The Poetical Works of John Payne :: :: University of Virginia Library

LOVE, perfect love,
The loved Apostle tells us, casts out fear.
Ah, thou belovéd of the Lord, that hate
Nor doubt despiteful knewest, being here,
Whose hopes in heaven above
Alone had harbourage, who still await
Watched for Christ's coming through the golden gate

341

Of morn miraculous, straining with bent ear
For the first trumps of the Accepted Year,
What should thy heart, elate
With the sure hope of heaven at hand and near,
Know of the iron laws of loveless Fate,
Which ban content and cheer
From those who anywhat on earth hold dear,
Dooming them still misdoubt, all else above,
The loss of that they cherish, soon or late,
So fearlessness their joys may have for mate
Nor peace? Peace! What hath that celestial dove,
Which broodeth but on Faith's serener sphere,
To do with Love?
In this our sorry scheme of things create,
Is not incertitude Love's born estate?
Are not its sacrifices sigh and tear?
Is it not unto doubt as hand to glove?

He better knew
The laws and statutes of Love's mystery,
The Roman singer, in like time with thee,
By the cold shores of the Cimmerian Sea
Who lived and sighed for Latium's skies of blue
And his lost love's embrace;
Or he, the Tusculan, who did abase,
In the last days of Rome's democracy,
His golden speech the senseless populace
To raise rebellious 'gainst the Fates' decree
Which bids these servants and those masters be.
Well of Love's ordinance he wotted who,
Far from the loved sight of his lady's face,
Weaving his wreaths of rue,
Love all fulfilled of anxious fear did see;
Or he
Who, yearning back unto his youthful case,

342

When all the world was new
In his new eyes and over lawn and lea
The pleasant hours the pleasanter did chase,
Love all for sorrow and anxiety,
Solicitude unceasing, did beshrew,
Inapt for those who run the worldly race,
Concernless being never nor care-free,
To one and all untrue.

Yet, who were fain,
For all Love's miseries and all affrays,
To think that he its ravishments had missed?
Who would for woe desist
From loving? Who, because he'd felt Love's bane,
Would, in his loveless age, that he had kissed
And clipt in brighter days forget again?
For lightning-stroke and thunder, storm and blaze,
Who would sweet summer banish its domain?
Who list
The flowered Spring forbear for wind and rain?
More than the Galilean votarist,
Awatch to see, across the Egean main,
Christ's kingdom flower through the morning mist,
More than the Sulmonéan rhapsodist,
Still sighing, 'neath the chill Cimmerian rays,
For the rebirth of the Saturnian reign,
More than the Volscian revolutionist,
Rehearsing ever to the Alban ways
The time he swayed the commons with his hist,
More than the Syrian and the Romans twain,
Yea, most of all who sing its pleasant praise,
Of Love and all its mysteries he wist,
Our English amorist,
Well skilled the tangles of the wildering maze

343

Of loveful thought to loose and wind again,
Our minnesinger of the latter days,
Who said, nor said in vain,
“All other pleasures are not worth its pain.”

“Res est soliciti plena timoris amor.” —Ovid, Her. I, 12.

“Quam sit omnis amor solicitus et anxius.” —Cicero ad tticum, II, 25.