Flower-de-Luce. O flower-de-luce, bloom on, and let the river O flower of song, bloom on, and make for ever 9 I PALIN GENESIS. LAY upon the headland-height, and listened To the incessant sobbing of the sea In caverns under me, An watched the waves, that tossed and fled and glistened, Until the rolling meadows of amethyst Then suddenly, as one from sleep, I started; Seemed peopled with the shapes Of those whom I had known in days departed, Apparelled in the loveliness which gleams On faces seen in dreams. Palingenesis. A moment only, and the light and glory And the wild roses of the promontory Around me shuddered in the wind, and shed. Their petals of pale red. There was an old belief that in the embers Of all things t eir primordial form exists, And cunning alchemists Could re-create the rose with all its members From its own ashes, but without the bloom, Without the lost perfume. Ah me! what wonder-working, occult science Can from the ashes in our hearts once more The rose of youth restore? What craft of alchemy can bid defiance To time and change, and for a single hour Renew this phantom-flower? "O, give me back!" I cried, "the vanished splendours, The breath of morn, and the exultant strife, Bounds o'er its rocky channel, and surrenders And the sea answered, with a lamentation, Like some old prophet wailing, and it said, "Alas! thy youth is dead! It breathes no more, its heart has no pulsa tion; In the dark places with the dead of old It lies for ever cold!' "" Then said I, "From its consecrated cerements I will not drag this sacred dust again, Only to give me pain; Palingenesis. 13 But, still remembering all the lost endearments, Into what land of harvests, what plantations Beneath what midnight skies, whose constellations Light up the spacious avenues between Amid what friendly greetings and caresses, What households, though not alien, yet not mine, What bowers of rest divine; To what temptations in lone wildernesses, What famine of the heart, what pain and loss, The bearing of what cross! |