With sounds too dim to shake the lowliest flower

Breathless with hope and dauntless with desire:

And bright before his face

That Hour became a Grace,

As in the light of their Athenian quire

When the Hours before the sun

And Graces were made one,

Called by sweet Love down from the aerial gyre

By one dear name of natural joy,

To bear on her bright breast from heaven a heaven-born boy.

4.

Ere light could kiss the little lids in sunder

Or love could lift them for the sun to smite,

His fiery birth-star as a sign of wonder

Had risen, perplexing the presageful night

With shadow and glory around her sphere and under

And portents prophesying by sound and sight;

And half the sound was song and half was thunder,

And half his life of lightning, half of light:

And in the soft clenched hand

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