The Poetical Works of George Barlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

The Poetical Works of George Barlow

In Ten [Eleven] Volumes

Barlow, George

Vol. I

II.

Vol. II A LIFE'S LOVE

III.

Vol. III

IV.

Vol. IV

Vol. V: LOVED BEYOND WORDS

LOVED BEYOND WORDS

II.

LOVED BEYOND WORDS

III.

LOVED BEYOND WORDS

VI.

Vol VI: THE PAGEANT OF LIFE

VII.

Vol VII: FROM DAWN TO SUNSET

VIII.

IX.

XI.

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V. Vol. V: LOVED BEYOND WORDS

1882–1885

LOVED BEYOND WORDS

I.

LOVE'S OFFERING

I offer this to God,—and then to thee,—
Then to the world: that God and man may know
Love's sweetness and love's blessing and love's woe
As each in turn possessed and vanquished me.
Then, lastly, back I come—as from the sea
To some fair valley with gold flowers aglow;
Longing to find thee,—where blue waters flow,
And where the bird's song mixes with the bee.

Back from the ocean of God's heart, and back
From the wild tempest-wingéd tides of things,
I turn to thee, as towards some flowerlit track
Lined with great oaks whose very leafage sings:
And then again God's changeless heart I see,
Soft now and blossomlike, revealed in thee.

June 13, 1883.

I. THE RAPTURE OF LOVE

This is the rapture of love:—To plunge one's soul in honey,—
Yet not one drop to spill:
To pass from night to dawn,—from darkness to the sunny
Broad belt of light that circles gleaming mount and hill.

This is the glory of love: this is the true possession;
When the clear soul-eyes meet.
When the strong soul leaps forth, at last from Time's oppression
Freed,—and first tastes its triumph large and full and sweet.

For in the end the Soul is victor, and that only:
Though day press hard on day;
Though the long path be thick with thorns, and black, and lonely,
And all the stars' gold glances turned, for years, away.

Yet there shall come a night when armies beyond counting
Of stars shall fill the deep
Of heaven, the far blue heights surpassing and surmounting
And all the dark fields where the soft dream-maidens sleep.

And we shall know that souls beyond our mortal scanning
Are marshalled on our side:
That measureless stout hosts the stars' bright yards are manning:
That all the heavens are watching, eager and swift-eyed.

Ah! we are not alone. The countless dead are near us:
Their warm strong hands we feel.
For fifty living souls, ten thousand dead souls hear us
And answer with their love our passionate appeal!

II. “THE RIGHT TO LOVE”

And is not love enough? To give, and give for ever,—
As God spreads light of day
O'er field and flaming hill and forest green and river
And blue soft-laughing bay!

To have the right to love. O man, is not that ample?
To have the right to wake
The soul in woman's eyes: the soul that weak fools trample;
The heart that proud fools break.

To have the right to give love infinite;—a treasure
That cannot pass or fade.
What Fate can hinder me from loving beyond measure,—
From giving strength and aid?

What Fate can e'er forbid the deep soul of its boundless
Eternal passionate stores
To give, with streams of love that flow, strong, quiet, soundless,
Round loveless needy shores?

III. “SO MANY STARS HAVE SHONE”

So many stars have shone, that all the stars are weary!
So many days have passed, that all the days are dreary!
So many flowers have bloomed
That nought is left of power within the earth to nourish
The spots where, gay of old, the green buds used to flourish:
Flowers, hearts and souls, are all alike entombed.

No more for me white hands shine at the summer casement
And beckon and allure, with dreams of sweet embracement:
No more swift glances gleam.
This arrow is the last. Though other arrows found me
And chains of other loves imprisoned me and bound me,
They passed at daylight: vanished like a dream.

But this love passes not. Ah! lightly I began it.
The love-tree's stem was slim: a childish hand might span it:
How weak seemed Love's gold dart!
Others had flown before: no conquering hand had launched them:
As for the wounds they made, a dozen days had stanched them.
But this slight arrow-point has reached my heart.

Ah! let it there abide. The pain has shown me surely
That still my soul can love unspeakably and purely:
That still my spirit can ache:
That still my heart retains its highest noblest power:
That still, as in the days when life was all in flower,
Death can seem sweeter,—for a woman's sake.

IV. “MORE THAN THESE”

The long days stretch in front, and each will bring its greeting:—
The flowers and fronds of June—the August breeze,—
The green boughs o'er thine head in wild luxuriance meeting,—
The rippling waves of far-off summer seas,—
These all will greet thee.—I loved thee more than these!

