The Well-Beloved
I wayed by star and planet shineTowards the dear one’s homeAt Kingsbere, there to make her mineWhen the next sun upclomb.
I edged the ancient hill and woodBeside the Ikling Way,Nigh where the Pagan temple stoodIn the world’s earlier day.
And as I quick and quicker walkedOn gravel and on green,I sang to sky, and tree, or talkedOf her I called my queen.
—“O faultless is her dainty form,And luminous her mind;She is the God-created normOf perfect womankind!”
A shape whereon one star-blink gleamedGlode softly by my side,A woman’s; and her motion seemedThe motion of my bride.
And yet methought she’d drawn erstwhileAdown the ancient leaze,Where once were pile and peristyleFor men’s idolatries.
—“O maiden lithe and lone, what mayThy name and lineage be,Who so resemblest by this rayMy darling?—Art thou she?”
The Shape: “Thy bride remains withinHer father’s grange and grove.”—“Thou speakest rightly,” I broke in,“Thou art not she I love.”
—“Nay: though thy bride remains insideHer father’s walls,” said she,“The one most dear is with thee here,For thou dost love but me.”
Then I: “But she, my only choice,Is now at Kingsbere Grove?”Again her soft mysterious voice:“I am thy only Love.”
Thus still she vouched, and still I said,“O sprite, that cannot be!” . . .It was as if my bosom bled,So much she troubled me.
The sprite resumed: “Thou hast transferredTo her dull form awhileMy beauty, fame, and deed, and word,My gestures and my smile.
“O fatuous man, this truth infer,Brides are not what they seem;Thou lovest what thou dreamest her;I am thy very dream!”
—“O then,” I answered miserably,Speaking as scarce I knew,“My loved one, I must wed with theeIf what thou say’st be true!”
She, proudly, thinning in the gloom:“Though, since troth-plight began,I’ve ever stood as bride to groom,I wed no mortal man!”
Thereat she vanished by the CrossThat, entering Kingsbere town,The two long lanes form, near the fosseBelow the faneless Down.
—When I arrived and met my bride,Her look was pinched and thin,As if her soul had shrunk and died,And left a waste within.
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