To G. E. M

'Tis a little room, my friend--Baby walks from end to end;All the things look sadly realThis hot noontide unideal;Vaporous heat from cope to basementAll you see outside the casement,Save one house all mud-becrusted,And a street all drought-bedusted!There behold its happiest vision,Trickling water-cart's derision!Shut we out the staring space,Draw the curtains in its face!

Close the eyelids of the room,Fill it with a scarlet gloom:Lo, the walls with warm flush dyed!Lo, the ceiling glorified,As when, lost in tenderest pinks,White rose on the red rose thinks!But beneath, a hue right rosy,Red as a geranium-posy,Stains the air with power estranging,Known with unknown clouding, changing.See in ruddy atmosphereCommonplaceness disappear!Look around on either hand--Are we not in fairyland?

On that couch, inwrapt in mistOf vaporized amethyst,Lie, as in a rose's heart:Secret things I would impart;Any time you would believe them--Easier, though, you will receive themBathed in glowing mysteryOf the red light shadowy;For this ruby-hearted hue,Sanguine core of all the true,Which for love the heart would plunderIs the very hue of wonder;This dissolving dreamy redIs the self-same radiance shedFrom the heart of poet young,Glowing poppy sunlight-stung:If in light you make a schism'Tis the deepest in the prism.

This poor-seeming room, in factIs of marvels all compact,So disguised by common daylightBy its disenchanting gray light,Only eyes that see by shining,Inside pierce to its live lining.Loftiest observatoryNe'er unveiled such hidden glory;Never sage's furnace-kitchenMagic wonders was so rich in;Never book of wizard oldClasped such in its iron hold.

See that case against the wall,Darkly-dull-purpureal!--A piano to the prosy,But to us in twilight rosy--What?--A cave where Nereids lie,Naiads, Dryads, Oreads sigh,Dreaming of the time when theyDanced in forest and in bay.In that chest before your eyesNature self-enchanted lies;--Lofty days of summer splendour;Low dim eves of opal tender;Airy hunts of cloud and wind;Brooding storm--below, behind;Awful hills and midnight woods;Sunny rains in solitudes;Babbling streams in forests hoar;Seven-hued icebergs; oceans frore.--Yes; did I not say enchanted,That is, hid away till wanted?Do you hear a low-voiced singing?'Tis the sorceress's, flingingSpells around her baby's riot,Binding her in moveless quiet:--She at will can disenchant them,And to prayer believing grant them.

You believe me: soon will nightFree her hands for fair delight;Then invoke her--she will come.Fold your arms, be blind and dumb.She will bring a book of spellsWrit like crabbed oracles;Like Sabrina's will her handsThaw the power of charmed bands.First will ransomed music rushRound thee in a glorious gush;Next, upon its waves will sally,Like a stream-god down a valley,Nature's self, the formless former,Nature's self, the peaceful stormer;She will enter, captive take thee,And both one and many make thee,One by softest power to still thee,Many by the thoughts that fill thee.--Let me guess three guesses whereShe her prisoner will bear!

On a mountain-top you standGazing o'er a sunny land;Shining streams, like silver veins,Rise in dells and meet in plains;Up yon brook a hollow liesDumb as love that fears surprise;Moorland tracts of broken groundO'er it rise and close it round:He who climbs from bosky daleHears the foggy breezes wail.Yes, thou know'st the nest of love,Know'st the waste around, above!In thy soul or in thy past,Straight it melts into the vast,Quickly vanishes awayIn a gloom of darkening gray.

Sinks the sadness into rest,Ripple like on water's breast:Mother's bosom rests the daughter--Grief the ripple, love the water;And thy brain like wind-harp liesBreathed upon from distant skies,Till, soft-gathering, visions newGrow like vapours in the blue:White forms, flushing hyacinthine,Move in motions labyrinthine;With an airy wishful gaitOn the counter-motion wait;Sweet restraint and action freeShow the law of liberty;Master of the revel stillThe obedient, perfect will;Hating smallest thing awry,Breathing, breeding harmony;While the god-like graceful feet,For such mazy marvelling meet,Press from air a shining sound,Rippling after, lingering round:Hair afloat and arms aloftFill the chord of movement soft.