I loved thee more than all the world's light host of lovers
Can love,—far more than fern or fragrant leas
Or fairies peeping through the rustling hazel-covers
Or gay-winged butterflies or restless bees.—
Ah! more than these I loved thee,—more than these!

I loved thee more than those whose tongues may praise and flatter
And for a moment thy young fancy please.
I have the flowers of love,—but only those,—to scatter;
Those flowers of love!—how soon their soft flush flees.
How many things thou lovest more than these!

Life's hands are full of gifts, and thou art young and ready
To trust the tale Life tells of wealth and ease.
The storm has risen not yet. Thy harbour-light flames steady.
But when the black night shivers through the trees
And friends fail, call me.—I love thee more than these.

V. NEW LIFE

Yes: through me then there passed the power of life immortal.
A revelation came
Sent straight from heaven's far golden high sun-guarded portal:
A revelation sweet and winged with flame.

I saw new powers of life within my spirit growing:
New pure undreamed-of things
Flashed on my sight with plumes all bright and eyes all glowing
And new skies' azure gathered in their wings.

Sweet as the skies of some unknown blue-sea-girt island,—
Fresh as the prospect fair
From purple heather-adorned voluptuous scented highland,—
Pure as the first breath of Italian air,—

Pure, sweet, and fresh as all these things, the vision crowned me
Which, maiden, thou didst bring.
Is it a wonder then that strange light gleamed around me
And gave me for awhile new force to sing?

Is it a wonder now that when the vision fadeth
My singing sinks to sleep?
Silence is surely best when solemn darkness shadeth
The golden meadows and the enchanted deep.

Yet have I strange eternal deathless recollection
Of what the vision gave.
Its passionate sense of glad superb love-resurrection
Methinks will tarry with me till my grave.

And why God takes away I know not,—for so little
My spirit asked indeed!
Just leave to love and give! Is that to trust a brittle
And faithless staff,—to lean upon a reed?

Is that to ask too much from Nature's stores unmeasured
Where love and life are framed?
Because I thought that love ought alway to be treasured
Is my deep faith in love to make me ashamed?

I saw new life arise as surely as new meadows
See new glad springs arise:—
As surely as the woods emerge from wintry shadows
To meet the soft primroses' laughing eyes!

As surely as new hearts when we lie calmly sleeping
Will chant love's flower-crowned lays
I, dead and buried long, woke: and my heart was weeping
Glad soft tears,—and love's sunlight lit the ways.

New possibilities of ardent life came thronging
Round me on every side.
In one short sigh wild grievous centuries of longing
Were soothed away. My soul-gaze opened wide.

Through room on room I passed of palace after palace
And found new joys in each.
And ever as I drained some new divine love-chalice
A new diviner cup my hand could reach.

As surely as the loves of far-off years approaching
With untouched fair white hands
Will greet new lovers,—sweet and new-born,—not encroaching
On the old barren shores and sterile lands:

As surely as there wait beneath new suns loves sweeter
Than any seen of yore
And poems tarry in front of lordlier march and metre,
And faces fairer than the old to adore:

As surely as the English gold hair makes the Spanish
Dark hair more sweet to see:
As surely as the scent of thyme will never vanish
For countless kisses of the assailant bee:—

So did I see new dreams of splendid new life winging
Their radiant-hued gold way
Around thee, maiden mine,—and brake forth into singing,
While through the clouds Apollo led the day.

And, if I lose thee now, what of these dreams I wonder?
What of next summer's rose?
Ah! when the very soul by grief is rent in sunder,
What is there left to sing?—God only knows.

VI. “ALL OVER LONDON NOW”

All over London now as weary and sad I wander
Thy face and eyes I meet.
Here wast thou; here and here; and there; and here; and yonder;—
Thou hast not left one uninvaded street!

Here did I meet thee once! Here marvellous words were spoken
That thrilled my very heart.—
Time paused and watched us, envious. Yet Time gave no token
How soon and for how long we were to part!

The new spring soon will come with crocus and with swallow
And green woods full of song:
And then the flowers of May will wake,—the rose will follow,
And in the rose's train the blossom-throng!

Thou wilt not come with these? Thou wilt not come for calling
Though sweet the love-strain be?
Thou wilt not come in summer,—or when the leaves are falling
And the wild winds and singers seek the sea?

