Poems MacCarthy, Florence Denis

151
There's a crowding and a crushing, through that golden, fairy place,
Where a snowy veil is lifting, like the slow and silent shifting
Of a shining vapour drifting across the moon's pale face--
For there sits gentle Una, fairest queen of fairy race,
In her beauty, and her majesty, and grace.
The moon by stars attended, on her pearly throne ascended,
Is not more purely splendid than this fairy-girted queen;
And when her lips had spoken, 'mid the charmed silence broken,
You'd think you had awoken in some bright Elysian scene;
For her voice than the lark's was sweeter, that sings in joy between
The heavens and the meadows green.
But her cheeks--ah! what are roses?--what are clouds where eve
reposes?--
What are hues that dawn discloses?--to the blushes spreading there;
And what the sparkling motion of a star within the ocean,
To the crystal soft emotion that her lustrous dark eyes wear?
And the tresses of a moonless and a starless night are fair
To the blackness of her raven hair.
Ah! mortal hearts have panted for what to thee is granted--
To see the halls enchanted of the spirit world revealed;
And yet no glimpse assuages the feverish doubt that rages
In the hearts of bards and sages wherewith they may be healed;
For this have pilgrims wandered--for this have votaries kneeled--
For this, too, has blood bedewed the field.
"And now that thou beholdest what the wisest and the oldest,
What the bravest and the boldest, have never yet descried,
Wilt thou come and share our being, be a part of what thou'rt seeing,
And flee, as we are fleeing, through the boundless ether wide?
Or along the silver ocean, or down deep where pale pearls hide?
And I, who am a queen, will be thy bride.
"As an essence thou wilt enter the world's mysterious centre,"
And then the fairy bent her, imploring to the youth--
"Thou'lt be free of Death's cold ghastness, and, with a comet's
fastness,
Thou canst wander through the vastness to the Paradise of Truth,
Each day a new joy bringing, which will never leave in sooth