University of Virginia Library

I.

Earth knew no deeper life since Earth began,
And scarce the Heaven above:
For us the world contains no ban;
In the profoundest measure given to Man,
We love, we love!
O, in that sound, completion lies
For all imperfect destinies.
It is a pulse of joy, that rings
The marriage-peal of Nature, brings
The lonely heart, the humblest and the least,
To share her royal feast;
No more an outcast on her sod,
Or at her board a stinted guest,
But now in purple raiment dressed,
And heir to all delight, that she receives of God!

II.

A balmy breath is breathed upon the land,
And through the spirit's inmost cells
It floats and swells,
Till at the touch of its persuading hand
The jealous bolts give way, and every door
Stands wide forevermore.
Not only there, dear love, not only there
Where Love's warm chambers front the morning air,
Thy soul may walk, and in the secret bower
Where burns the holiest fire that Heaven lets fall,
And with Ambition, in his blazoned hall,
Hope, in her airy tower!
The heart has other guests than these,
More secret halls, more solemn mysteries.
Dark crypts, beheld of none,
Throne darker powers, that flee the sun,
Chained far below, and heard at intervals
When all is still, and through the trembling walls
Some guilty whisper calls;
Or, when the storms have blown,
And the house rocks upon its basement stone,
They wring their chains with clamor that appals
The pale-cheeked lord. To thee
Those awful crypts and corridors are free.
Thou through the darkened hush mayst glide,
White and serene, with unaffrighted breath,
Past the blind Sins, that slumber leaden-eyed
In caves that lead to Death.
Nor I the less, where purer powers control
The perfect temple of thy soul,
And saintly harmonies to me
Breathe from its gates unceasingly,
Its bowery courts and chambers that infold
The chastened gleam of pearl and gold,
Free to the sun and blesséd air:
No deeper gloom than starry twilight there!

III.

What is the world of men to us? We love,
And Love hath his own world. Love hath
Repose in storms and peace in wrath,
Far from the shocks of Time a quiet path,
Another Earth below, another Heaven above.
Men from their weakness and their sin create
The iron bonds of State,
Soldered with wrongs of olden date,—
The heartless frame, the chance-directed law
Which grows to them a grand, avenging Fate,
And fills their darkness with its awe.
States have no soul. The World's tired brain
O'er many riddles broods with pain,
Not hopeless all, but hoping much in vain.
Those who have never loved may stay,
And in his files fight out the day;
But aliens we, who breathe a separate air
In regions far away!
Thou art my law, I thine: the links we wear,
If not of Freedom, dearer still,
And binding both in one harmonious will.
Why should we track the labyrinth of ill
Before us,—mingle with the fret
Of jangling natures, till our souls forget
Their crystal orbits of accordant sound?
Why should we walk the common ground,
Where gloom is born of gloom, and pain
From pain unfoldeth ever,
When to the blue air's limitless domain,
Made ours by right of love, we rise without endeavor?

IV.

Some voice of wind or sea
May reach the imbruted slave, and in his ear
Drop Freedom's mighty secret: so to me
Through blindness and through passion came the clear
Calm voice of Love, thenceforth to be
The revelation of diviner truth
Than ever touched our sinless youth,—
A power to bid us face Eternity!
But the same whisper that reveals the glory
Of Freedom's brow, makes also known
The bitterness of bondage. We
Will leave this splendid misery,
This hollow joy, whose laugh but hides a groan,
And teach our lives to write a perfect story.

V.

O, somewhere, in the living realms that lie
Between the icy zones of desolation,
Covered by some remote, unconscious sky,
Where God's serene creation
Yet never glassed itself in human eye,
Must be a glorious Valley, hidden
In the safe bosom of the hills that part
The river-veins of some old Continent's heart,
To love like ours a shelter unforbidden!
Some Valley must there be,
Whereto wide wastes of desert sand have kept
The gateway secret, mountain walls
Across the explorer's pathway stepped,
Or mighty woods surrounded like a sea.
Love's voice, unto the chosen ones he calls,
Alike the compass to his freedom is,
And to that Vale, the lodestar of our bliss,
Our hearts shall guide us. Even now
I see the close defiles unfold
Upon a sloping mead that lies below
A mountain black with pines,
O'er which the barren ridges heave their lines,
And high beyond, the snowy ranges old!
Fed by the plenteous mountain rain,
Southward, a blue lake sparkles, whence outflows
A rivulet's silver vein,
Awhile meandering in fair repose,
Then caught by riven cliffs that guard our home,
And flung upon the outer world in foam!
The sky above that still retreat,
Through all the year serene and sweet,
Drops dew that finds the daisy's heart,
And keeps the violet's tender lids apart:
All winds that whistle drearily
Around the naked granite, die
With many a long, melodious sigh
Among the pines; and if a tempest seek
The summits cold and bleak,
He does but shift the snow from shining peak to peak

VI.