Thou wilt not come again,—for ever and for ever?
Nor make one London street
New and divine as if man's steps had trodden it never
But only, just that once, thy maiden feet?

Thou wilt not come again,—to make my heart a giant
Leaping along life's way?
To make it new and young and pure and tender and pliant
As if thy touch created love that day?

As if when I saw thee that moment dawned the morning
O'er primal sea and land.
As if the world's white roses waited for the warning
Soft glad first touch of thy creative hand!

As if my heart was void till thy pure spirit did enter
And built its palace there
And sat enthroned a queen within its very centre
And gave my heart the power new fruit to bear!

Yet thou hast come, and herein lies love's chiefest wonder,—
That Time has nought to say
To Love: that years and years can never sunder
From the safe heart the memory of one day.

I never see the streets wherethrough we walked together
Without a deep soul-sigh.
Never,—in autumn days or gorgeous blue June-weather;
And so it will be with me till I die.

And yet we met some six or seven or eight times merely:—
But all the stars are thine,
And when the moon shines out above the roof-tops clearly
I see thee,—and thine eyes again meet mine.

Time is not aught. The world since Jesus' resurrection
Has owned him as its Lord:
The centuries have bent with giant genuflexion
And kings of the earth have yielded crown and sword:

And yet his voice was heard some seven or eight times merely
After the pale death-pang.
Yet through all time it rings of every voice most clearly:—
Dead is no singer, if but once he sang.

And so the two strange nights when all the stars were lightened
Of agelong hunger and grief,
And when my soul grew young once more, and cloud-wreaths brightened,
And love's heart fluttered like a wind-kissed leaf:

The two strange nights when heaven seemed full of hope and bluer
And every star more near
And every breath of air more sweet,—all poems truer,—
And all the soul of womanhood more dear:

These are mine own for ever.—Nought can change or take them
Till life itself is spent.
Can storm-winds move the stars? Can the black tempests shake them?
Do they not laugh when the frail heaven is rent?

Does God own any change though all the centuries dwindle
And shrink before his gaze?
Do God's eyes tremble when the eternal firebolts kindle
Or when the storm-lashed brown foam piles the bays?

No?—So it is with love,—and those two nights of wonder.
They sink into the past.
Yet when along the sea-line rolls the flagging thunder
And all things end, the glory of these shall last.

VII. THE INLAND-LOVE AND THE SEA-LOVE

The old sweet inland love was mighty of soul and seeming:—
Through valleys sweet with flowers its footstep lingered dreaming
And ever it laughed and sang.
But when the valleys all are trodden and moorland heather
Burns round about our path, and winds and waves together
Mingle their solemn chant, how large is love and love's last pang.

Far-off the valleys seem, and all the inland flowers;
Love's tender spring, and love's soft unforgotten bowers
Where the early words were said.
Upon the cliffs the last great fight is ever wagéd
And the red final blades of close-locked swords assuagéd
While round about us crowd the strange-eyed hosts of the awful dead.

So, though the old loves were sweet, yet in a sense far sweeter
Is the last love that links its music-soul to metre
With the great waves in sight.
For something it hath upon its lips of the sea-laughter
And in its eyes the awe and shadow of the hereafter
And in its hands the strength of the seas, and on its brow their light.

VIII. SURPRISED

As one who loves is on a sudden left amazed
When the sheer mocking stroke of death descends;
As he seems thunder-struck and blind of heart and dazed
To think the sword of death was for one moment raised
And in that moment, lo! a life's love ends;

As he is left alone, wifeless,—yet perhaps a frail
Babe still smiles at him with her mother's eyes:
So am I left alone and helpless with my pale
Babe-poems,—and my love is lost beneath the veil
Of pitiless unstormed unanswering skies.

And half I hate the poems,—and half I love them well:
They have their mother's eyes. Her cradle-song
Wherewith she lulled them once as they on slumber fell
Sounds through them yet: but now 'tis changed into a knell,—
The chant of an irreparable wrong.

O poems written when the summer light of skies
So sweet and tender round about you gleamed,
Are ye then still alive? Pale with a mute surprise
I see her likeness still in your brown depths of eyes,—
Ah! not so deep as hers of whom ye dreamed.

The likeness still is there. And I,—I know not well
Whether to throw the poems in the sea,
Or give them to the air, or earth, or fiery hell:
Yet, if I did, my heart would reproduce their spell,
For they are graven on the spirit of me.

