And doth the man pursue a tightened zone, Then be it as the Laurel God he runs, Confirmed to win, with countenance the Sun's.
Should pity bless the tremulous voice of woe He lifts for pity, limp his offspring show.
For him requiring woman's arts to please Infantile tastes with babe reluctances, No race of giants! In the woman's veins Persuasion ripely runs, through hers the pains.
Her choice of him, should kind occasion nod, Aspiring blends the Titan with the God;Yet unto dwarf and mortal, she, submiss In her high Lady's mandate, yields the kiss;And is it needed that Love's daintier brute Be snared as hunter, she will tempt pursuit.
She is great Nature's ever intimate In breast, and doth as ready handmaid wait, Until perverted by her senseless male, She plays the winding snake, the shrinking snail, The flying deer, all tricks of evil fame, Elusive to allure, since he grew tame.
Hence has the Goddess, Nature's earliest Power, And greatest and most present, with her dower Of the transcendent beauty, gained repute For meditated guile. She laughs to hear A charge her garden's labyrinths scarce confute, Her garden's histories tell of to all near.
Let it be said, But less upon her guile Doth she rely for her immortal smile.
Still let the rumour spread, and terror screens To push her conquests by the simplest means.
While man abjures not lustihead, nor swerves From earth's good labours, Beauty's Queen he serves.
Her spacious garden and her garden's grant She offers in reward for handsome cheer:
Choice of the nymphs whose looks will slant The secret down a dewy leer Of corner eyelids into haze:
Many a fair Aphrosyne Like flower-bell to honey-bee:
And here they flicker round the maze Bewildering him in heart and head:
And here they wear the close demure, With subtle peeps to reassure:
Others parade where love has bled, And of its crimson weave their mesh:
Others to snap of fingers leap, As bearing breast with love asleep.
These are her laughters in the flesh.
Or would she fit a warrior mood, She lights her seeming unsubdued, And indicates the fortress-key.
Or is it heart for heart that craves, She flecks along a run of waves The one to promise deeper sea.
Bands of her limpid primitives, Or patterned in the curious braid, Are the blest man's; and whatsoever he gives, For what he gives is he repaid.
Good is it if by him 'tis held He wins the fairest ever welled From Nature's founts: she whispers it: Even INot fairer! and forbids him to deny, Else little is he lover. Those he clasps, Intent as tempest, worshipful as prayer, -And be they doves or be they asps, -
Must seem to him the sovereignty fair;
Else counts he soon among life's wholly tamed.
Him whom from utter savage she reclaimed, Half savage must he stay, would he be crowned The lover. Else, past ripeness, deathward bound, He reasons; and the totterer Earth detests, Love shuns, grim logic screws in grasp, is he.
Doth man divide divine Necessity From Joy, between the Queen of Beauty's breasts A sword is driven; for those most glorious twain Present her; armed to bless and to constrain.
Of this he perishes; not she, the throned On rocks that spout their springs to the sacred mounts.
A loftier Reason out of deeper founts Earth's chosen Goddess bears: by none disowned While red blood runs to swell the pulse, she boasts, And Beauty, like her star, descends the sky;Earth's answer, heaven's consent unto man's cry, Uplifted by the innumerable hosts.
Quickened of Nature's eye and ear, When the wild sap at high tide smites Within us; or benignly clear To vision; or as the iris lights On fluctuant waters; she is ours Till set of man: the dreamed, the seen;Flushing the world with odorous flowers:
A soft compulsion on terrene By heavenly: and the world is hers While hunger after Beauty spurs.
So is it sung in any space She fills, with laugh at shallow laws Forbidding love's devised embrace, The music Beauty from it draws.
