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Motion toward Noon
My heart is like a singing bird.
C. Rossetti
Toward so small hour to sound in such a joy,
To trumpet wilderness, to harden close
The bright stem run through me crying joy.
And for what measure, for what single close?
What stillness comes, what secret, what revealed
That all should lend, that all should turn in light?
O fresh, elusive, brightly gilded pain,
Séance of morning, prophesy your day.
Light and expectant, fall on me in rain,
Shine up through hours, gather up such day
As stillness tells, as secret and revealed,
Brought in illusion among clouds of light.
Morning shall sing, and noon shall cover all,
And shafts of sky, and planes of gold combine
And ring in stillness in such syllable
As is most common, rarely to combine
As rarities that seraphim revealed
Once in the opening mist of quietest light.
And all for such that quietly in joy
Descends to prophesy and cries its end,
That sets its epilogue before the joy
Of morning bids her hollow shafts to send
The singing noon, when, for itself revealed,
It ebbs at ending in extinguished light.