I know not whether to hate or cherish my pale child,
My poem,—having, as it has, her gaze:
Whether to cast it forth upon the waters wild:
Whether to yield once more and so be reconciled:—
Whether to love the poor close-clinging lays!

Ah! they are sad indeed. Their eyes are full of tears.
They are as full of sorrow as if one saw
The roses and the leaves of devastated years
Rise suddenly among their new this-summer's peers,—
While all the breezes watched with silent awe,—

Rise suddenly and claim their place the flowers among.
So these sad poems, flowerlike, do not know
That she who gave them birth and wrought them into song
Will never see them more, or care what hand doth wrong
To these her children,—or him who loved her so!

IX. OTHER LOVES

Yes, there are other loves.—This world is full of flowers.
Because to-night is fair, are there no moonlit hours
In front? Because to-night
Gives thee thy love, are there no loves in other cities?
If thou hast sung, is thine the last of all love-ditties?
Not woman,—rather womanhood,—is white.

Ah! so a man might plead. And yet how hollow a fashion
Of thought and word it seems, when once real deep live passion
Has risen and set its seal
Upon the spirit!—How little I care for next year's roses
If my flower-dream of this sweet year in darkness closes
And passes far beyond song's wild appeal!

Yes, there are other loves. I have no heart to take them.—
Yes, there are other flowers. I have no heart to break them
From their soft supple stems.—
Yes, there are other stars,—and golden moonlight quivers
To-night upon green waves of white-bridged Southern rivers;
But all my moonlight falls across the Thames.

Pass on, ye lovers all. Choose ye your glad hereafter.
I follow along the track my dead dream's ghostlike laughter.
Pass on, ye suns and stars.—
I only know that just one hour sweet Freedom gave me
Her light of eyes, and light of soul and heart, to save me;
But now I see all light through prison-bars.

X. ONE GIRL'S LAUGHTER

All men desire,—to make their dower of joy completer
And their lives' songs ring out far clearlier yet and sweeter,—
Some one forbidden thing.
Some long for fame, and some for gold, and some for passion.
The linnet, if it could, would robe in peacock-fashion:
The peacock's bliss were perfect, could it sing!

All things desire, and fail to win their satisfaction.
The man whose path is calm longs madly for fierce action
And some wild knightly quest.
The saint heeds nought on earth, but lives in the hereafter.—
And I feel that to hear one girl's clear lovely laughter
Would give my weary spirit eternal rest.

XI. FOR THEE

It is as if my whole past life were but a shadow:—
The years till thy foot came
Were winter. Spring with thee turned hill and lane and meadow
Into one golden sheet of blossom-flame.

It is as if the centuries hushed their wings and waited
For thee, my sweet, for thee,—
And all the silver tidal ripples hesitated
And paused to worship, over all the sea!

It is as if till this strange year of dread and wonder
Never one rosebud blew.
It is as if for thee the very march of thunder
Halted, and lightning's red lips silent grew.

When thou didst come, the blue waves' light-lipped silver laughter
Rang echoing round thy road.
Spring caught up her green gown, and Summer followed after,
And never a stream but far more softly flowed.

It is as if the flowers in prehistoric valleys
Had waited for thy reign.
Now thou art gone, the vales of earth and its green alleys
Will never laugh their old light laugh again!

The days will come and go,—the flowers will bloom and wither
And summers bloom and fade;
Spring's glistening wings will pass, and once again turn hither;
Darkness will yield to light, and sun to shade;

And I shall live and love, and hear of thee, and see thee
(Yes: I shall love again!)—
But never will my heart for all its journeys flee thee
Or quite escape one haunting pain.

XII. A CHRISTMAS CARD

I

A Christmas Card! A small slight common message merely.
And yet it makes as though the summer sun shone clearly
Across the wintry track
Just now so gaunt and black!

II

A little thing can change the current of our dreaming
And change the grey wan waves to azure waters gleaming,
Make all our spirits sing;
Yes,—just one little thing!

III

A little thing gives Life. A little thing brings pain.
A touch upon the heart,—and song speaks not again.
Another touch, and lo!
Forth the song-waters flow.

IV

A thrill along the heart: a kiss upon the cheek:
And out the ripples gush,—and the mute cravings speak.
Woman can kill or save;
Can build or burst a grave.

