 | Poems and Sonnets |  |
25
KING LOVE.
I
Out of the depths of loneliness I cry,A voice to awake the echoes of the past,
A voice that rises, borne upon the blast,
And seeks the shadowy land for which I sigh,
A land I long to visit ere I die,
Where, throned in isles of green and bowers of roses,
Himself a red rose, revels and reposes
King Love, all bathed about with seas of posies
And scent of honeysuckle hanging nigh;
There skies are blue and breath of gentle breezes
Gladdens a land that smiles from side to side,
Smiling a smile the enraptured soul that seizes
And whirls adown its own soft-flowing tide,
A land of purple seas, of day that pleases
And night that soothes, a starry dark-eyed bride.
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II
Nor only dwells the King in bowers of rosesAmid the growth and greenery of the land,
Across the seas and barren breadths of sand
His voice is heard, the mountain-height discloses
His form enshrined where ignorance supposes
The cold white Snow-Queen lords it all alone,
Shaking the snow-showers round her misty throne,
And all her force to melting love opposes;
Warm Love that melts the very rocks in sunder,
And crumbles mountains into sheets of sea,
Brave Love that steals the bolts of Monarch Thunder,
And, when the Monarch mutters, laughs in glee,
True Love, the King of Wisdom and of Wonder,
White, born of woman, fiery-footed, free.
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III
Along the hills and heights and purple highlands,Adown the valleys, lo! Love sweeps his wand,
The spring breathes blossoms born at his command.
The streams, the lakes, the seas, the wreath of islands,
The sunset-splendour of the western skylands,
All borrow bloom and beauty from his touch,
He holds the Round World crumpled in his clutch,
The suns and moons, the starry far and nigh lands;
Love interpenetrates the silent spaces,
Therein his wings awake a wave of sound,
With Sound and Light King Love runs laughing races
And beats them breathless, beats them at a bound,
Above, beneath the earth, yea, in all places
Some shimmer of his presence may be found.
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