Of never apprehending all so fair
And I have stood, unnerved and numb and weak,
Watching your breathing bosom fall and rise.
Ah no!This joy is empty, incomplete,
And sullied with a sense of too much longing,
Where thoughts and fancies, sweet and bitter-sweet,
And old regrets and new-born hopes come thronging.
Man can see beauty for a moment's space
And live, having seen her with an unfilmed eye,
If all his body and all his soul in one
Instant are tuned by passion to unison
And I can image in your kissing face
The eternal meaning of the earth and sky.