Ah! Beauty When It Is Ravished

Ah! beauty when it is ravished How wild, how wild its eyes will look All drowsy as if just awoke From steadfast dreams by drowsing poppies numbed How wild, how wild and drowsy will she look! Not long enough will be The hours of the night, the long summer night And all its humid heat and sweaty drops When the full body rests the welcome rest From the long tedious day of laboring And the limbs their muscled beauty relax Unto the soothing night, the welcome night. Below the casement a small rill with happy mien Gurgles into the night its dark unfettered voice And its unconquered syllables indistinct And heard and understood by satyrs bright That hold unseen their winy feast at night Into some coppice still and olive-green and calm While the still wind a single rustle does not make In the thick foliage of the talling oak Within whose highest branch the old owl rests And with awakened eye half-opened half-closed Looks all before at night she witnesses The dances of the fauns amidst the green And sheltered avenues sentinel by trees And feasting satyrs red-lipped with warm wine And hold cups and drinking to their god That from his heaven upon them smiling looks: Ah! long the night beneath the bending yew It seems a pilgrim gray half-bending and all still And by him lies his staff unmoving quite And with him Time rested and did not move: Ah! pilgrim Time the night has conquered too Your limbs with its faint drowsiness And faint half-audible caresses That in the ear melt like a serpent hiss Or like the sorceries of Circe when she lay Into the cave to calm Ulysess’s whims Whilst waves reflected danced all long the rocks That were the roof reflected from the sea That down below down giddying heights The sea-waves danced with nymphs that danced on them: Full rippling the love-words of Ocean waves When dreaming in the waters drowses more In feeling their cool numbers to him flow Ah! drowsy beauty wild untamed unfettered By the musty parchments of conventions old And hated as the ancient Saturn gods: That Jove and his men duly overturned The old though good with hate all covered goes When time wills that it cede unto the new A leaf that in its glory in the sunshine basked When time doth make it sere ‘twill hate itself And wish its bough by its new spring replace: How drowsy beauty is, how wild untamed How magic are the castles that it dreams And in it waves will leap Over a hundred stories to the fort Where lies love and grace and history And that like lighthouse in the night Shines its tall rays unto the welcome skiff: That the tall bosom of the sea swift plies Into the long night, the long welcome night. How will the blood to the warm veins Rush in delight like wine a-warming full When Bacchus holds his feasts and revels full And laughs resound from the dark coppice green Where he and his companions revel full Hid from curious eyes and human steps. But now gray pilgrim Time stirs full and tall He rises now and looking at his watch He on his staff his voyage now resumes And sands again now trickle down the glass Anon unwarranted the eyes of Down Into the dark nocturnal mantle peer and see Making full breach with it: soon the dress That satins the dark mantle of the night Will here and there dissolve and loose Its dark transparent gloss to a light grey Wherein the rising Dawn by slow degrees Tears the web of dark that night has meshed Till the downy structure to its feet Is like a castle to its crushing sent: Awhile the sun a-shedding his stirrups gay To ride into his car with joy prepares: And dwindles the long night, the welcome night But beauty still with ravished eyes and wild Into the drowsy dawn will rise and look.