 | The Creed of My Heart and Other Poems |  |
60
CALL ME NOT BACK
I
Call me not back, O Love, when I am dead:Call me not back with witchcraft of thy will:
Far beyond thought my spirit will have fled;—
Call it not back lest it obey thee still.
II
Dear is the haunting music of thy voice;And dear the sunlight of thy tresses brown:—
From Heaven itself (spare me the cruel choice)
For love of these my soul might flutter down.
III
Oh, of thy mercy let me wander hence:—Fair are thine outward charms, but fairer far
The mystic beauty, veiled from mortal sense,
That makes thy voice a song, thy face a star.
IV
Long have I loved the symbols of thy grace,And loved them best for what they left untold;
But thou art lovelier than thine own sweet face.
And brighter than thy waves of burnished gold.
61
V
Where dost thou dwell, for thither would I go?Ah, not on earth, but in some world of light:—
Guided by death perchance my soul will know,
And knowing, seek thee with aspiring flight.
VI
Or, haply, rapt into some inward state,Where dreams are real and what is wished is won,
Reaping what life has sown, my soul will wait
Till dreams are o'er and the new life begun.
VII
Reaping what life has sown:—O guerdon blest(For love by deeper love alone is crowned)
To lie in rapture on love's moonlit breast,
To melt into the loved one's life profound!
VIII
Ten thousand years will pass—if years they be,—Will pass too quickly while I dream love's dream;
For what is time to spirits floating free
On the broad bosom of love's gliding stream?
IX
And when, at Fate's behest, I wake at lastTo toil on earth, to laugh, to weep again,—
Dense be the darkness that enshrouds the past,
Deep be the draught of Lethe that I drain.
| The Creed of My Heart and Other Poems | |