The Poetical Works of George Barlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

I seemed to see the Saviour stretched along
The cruel wood. I gazed within his eyes
When lo! with trembling of a sweet surprise
I met the glance that changed my youth to song.

The brown limbs quivered into amorous white.
Each hasty blood-drop, hurrying from the blows
Seemed like the round shape of a sanguine rose,
And all God's face was wonderful with light.

As if sweet Venus panted on a cross
The body panted, and the breasts became
Like breasts of Venus, yea the very same
In rounded outline and in silken gloss.

For every drop of blood, a flower was there;
For every tear, a jewel had been earned;
In the dark tresses orange lilies burned:
I knew my lady's form and worshipped her.

192

And, more than this, I knew the sacred signs
Of noble love and of the cross are one;
That through the dark of Calvary the sun
Shall pierce, as the red arrows pierce the pines.

Christ vanished, and his cross, and lo! I stood
Watching my lady twine within her hair
White meadow-sweet, and fern-fronds soft and fair,
Beneath gold arches of an autumn wood.

I turned from Palestine, and from the hill,
And marked the love within my lady's eyes,
And over us beheld the English skies,
And nigh our feet a moorland English rill.

And then our lips clung fast, but through the kiss
The wild sense pulsed that Christ himself was here;
That all true love-songs rise and reach his ear
And call him down to share pure passion's bliss.

Then the thought passed, and left me face to face
With love and with my lady—only her;
And with the sunlight crowning larch and fir,
And with the silent magic of the place.

Nov. 28, 1885.