Words by the Wayside :: :: University of Virginia Library

O bride and bridegroom, while the sun
Shall cast a shade on your life's dial,
May many a cup of sparkling fun
Be poured from this Venetian phial!
Come, make the trial!

I'll warrant the deft hands long cold
That round the dainty waist first took it;
And, if the cork be scarce so old,
To our default pray do not book it,
But overlook it.

No bubble in the crystal spied,
But came from lips of lovers sighing;
And up and down its tendrilled side
(Fair omen) turtle-doves are flying,
There's no denying.

See too with what a jaunty air
It cocks those skinny arms akimbo,
As if protesting “I shall ne'er,
Cracked by an arrow from Time's grim bow,
Be laid in limbo.”

Of its own worth, though all too slight,
'Twill plainly bate nor jot nor tittle:
Yet take it, in its own despite
An emblem of true love in little,
Though far more brittle.

II

On a day the wide world roaming,
Love, who sought for lovers true,
Weary of his quest came homing
To the hearts of you and you:

Some his fiery shafts affrighted,
Some were fickle, some were vain,
Till in happy hour he lighted
There to rest him and to reign.

Reign of Love, how much or little
Knows the world thy lustral power?
Thou art not the brief and brittle
Impulse of an ardent hour;

Not a flame now fierce, now dwindling,
As the blood beats high or low,
But a light whose mystic kindling
Is of heaven's eternal glow.

When the powers of darkness muster,
Should one ray from thee be shed,
Azrael, blinded by its lustre,
With foiled errand bows the head.

Those who find thee lose thee never;
Throned amidst them there art thou
With thy glorious sign, For ever,
Writ in radiance on their brow,

Dazzling so men's souls with beauty,
They discern not hate or harm:
Peace thou art, and joy in duty,
And pure faith, and power to charm:

And beyond all past aspiring,
Present bliss, or boon to be,
The high crown of their desiring
Is to be controlled by thee.

Who so guard thy golden tether,
Nor reluctant own thy sway,
These may dare all worlds together!
Hail we then this happy day,

When, from idler dreams awaking,
Love, that maketh all things new,
Weaves the net that knows no breaking
Round the hearts of you and you!

III

When Love, from heaven alighted,
Touched with seraphic fire
These twain, divinely plighted
In holy, fond desire,
For utterance all too fleeting,
For mortal ear too fine,
The song of their hearts' beating
O'erflowed, methought, to mine—

“Arise, ye lowland dwellers,
Forsake yon arid plain—
The buyers and the sellers
Who barter souls for gain!
Mount upward, and mount hither,
Where thrill the finer sense
Such flowers as will not wither,
And spring we know not whence—

Where birds are angels singing,
And not a breeze can blow
But to the heart comes bringing
What none but lovers know:
For, wintry skies or vernal,
We keep our golden Prime,
And hear the bells eternal
Peal from the towers of time!
Come to this world of wonder
Where fraud and force are not,
Nor sweet lives torn asunder,
Nor holiest vows forgot—
Where weakness fears no capture,
Nor poverty disdain:—
Come, and of inward rapture
Inaugurate the reign!
Earth yearns, the heavens are willing,
And wind, and flower, and sod,
Await but man's fulfilling
Of the glad Dream of God!”

“O blessèd ones abiding,”
I said, “in Love's sure hiding;
Whose bark no billow tosses;
Who from the visible goal,
New-gained, of your desire
Can still aspire
To enter, soul with soul,
That infinite Beyondness
Where only human fondness
Can fix her wandering star,
Housed as we are
Amid this turbid hum

Of Babel gains and losses,
Yet onward, upward pressing
To the one thing worth possessing,
God helping, and Love guiding,
We come to you—we come!”

IV

Quoth he, “If ever Love shall come
And of my life claim masterdom,
I will him take, for joy or dole,
As the one sovereign of my soul,
And in that high surrender see
A very heaven of liberty.
And whatso' powers be mine to charm
From inward fear or outward harm,
With all that manlike in me stirs,
Making for godlike, shall be hers
Who kindled the refining fire
That hallows and uplifts desire
From strength to strength, from grace to grace,
Till in my mind's most holy place—
Love's loftiest consummation this—
I am not, and she only is:
A presence that to hearts made wise
Is mightiest of all Mysteries,
And token of the eternal gain
Which is man's birthright to attain.”

Quoth she, “If ever at God's call
The yoke of Love on me should fall,
I'd wear it, till my days were spent,
As life's divinest ornament;

And what within me noblest is,
Or outward fairest, should be his
Who set my beating heart a-tune
With roses and the breath of June,
And all the sweet world's witchery.
Yea, as their beauties are to me,
So would I seem to him; a sight
To bathe his spirit in delight;
A voice to touch the hidden strings
That thrill to fine imaginings;
A power, when earthly cares oppress,
To ease him of their weariness,
And rouse to rapture at a breath!
The very self within me saith
‘For thee, my lover, this could I,
Or, if I could not, let me die!’”

O thou that of all kings we ken
Art lordliest over maids and men,
That knowest the deeps of their desire,
To what far heights their souls aspire,
If haply the heart-whispered word
Of these thy votaries thou hast heard
Who wed within thy courts to-day—
Deal so with them, Lord Love, we pray.

V

For the vows divinely plighted
By these lovers, now united,
Set we all our soul-bells swinging
With a sweet and rhythmic ringing
In their high-built towers eternal,
That from dust of things diurnal

We may waft them with our chiming,
Tuning it, the while, and timing
To the deep and soundless chorus
Of the souls that loved before us,
Who have gained that golden morrow
On the sunward side of sorrow,
All their travail past redeeming
With the substance of earth's seeming!
From those high and holy places
May the Virtues, may the Graces,
To the loom of life descending
Weave them days of happy blending—
Warp of toil and weft of leisure
Patterned into perfect pleasure—
With all flowers of fine affection
Wrought for lasting recollection!
Roamers of Faith's magic mountain
May they find the enchanted fountain
That with bubbling bliss up-bursteth
For the lips of him that thirsteth,
Filling what can ne'er be sated,
By its own sweet want created!
So, beyond all risk of ranging,
Love, the chaste, the never-changing,
Whatso' mortal hap betide them,
In his secret haunt shall hide them,
Keep them whole and single-hearted,
Ne'er to be estranged or parted,
By the troth no time can sever
Welded and made one for ever!

VI

The many seek delights that cloy;
Ye twain are of the few;
To others here and there a joy,
The sum of joys for you!

Henceforth, though seas or lands divide,
Fear ye no lonely hour,
So strong to keep you side by side
The Presence and the Power,

That welds the universe in one,
And o'er the heart hath sway,
Can see, though midnight blots the sun,
And hear, though worlds away.

Now what the singing laverock feels
At last ye learn, and what
The red heart of the rose reveals,
Though others mark it not;

Over the spirit's deep abyss
Such error broods, men deem
As visionary that which is,
As real the things that seem.

You from this hour it doth behove
Among earth's seers to be—
Interpreters of heaven; for love
Life's secret is, and he,

To whom that secret doth belong,
Alone perceives and knows
The Soul that is behind the song,
The God within the rose.

VII

Love's a jewel that will shine
Fairest in a sombre setting:
Such a bridal hour is thine,
Gay with hope yet unforgetting:
Smiles and tears, that meet together,
In the soul make April weather.

Sad and happy that thou art,
Take this message I am sending
From a heart and to a heart,
Wherein joy and grief are blending!
Joy was born to conquer sorrow,
April will be May to-morrow.