Benoni :: :: University of Virginia Library

O, stranger spirit—if indeed there live
Aloof, some dear nor conscious part of me,
Self-ripening till her virgin soul conceive
The love yet uncreated, but to be—

My peace be on thee wheresoe'er thou art,—
Beneath grey roofs or under starry dome;
My blessing on thy pure unshadow'd heart,
And on the quiet portals of thy home!

I know thee not; yet ever in my soul
Some strange prophetic dearness eddies round
A vacant centre, whirling to their goal
Whate'er of love or hope in me is found:

And some day, haply, in the march of life,
That dark, unquicken'd void instinct shall be
With sudden Being, and the ideal wife
Warm into shape, and mould itself to thee.

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So cleanse and cherish I my heart, to make
A worthy home for that expected morn
When with the dawning orient as I wake
Thy forward shadow o'er me shall be born;

Or when, unbosom'd to the sun and thee,
Thy potent presence strike an instant day
On my train'd heart, whence sure and silently
Comes out thy faithful transcript, fixt for aye.

For self is not a full-orb'd whole: the range
Of loves and hopes and joys are less divine
Being single; but their embryo state shall change
To fuller life, my sweetheart, blent with thine.

So may my aimless words go forth and shoot
Thee, lightly floating thro' thy girlish ways,
To the heart's core; that thus with golden fruit
Myself may reap them after many days!

Set thou (and I have done the like in hope)
My unknown face before thee in the way;
A far and formless light, whereto the scope
Of thy sweet life shall centre thro' the grey.

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Think on the darker stream, that lower down
Shall half absorb thine own; so where it sleeps
Sullen and thick, thy happier gush may drown
In vivid clearness all its cloudy deeps:

Live as thou wert the nucleus of a wife,
Whom fair accretions, cloying from without,
And from within, its own elastic life
Enlarge, and swell the full perfections out.

Thy soul is full of germs and seedling-shoots
Not born for growth unaided, but to wind
Their brilliant creeper-blooms and clinging fruits
Thro' the dark foliage of a stronger mind:

Yea, thou art but a germ—so, not untaught
How all thou wilt be grows from what thou art,
Let bard and sage inform with richer thought
And set the wavering music of thy heart.

So make thyself a woman—fair and vast
Of soul, whose crown all Christian graces weave;
Pure as the sainted maidens of the past,
And grand and queenly as another Eve:

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With me, erect in clear intelligence,
Most meet to tread the wondrous days that are;
Spell out the secrets of the times, and thence
Give help to woo the better Morn from far:

A fair and graceful spouse, whose deep true eyes
Make half my soul's imaginings of Heaven,
A mother blest of the age unborn, that cries
‘She to our lives their holiest hues hath given!’—

So, O twin lives that blindly move apart
Yet not apart,—from wishes to belief
Her wants have led the strange divining heart,
And thro' her budding fancy peeps relief—

Melt towards each other thro' the yielding years,
Which, yielding, press you toward your mutual place;
That we may know each other's smiles and tears,
And how the soul doth fashion out the face.

Come—and as viewless rustlings in the growth
Of leaves above, faint earnests of the wind,—
So let the nearing future thro' us both
Thrill sweet foreknowledge of the bliss behind:

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Till, rising from the lover to the wife,
Thy fairer self shall grow instinct with mine,
And I shall share the secret of thy life,
And light my inmost Being up with thine.