V

A glance from eyes to eyes: a pressure of the hand:
And flowers fill all the paths, and sunlight fills the land.
A woman's word can bring,
In mid-December, Spring.

VI

In mid-December, May; or winter in mid-June:
And in the darkest night the magic of full moon.
A woman's glance or kiss
Can more than compass this!

Christmas Day, 1882.

XIII. “I PRAISED THE LORD OF LOVE”

I

I praised the Lord of love who made the world of roses
For his own heart to seek:
Then gave me one white rose that blossoms and uncloses,—
Thy cheek against my cheek!

II

I praised the Lord who made the soft night fall around me,—
Made star-hosts wax and flee:
Then, since he needed song, with song's wild passion crowned me,—
And with one star-love,—thee!

III

I praised the Lord who heard the laughter of his daughters
And of the leaves o'the pine
And of the silver-voiced and multitudinous waters:
Then gave me one laugh,—thine!

IV

I praised the Lord who saw the wild wind like a lover
Laughing for very bliss
Fondle the dainty heads of countless cliff-top clover:
Then gave me thy one kiss!

XIV. AT THE LAST

When at the last we stand beside the sea's grey water,
How passing sweet is then the earth's pale last flower-daughter
Who follows to the marge
Where yellow sand meets grey wild-crested waves far-gleaming;
Who once again sets heart and spirit and brain a-dreaming
Of old green forests lit by moonlight large.

No flowers are here to love, save this one blossom only
Which shines so strange and sweet upon the margin lonely
Where at the last we stand:
This blossom-spirit who brings the fair old earth's last message,
Which mixes with the weird and solemn bodeful presage
Of new love wafted from the sea to land.

In doubt and awe we stand, and mystic perturbation,
And all our nerves are thrilled with dread and expectation:
We know not what shall be.
Yet this we know,—that sweeter than all old loves' glances
Is this the whisper low whose tremulous breath advances
From over footless leagues of flowerless sea.

Through regions red with rose or white with scented lily
Our steps have passed,—from groves umbrageous unto hilly
Bare windy sun-struck peaks:
Dark eyes indeed we have loved, and river after river
Have tracked just out of love for mermaids' arms that quiver
Through the blue water and their flushed sweet cheeks.

And now at last the sea wide stretches out before us:
Far into the murk night recedes the sobbing chorus
Of hosts of plashing waves.
Is not beyond all loves this last pale love courageous
Who for our sake has left the groves and grots umbrageous,
And paths that many a tender green leaf paves?

Is not this love beyond all loves preceding solemn
Who, now the waves advance in white unending column
And threaten through the gloom,

Still true beside me stands, and gives me thoughts that cheer me
Of long-past days when loves innumerable were near me,
Both sweet and numberless as white may-bloom?

Ambassadress divine, who through thy lips and laughter
The earth's last message bring'st, will any love hereafter
Have quite the charm for me
(If there be loves indeed behind the mystic curtain)
That thou hast?—for thy love is earthly, sweet, and certain,—
Not like the love-clasp of the uncertain sea.

Thou art the messenger who bringest to the portal
Of death,—or, it may be, the gate of life immortal,—
(So doubtful is the deep!)
The farewell words of earth;—the farewell of the willows
That sounds so strange amid the treeless plunge of billows;
The last voice of the woods where lost dreams sleep:

The farewell of the birds; the farewell of the arches
Wherethrough the gold sun peeps, and lights the forest-larches
To their most tender green;
The farewell of the hills and all the blue-haired rivers;
The farewell of each reed that by the water quivers;
The voice of each spot where love's steps have been:

The voices of old loves,—their soft good-bye eternal;
The farewell of the leaves, now green-robed, young, and vernal,
Autumnal now and red:
The voice of all these things, O true last love, thou bringest;
With their collective voice beside the sea thou singest,—
Thou the one link between the live and dead.

So art thou strangely sweet. So is this love intenser
Than all the old when flowers and loves and leaves in denser
Gay squadrons shone around.
For now thou hast no lute, and I have never a poem:
We have no power to pay King Love the chant we owe him
Save only with the waves' untuneful sound.

If thou dost travel back, tell all the flowers and faces
Of old loves in the woods and all remembered places
That all my love was true.
Take my farewell to all: to every river-valley
And forest where the sweet hyacinthine armies rally
And flaunt their banners of empyreal blue.