Or should this Valley seem
Too deeply buried from the golden sun,
Still may a home be won
Whose breast lies open to his every beam.
Some Island, on the purple plain
Of Polynesian main,
Where never yet the adventurer's prore
Lay rocking near its coral shore:
A tropic mystery, which the enamoured Deep
Folds, as a beauty in a charmèd sleep.
There lofty palms, of some imperial line,
That never bled their nimble wine,
Crowd all the hills, and out the headlands go
To watch on distant reefs the lazy brine
Turning its fringe of snow.
There, when the sun stands high
Upon the burning summit of the sky,
All shadows wither: Light alone
Is in the world: and, pregnant grown
With teeming life, the trembling island-earth
And panting sea forebode sweet pains of birth
Which never come,—their love brings never forth
The Human Soul they lack alone!

VII.

We to that Island soul and voice will be,
When (rapturous hour!) the baffling quest is over,
The boat is wrecked, the ship is blown to sea,
And underneath the palm-tree's cover
We bless our God that He hath left us free.
Then, wandering through the inland dells
Where sun and dew have built their gorgeous bowers,
The golden, blue, and crimson flowers
Will drain in joy their spicy wells,
The lily toll her alabaster bells,
And some fine influence, unknown and sweet,
Precede our happy feet
Around the Isle, till all the life that dwells
In leaf and stem shall feel it, and awake,
And even the pearly-bosomed shells,
Wet with the foamy kiss of lingering swells,
Shall rosier beauty at our coming take,
For Love's dear sake!
There when, like Aphrodite, Morn
From the ecstatic waves is born,
The chieftain Palm, that tops each mountain-crest,
Shall feel her glory gild his scaly greaves,
And lift his glittering leaves
Like arms outspread, to take her to his breast.
Then shall we watch her slowly bend, and fold
The Island in her arms of gold,
Breathing away the heavy balms which crept
All night around the bowers, and lifting up
Each flower's enamelled cup,
To drink the sweetness gathered while it slept.
Yet on our souls a joy more tender
Shall gently sink, when sunset makes the sky
One burning sheet of opalescent splendor,
And on the deep dissolving rainbows lie.
No whisper shall disturb
That alchemy superb,
Whereto our beings every sense surrender.
O, long and sweet, while sitting side by side,
Looking across the western sea,
That dream of Death, that morn of Heaven, shall be
And when the shadows hide
Each dying flush, upon the quiet tide,—
Quiet as is our love,—
We first shall see the stars come out above,
And after them, the slanting beams that run,
Based on the sea, far up the shining track
Of the emblazoned Zodiac,
A pyramid of light, above the buried sun!

VIII.

There shall our lives to such accordance grow
As love alone can know;
Can never know but there:
Each within each involved, like Light and Air,
In endless marriage. Earth will fill
Her bounteous lap with all we ask of Earth,
Nor ever drought or dearth
Shrink the rich pulps of vale and hill.
Content at last the missing tone to hear
Through all her summer-chords,
Which makes their full-strung harmony complete
In her delighted ear,
She to our hearts that concord shall repeat.
Led by the strain, it may be ours to enter
The secret chamber where she works alone
With Color, Form, and Tone,
In human mood, or, sterner grown,
Takes hold on powers that shake her fiery centre.
Year after year the Island shall become
A fairer and serener home,
And happy children, beautiful as Dawn,
The future parents of a race
Whose purer eyes shall face to face
Look on the Angels, fill our place,
And be the Presence and the Soul, when we have gone.

IX.

Forgive the dream. Love owns no human birth,
And may not find fulfilment here
On this degenerate Earth.
Forgive the dream: here never yet was given
More than the promise and the hope of Heaven.
The dearest joy is dashed with fear,
Our darkest sorrow may be then most near.
Even with the will our passion lends
We cannot break the chain;
Against our vows, we must remain
With common men, and compass common ends.
We cannot shut our hearts from haunting fears;
We cannot purge our eyes from heavy tears;
We cannot shift the burden and the woe
Which all alike must know,
Which Love's Elected through the countless years
Have known, and, knowing, died: God wills it so.