saints

I can’t tell you — but you feel it –
Nor can you tell me –
Saints, with ravished slate and pencil
Solve our April Day!

Sweeter than a vanished frolic
From a vanished green!
Swifter than the hoofs of Horsemen
Round a Ledge of dream!

Modest, let us walk among it
With our faces veiled –
As they say polite Archangels
Do in meeting God!

Not for me — to prate about it!
Not for you — to say
To some fashionable Lady
“Charming April Day”!

Rather — Heaven’s “Peter Parley”!
By which Children slow
To sublimer Recitation
Are prepared to go!

For this — accepted Breath –
Through it — compete with Death –
The fellow cannot touch this Crown –
By it — my title take –
Ah, what a royal sake
To my necessity — stooped down!

No Wilderness — can be
Where this attendeth me –
No Desert Noon –
No fear of frost to come
Haunt the perennial bloom –
But Certain June!

Get Gabriel — to tell — the royal syllable –
Get Saints — with new — unsteady tongue –
To say what trance below
Most like their glory show –
Fittest the Crown!

She bore it till the simple veins
Traced azure on her hand –
Til pleading, round her quiet eyes
The purple Crayons stand.

Till Daffodils had come and gone
I cannot tell the sum,
And then she ceased to bear it –
And with the Saints sat down.

No more her patient figure
At twilight soft to meet –
No more her timid bonnet
Upon the village street –

But Crowns instead, and Courtiers –
And in the midst so fair,
Whose but her shy — immortal face
Of whom we’re whispering here?

Like her the Saints retire,
In their Chapeaux of fire,
Martial as she!

Like her the Evenings steal
Purple and Cochineal
After the Day!

“Departed” — both — they say!
i.e. gathered away,
Not found,

Argues the Aster still –
Reasons the Daffodil
Profound!