Gone the measure polyhedral!Towers aloft a fair cathedral!Every arch--like praying armsUpward flung in love's alarms,Knit by clasped hands o'erhead--Heaves to heaven a weight of dread;In thee, like an angel-crowd,Grows the music, praying loud,Swells thy spirit with devotionAs a strong wind swells the ocean,Sweeps the visioned pile away,Leaves thy heart alone to pray.

As the prayer grows dim and diesLike a sunset from the skies,Glides another change of moodO'er thy inner solitude:Girt with Music's magic zone,Lo, thyself magician grown!Open-eyed thou walk'st through earthBrooding on the aeonian birthOf a thousand wonder-thingsIn divine dusk of their springs:Half thou seest whence they flow,Half thou seest whither go--Nature's consciousness, wherebyOn herself she turns her eye,Hoping for all men and theePerfected, pure harmony.

But when, sinking slow, the sunLeaves the glowing curtain dun,I, of prophet-insight reft,Shall be dull and dreamless left;I must hasten proof on proof,Weaving in the warp my woof!

What are those upon the wall,Ranged in rows symmetrical?Through the wall of things externalPosterns they to the supernal;Through Earth's battlemented heightLoopholes to the Infinite;Through locked gates of place and time,Wickets to the eternal primeLying round the noisy dayFull of silences alway.

That, my friend? Now, it is curiousYou should hit upon the spurious!'Tis a door to nowhere, that;Never soul went in thereat;Lies behind, a limy wallHung with cobwebs, that is all.

Do not open that one yet,Wait until the sun is set.If you careless lift its latchGlimpse of nothing will you catch;Mere negation, blank of hue,Out of it will stare at you;Wait, I say, the coming night,Fittest time for second sight,Then the wide eyes of the mindSee far down the Spirit's wind.You may have to strain and pull,Force and lift with cunning tool,Ere the rugged, ill-joined doorYield the sight it stands before:When at last, with grating sweep,Wide it swings--behold, the deep!

Thou art standing on the vergeWhere material things emerge;Hoary silence, lightning fleet,Shooteth hellward at thy feet!Fear not thou whose life is truth,Gazing will renew thy youth;But where sin of soul or fleshHeld a man in spider-mesh,It would drag him through that door,Give him up to loreless lore,Ages to be blown and hurledUp and down a deedless world.

Ah, your eyes ask how I brookDoors that are not, doors to look!That is whither I was tending,And it brings me to good ending.

Baby is the cause of this;Odd it seems, but so it is;--Baby, with her pretty prateMolten, half articulate,Full of hints, suggestions, catches,Broken verse, and music snatches!She, like seraph gone astray,Must be shown the homeward way;Plant of heaven, she, rooted lowly,Must put forth a blossom holy,Must, through culture high and steady,Slow unfold a gracious lady;She must therefore live in wonder,See nought common up or under;She the moon and stars and sea,Worm and butterfly and bee,Yea, the sparkle in a stone,Must with marvel look upon;She must love, in heaven's own blueness,Both the colour and the newness;Must each day from darkness break,Often often come awake,Never with her childhood part,Change the brain, but keep the heart.

So, from lips and hands and looks,She must learn to honour books,Turn the leaves with careful fingers,Never lean where long she lingers;But when she is old enoughShe must learn the lesson roughThat to seem is not to be,As to know is not to see;That to man or book, appearingGives no title to revering;That a pump is not a well,Nor a priest an oracle:This to leave safe in her mind,I will take her and go findCertain no-books, dreary apes,Tell her they are mere mock-shapesNo more to be honoured by herBut be laid upon the fire;Book-appearance must not hinderTheir consuming to a cinder.

Would you see the small immortalOne short pace within Time's portal?I will fetch her.--Is she white?Solemn? true? a light in light?See! is not her lily-skinWhite as whitest ermelinWashed in palest thinnest rose?Very thought of God she goes,Ne'er to wander, in her dance,Out of his love-radiance!

But, my friend, I've rattled plentyTo suffice for mornings twenty!I should never stop of course,Therefore stop I will perforce.--If I led them up, choragic,To reveal their nature magic,Twenty things, past contradiction,Yet would prove I spoke no fictionOf the room's belongings crypticRead by light apocalyptic:There is that strange thing, glass-masked,With continual questions tasked,Ticking with untiring rock:It is called an eight-day clock,But to me the thing appearsBusy winding up the years,Drawing on with coiling chainThe epiphany again.