(_Soul_, _hush these sad numbers_, _too sad to upraise_ _In hymning bright Sylvia_, _unlearn’d in such ways_! _Our mournful moods lay we away_, _And prank our thoughts in holiday_, _For syllabling to Sylvia_; _When all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May_, _To bear with us this burthen_, _For singing to Sylvia_!)
Then thus Spring, bounteous lady, made reply: “O lover of me and all my progeny, For grace to you I take her ever to my retinue. Over thy form, dear child, alas! my art Cannot prevail; but mine immortalising Touch I lay upon thy heart. Thy soul’s fair shape In my unfading mantle’s green I drape, And thy white mind shall rest by my devising A Gideon-fleece amid life’s dusty drouth. If Even burst yon globèd yellow grape (Which is the sun to mortals’ sealèd sight) Against her stainèd mouth; Or if white-handed light Draw thee yet dripping from the quiet pools, Still lucencies and cools, Of sleep, which all night mirror constellate dreams; Like to the sign which led the Israelite, Thy soul, through day or dark, A visible brightness on the chosen ark Of thy sweet body and pure, Shall it assure, With auspice large and tutelary gleams, Appointed solemn courts, and covenanted streams.”
_Cease_, _Spring’s little children_, _now cease your lauds to raise_; _That dream is past_, _and Sylvia_, _with her sweet_, _feat ways_. _Our lovèd labour_, _laid away_, _Is smoothly ended_; _said our say_, _Our syllable to Sylvia_. _Make sweet_, _you birds on branches_! _make sweet your mouths with May_! _But borne is this burthen_, _Sung unto Sylvia_.
AND now, thou elder nursling of the nest; Ere all the intertangled west Be one magnificence Of multitudinous blossoms that o’errun The flaming brazen bowl o’ the burnished sun Which they do flower from, How shall I ’stablish _thy_ memorial? Nay, how or with what countenance shall I come To plead in my defence For loving thee at all? I who can scarcely speak my fellows’ speech, Love their love, or mine own love to them teach; A bastard barred from their inheritance, Who seem, in this dim shape’s uneasy nook, Some sun-flower’s spirit which by luckless chance Has mournfully its tenement mistook; When it were better in its right abode, Heartless and happy lackeying its god. How com’st thou, little tender thing of white, Whose very touch full scantly me beseems, How com’st thou resting on my vaporous dreams, Kindling a wraith there of earth’s vernal green? Even so as I have seen, In night’s aërial sea with no wind blust’rous, A ribbèd tract of cloudy malachite Curve a shored crescent wide; And on its slope marge shelving to the night The stranded moon lay quivering like a lustrous Medusa newly washed up from the tide, Lay in an oozy pool of its own deliquious light.