University of Virginia Library

4. PART IV

I—SONG

Love, Love, my love,
The best things are the truest!
When the earth lies shadowy dark below,
O then the heavens are bluest!
Deep the blue of the sky,
And sharp the gleam of the stars,
And O, more bright against the night
The Aurora's crimson bars!

II—THE MIRROR

That I should love thee seemeth meet and wise,
So beautiful thou art that he were mad
Who in thy countenance no pleasure had;
Who felt not the still music of thine eyes
Fall on his forehead, as the evening skies
The music of the stars feel and are glad.
But o'er my mind one doubt still cast a shade
Till in my thought this answer did arise:
That thou shouldst love me is not wise or meet,
For like thee, Love, I am not beautiful;
And yet I think that haply in my face
Thou findest a true beauty;—this poor, dull,
Disfigured mirror dimly may repeat
A little part of thy most heavenly grace.

III—LIKENESS IN UNLIKENESS

We are alike, and yet,—O strange and sweet!—
Each in the other difference discerns;
So the torn strands the maiden's finger turns
Opposing ways, when they again do meet
Clasp each in each, as flame clasps into heat;
So when this hand on this cool bosom burns,
Each sense is lost in the other. So two urns
Do, side by side, the selfsame lines repeat,
But various color gives a lovelier grace,
And each by contrast still more fine has grown.
Thus, Love, it was, I did forget thy face
As more and more to me thy soul was known;
Vague in my mind it grew till, in its place,
Another came I knew not from my own.

IV—SONG

Not from the whole wide world I chose thee—
Sweetheart, light of the land and the sea!
The wide, wide world could not inclose thee,
For thou art the whole wide world to me.

V—ALL IN ONE

Once when a maiden maidenly went by,
Or when I found some wonder in the grass,
Or when a purple sunset slow did pass,
Or a great star rushed silent through the sky;
Once when I heard a singing ecstasy,
Or saw the moon's face in the river's glass—
Then I remembered that for me, alas!
This beauty must for ever and ever die.
But now I may thus sorrow never more;
From fleeting beauty thou hast torn the pall;
Of beauty, Love, thou art the soul and core;
And tho' the empty shadow fading fall,—
Tho' lesser birds lift up their wings and soar,—
In having thee alone, Love, I have all.

VI—“I COUNT MY TIME BY TIMES THAT I MEET THEE”

I count my time by times that I meet thee;
These are my yesterdays, my morrows, noons,
And nights; these my old moons and my new moons
Slow fly the hours, or fast the hours do flee,
If thou art far from or art near to me;
If thou art far, the bird tunes are no tunes;
If thou art near, the wintry days are Junes—
Darkness is light, and sorrow cannot be.
Thou art my dream come true, and thou my dream;
The air I breathe, the world wherein I dwell;
My journey's end thou art, and thou the way;
Thou art what I would be, yet only seem;
Thou art my heaven and thou art my hell;
Thou art my ever-living judgment-day.

VII—SONG

Years have flown since I knew thee first,
And I know thee as water is known of thirst;
Yet I knew thee of old at the first sweet sight,
And thou art strange to me, Love, to-night.

VIII—THE SEASONS

IX—“SUMMER'S RAIN AND WINTER'S SNOW”

Summer's rain and winter's snow
With the seasons come and go;
Shine and shower;
Tender bud and perfect flower;
Silver blossom, golden fruit;
Song and lute,
With their inward sound of pain;
Winter's snow and summer's rain;
Frost and fire;
Joy beyond the heart's desire—
And our June comes round again.

X—THE VIOLIN

Before the listening world behold him stand;
The warm air trembles with his passionate play;
Their cheers shower round him like the ocean spray
Round one who waits upon the stormy strand.
Their smiles, sighs, tears all are at his command;
And now they hear the trump of judgment-day,
And now one silver note to heaven doth stray
And fluttering fall upon the golden sand.
But like the murmur of the distant sea
Their loud applause, and far off, faint, and weak
Sounds his own music to him, wild and free—
Far from the soul of music that doth speak
In wordless wail and lyric ecstasy
From that good viol prest against his cheek.

XI—“O MIGHTY RIVER, TRIUMPHING TO THE SEA”

XII—“MY SONGS ARE ALL OF THEE”

My songs are all of thee, what tho' I sing
Of morning when the stars are yet in sight,
Of evening, or the melancholy night,
Of birds that o'er the reddening waters wing;
Of song, of fire, of winds, or mists that cling
To mountain-tops, of winter all in white,
Of rivers that toward ocean take their flight,
Of summer when the rose is blossoming.
I think no thought that is not thine, no breath
Of life I breathe beyond thy sanctity;
Thou art the voice that silence uttereth,
And of all sound thou art the sense. From thee
The music of my song, and what it saith
Is but the beat of thy heart, throbbed through me.

XIII—AFTER MANY DAYS

Dear heart, I would that after many days,
When we are gone, true lovers in a book
Might find these faithful songs of ours. “O look!”
I hear him murmur while he straightway lays
His finger on the page, and she doth raise
Her eyes to his. Then, like the winter brook
From whose young limbs a sudden summer shook
The fetters, love flows on in sunny ways.
I would that when we are no more, dear heart,
The world might hold thy unforgotten name
Inviolate in these eternal rhymes.
I would have poets say: “Let not the art
Wherewith they loved be lost! To us the blame
Should love grow less in these our modern times.”

XIV—WEAL AND WOE

O highest, strongest, sweetest woman-soul!
Thou holdest in the compass of thy grace
All the strange fate and passion of thy race;
Of the old, primal curse thou knowest the whole.
Thine eyes, too wise, are heavy with the dole,
The doubt, the dread of all this human maze;
Thou in the virgin morning of thy days
Hast felt the bitter waters o'er thee roll.
Yet thou knowest, too, the terrible delight,
The still content, and solemn ecstasy;
Whatever sharp, sweet bliss thy kind may know.
Thy spirit is deep for pleasure as for woe—
Deep as the rich, dark-caverned, awful sea
That the keen-winded, glimmering dawn makes white.

XV—“O, LOVE IS NOT A SUMMER MOOD”

XVI—“LOVE IS NOT BOND TO ANY MAN”

XVII—“HE KNOWS NOT THE PATH OF DUTY”

AFTER-SONG

Through love to light! O, wonderful the way
That leads from darkness to the perfect day!
From darkness and from sorrow of the night
To morning that comes singing o'er the sea.
Through love to light! Through light, O God, to Thee,
Who art the love of love, the eternal light of light!