What flags are these?... what trumpets?... Oh! what drums? What pride august?... what solemn minstrelsy? Hush! drums, ecstatic drums: say who is she That in the midst majestically comes. Is she some queen whose haughty eye benumbs Proud potentates; whose word can lift the sea Of shattering war, and fling red misery Across the world?... Speak, drums! Oh! aching drums!
Hush! hush! wild drums, drums in my happy heart! Not thus she comes, my life's exalted queen, But in sweet silence far outlauding praise. Her's not the flaming sword that puts apart, But Right's resistless blade, whose stroke unseen Wounds but to heal, and crown with Freedom's bays!
Come from behind those eyes, that I may see Thyself, beloved! not lip, or hand, or brain. These are not thou. These are the servile train That crowd me from thine inmost mystery. Show me thy naked soul!... or it may be That, lacking this, I shall, in Love's mad strain, Shatter the form, and sift it grain by grain To find thine utter Self--thee--very Thee!...
Ah! Love, forgive!... Be this my penitence That in my passion I have glimpsed the goal Of all calamity, and surely scanned In flood and flame, earthquake and pestilence, Love raging forth, to find Love's inmost soul, With bridal gifts in Ruin's awful hand!
_I raise to you, O Queen, this Loving Cup, this Mether, Filled with Mead Made from honey of the heather, Brought by many a humming wing, And with water from the spring; Mixed by cunning hands together In a foamy ferment Thou would lead Sullen tongues to song, If along Harpstrings now a rousing air went._
_But in this our souls' espousal Axe nor skeen Throb and bleed For the spear-clash of carousal, Spoils of slaughter Ravening: No, for peace has mixed our mether, With its Mead, O my Queen, Made from honey of the heather, And with water From the spring._
_Ah! but what avail Song and ale, If beneath our quaffing Moves not something deeper than our laughing?_
_So to you, O Queen, Here with hands unseen I raise my Heart's deep Mether, Where together, Sweetness brought on Fancy's wing From the flowers Of happy hours, And a draught from Thought's cool spring, Blend in song's melodious ferment, With an undertone Caught in deeper hours alone, When along Life's solemn harp the Spirit's air went._