If thou dost travel back. But wilt thou travel forward?
Wilt thou with me forego the journey backward, shoreward,
And tempt the deep with me?
Wilt thou, when all is dark and all is very lonely,
Be on this awful waste the one white flower,—the only
Angel of life upon the death-black sea?

XV. RESURRECTION

Oh joy past words indeed, delight superbly fashioned,
That in the groves of heaven will speak with voice impassioned,
When, after thou hadst died
I thought and passed away for ever in mortal seeming,
I found myself one night in golden May a-dreaming
My sweet old golden love-dream by thy side!

It was as sweet as if the May-month had arisen
New-born, new-decked indeed, from some sad darksome prison
And brought all dead rose-bloom
Of perished former Mays within its white hands yearning
Over the tender white and red soft rosebuds burning
Alive and splendid through their prison gloom.

It was most sweet to find that May can still remember
The flowers and wreaths and songs of mist-wreathed pale September
And bring them back again:—
Most sweet to see again heaven's hills and May-green larches
After the flowerless walls of hell and flowerless arches
Of the grim wintry dungeon-deeps of pain.

And will the fair dream pass? I know not. One thing knowing,
I meet with gladdened lips the lips of May soft-glowing
And tender and pure and red:
This knowing,—that I to-day am strong who once was weary;
Free who once watched the sun through prison-grating dreary;
Alive to-day, who yesterday was dead.

May 2, 1883.

XVI. THE POET'S DEATH-GIFT

We have loved too much.—The sun is blamed who loves the flowers
And pierces deep within the tangled hawthorn-bowers
And lights with loving glee
The green grass-depths. The moon is blamed who casts her brightness
Not over one but over all the white waves' whiteness
And kisses all the foam-bells on the sea.

O ye who love in small and common fickle fashion
What know ye of the intense immeasurable passion
That through the poet flows
And, if it could, would bring—even by its death—deep pleasure
To those it loves,—as God who loves beyond all measure
Tinges with his own blood the blood-red rose?

So would the poet die for those he loves to bring them
New sweet immortal bloom. He would do more than sing them
As God did more than make
The world.—The poet loves. Yet who believes or heedeth?
Who understands his heart that wrestles in love and bleedeth
And loveth on and on, though nigh to break?

A man may love too much. What rose of all the roses
When at the morning's glance her sweetness she uncloses
And blushes being fair
Knows that it took a God's death-pain to bring the brightness
Into her blood-red leaves that else had paled in whiteness,
Ashamed before the morning's golden hair?

What woman is there yet to understand or know it,—
That he the man she deems a careless light-heart poet
Loving where'er he wills
Has given his very life for some: though they shall never
Know all until the Last Day's fiery lightnings sever
The earth's foundations and the tossing hills.

What if they never had bloomed—though they may never know it!—
But for the long death-pang and love-pang of the poet?
What if (as God to the rose)
He gave his very life in anguish-throbs exceeding
For them? What if their bloom be his slow deadly bleeding
And all their beauty his death-gift? Who knows?

XVII. “THOU KNOWEST NOT NOW”

I

My love “thou knowest not now,—but thou shalt know hereafter”
Why I would give my life to give thy silver laughter
A yet more silvery tone.
Why I would die to call thee (—as I may not ever—)
Beyond all days that part and black-winged nights that sever
My own.

II

Thou knowest not why I love; nor canst thou ever know it
On this side of the grave. I, a sad world-worn poet,
Stand by death's ocean-deep,
And lo! thy bright eyes gaze upon me and they blind me
And I who had to death inexorable resigned me
Can weep.

III

Perchance in days to come,—far days of which we dream not,—
When all is dark around and passion's bright stars gleam not
Nor youth's stars upon thee
I may be able—then—to tell thee why the morning
At thine approach blushed red and smote without one warning
The sea.

IV

I may be able—then—to tell thee why romances
Long dead and buried deep rose up at thy dark glances
Alive as ever of old:
And why the far fields flamed one living sheet of flowers
And why the buttercups lent glad thought's summer hours
Their gold!

V

But now I may not speak, save only in mystic metre,—
And may not tell thee, love, why thou to me art sweeter
Than any words could tell.

Why is the grass-blade sweet that shines like some mute warder
Just on the parched-up grim intolerable border
Of hell?

VI

I may not speak or act. Nay! hardly may I love thee.
I may not send a song to turn thy heart or move thee.
Yet this one thing I may;
Each morn and every night thank God that I have seen thee
And plead that Love's strong arms may fold around and screen thee
Each night and day.

