God, whom none may live and mark, Borne within thy radiant ark!-- While the Earth, a joyous David, Dances before thee from the dawn to dark. The moon, O leave, pale ruined Eve; Behold her fair and greater daughter[C] Offers to thee her fruitful water, Which at thy first white _Ave_ shall conceive! Thy gazes do on simple her Desirable allures confer; What happy comelinesses rise Beneath thy beautifying eyes! Who was, indeed, at first a maid Such as, with sighs, misgives she is not fair, And secret views herself afraid, Till flatteries sweet provoke the charms they swear: Yea, thy gazes, blissful lover, Make the beauties they discover! What dainty guiles and treacheries caught From artful prompting of love's artless thought Her lowly loveliness teach her to adorn, When thy plumes shiver against the conscious gates of morn! And so the love which is thy dower, Earth, though her first-frightened breast Against the exigent boon protest, (For she, poor maid, of her own power Has nothing in herself, not even love, But an unwitting void thereof), Gives back to thee in sanctities of flower; And holy odours do her bosom invest, That sweeter grows for being prest: Though dear recoil, the tremorous nurse of joy, From thine embrace still startles coy, Till Phosphor lead, at thy returning hour, The laughing captive from the wishing West. Nor the majestic heavens less Thy formidable sweets approve, Thy dreads and thy delights confess That do draw, and that remove. Thou as a lion roar'st, O Sun, Upon thy satellites' vexèd heels; Before thy terrible hunt thy planets run; Each in his frighted orbit wheels, Each flies through inassuageable chase, Since the hunt o' the world begun, The puissant approaches of thy face, And yet thy radiant leash he feels. Since the hunt o' the world begun, Lashed with terror, leashed with longing, The mighty course is ever run; Pricked with terror, leashed with longing, Thy rein they love, and thy rebuke they shun. Since the hunt o' the world began, With love that trembleth, fear that loveth, Thou join'st the woman to the man; And Life with Death In obscure nuptials moveth, Commingling alien, yet affinèd, breath.