THEN-as a nymph's carven head sweet

water drips,

For others oozing so the cool delight

Which cannot steep her stiffened mouth of stone-

Thy nescient Ups repeat maternal strains.

Memnonian lips!

Smitten with singing from thy mother's east,

And murmurous with music not their own:

Nay, the lips flexile, while the mind alone

A passionless statue Stands. ,

Oh, pardon, innocent one!

Pardon at thine unconscious hands!

"Murmurous with music not their own," I say?

And in that saying how do I missay,

When from the common sands

Of poorest common speech of common day

Thine accents sift the golden musics out!

And ah, we poets, I misdoubt,

Are little more than thou!

We speak a lesson taught we know not how,

And what it is that from us flows

The hearer better than the utterer knows.

And thou, bright girl, not long shalt thou repeat

Idly the music from thy mother caught ;

Not vainly has she wrought,

Not vainly from the cloudward-jetting turret

Of her aërial mind, for thy weak feet,

Let down the silken ladder of her thought.

She bare thee with a double pain,

Of the body and the spirit ;

Thou thy fleshly weeds hast ta'en,

Thy diviner weeds inherit !

The precious streams which through thy young lips roll

Shall leave their lovely delta in thy soul :

Where sprites of so essential kind

Set their paces,

Surely they shall leave behind

The green traces

Of their sportance in the mind ;

And thou shalt, ere we well may know it,

Turn that daintiness, a poet,-

Elfin-ring

Where sweet fancies foot and sing.

So it may be, so it shall be,-

O, take the prophecy from me!

What if the old fastidious sculptor, Time,

This crescent marvel of his hands

Carveth all too painfully,

And I who prophesy shall never see ?

What if the niche of its predestined rhyme,

Its aching niche, too long expectant stands ?

Yet shall he after sore delays

On some exultant day of days

The white enshrouding childhood raise

From thy fair spirit, finished for our gaze;

While we (but 'mongst that happy "we"

The prophet cannot be!)

While we behold with no astonishments,

With that serene fulfilment of delight

Wherewith we view the sight

When the stars pitch the golden tents

Of their high encampment on the plains of night.

Why should amazement be our satellite ?

What wonder in such things ?

If angels have hereditary wings,

If not by Salic law is handed down

The poet's crown,

To thee, born in the purple of the throne,

The laurel must belong:

Thou, in thy mother's right

Descendant of Castalian-chrismed kings-

O Princess of the Blood of Song!