XVIII. THE DEATH OF TYRANNY

All tyrannies shall pass.—The tyranny of winter
That clothes with snow and frost and pitiless ice-splinter
The blossomless may-tree.
The tyranny that strips of leaves the greenwood cover:
The tyranny that parts the loved one from the lover;
That keeps the imprisoned sea-bird from the sea.

The tyranny that holds our eyes and hearts in prison
In dark-green leafy woods when God has just arisen
In sunlight o'er the waves:
The tyranny that holds vast nations pent in bondage;
That changes to blood-red the agonized green frondage
And changes bridal-beds to brideless graves.

The tyranny of man o'er woman, and of pleasure
Over the Soul that strives with suffering past all measure
To arise and stand upright:
The tyranny that sends the songless days and flowerless
And hurls the darts of pain upon us, speechless, powerless,
After our sojourn in love's vast sweet light.

All tyrannies shall end. Of kings and lusts and liars
And sorrow and evil hours and thorns that on the briars
Startle the roses' breath:
And last of all shall end the power of him who waiteth
Alert, unconquered yet, when all force else abateth,—
The agelong hell-deep Monarchy of Death.

XIX. THE INEVITABLE END

On one side youth and beauty infinite
And on the other weariness extreme
Of life and life's long spirit-torturing dream
And of the vain wild search for vain delight.
On one side eyes the sun's own glance made bright
But on the other eyes through which there gleam
The eyes of sorrows numberless,—no beam
Of sun being there by day, nor moon by night.

When this is so, could any end but one
Be reached,—could either flee the certain goal,
This—that the weary night should love the sun;
That all my heart should by thy glance be won;
That I should love thee, spirit calm and white,
With all the stormy dark strength of my soul?

XX. MY PRAYER

This is my prayer each day: not that the flowers should love me,
Nor further skies of June gleam bountiful above me,
Nor further seas gleam blue,—
Not that the scent of may may fill once more the hedges
And scent of gracious thyme the balmy river-ledges,—
But that once more my eyes may look on you!

This is my prayer each day, each night; that God will let me,
O loved past poet's speech, before you quite forget me,
Just see you,—once draw nigh.
And then when we have met, and once again are parted,
The same cry goes to God from me half broken-hearted,—
“God! let me see her again before I die!”

XXI. SONG

I

Yes, the white meadow-sweet is fair,
With fronds upon the June-breeze shaking,—
And sweet the sumptuous summer air
The reeds and tossing branches taking,
And sweet the sound of birds awaking,
And sweet the whisper on the shore
Of small white-crested clear waves breaking:—
But all the glory of these is o'er
If I may hear your voice no more,—O love, no more!

II

Once loves were many as the flowers
Upon the wind their petals flinging;

Soft voices silvery in the bowers
That then were full of youth's wild singing:
But now life's autumn leaves are clinging
To branches brown and sad and dry
That once with throstles' notes were ringing:—
If this last love must wither and die
There are no other loves beneath the darkening sky.

XXII. HOW CAN YOU UNDERSTAND?

How can you ever, ever, understand?
How can I tell you what you are to me?—
More than the snow-white sea-bird to the sea!
More than the sweetest white rose to the land!
I see you,—gaze upon you,—touch your hand;
Yet what is that to love's infinity?
What is the little ocean-space we see
To ocean-wastes by rainbow-arches spanned?

How can I tell you anything at all?
You with the great brown gentle birdlike eyes!
Why should you answer at a lover's call,—
You whose true lovers are the stars and skies?
What can I do, O loved one, for your sake
Save only just to let my whole heart break?

XXIII. “IF I COULD DO SOME GREAT HIGH THING FOR THEE”

If I could do some great high thing for thee
As Christ did for the world,—could slowly bleed
To death that thou mightst gladdened be or freed,—
If I could change my heart-throbs to a sea
And every wave of life thy wave might be
And every act of life a loving deed
And every word a prayer to intercede,—
I should be then content eternally.

But I can do so little: just a song,
A wreath of words, I bring thee,—when I pine
To crown thee with my very being's breath.
Some music here and there in just a line
Of verse or two I bring thee when I long
To give thee love so deep it mocks at death.

XXIV. “IF I MUST EVER CEASE”

If I must ever cease this tide of passionate dreaming,—
If there should come a day when never more the gleaming
Of thy star-eyes may be,—
If I lose by the banks of very death's dark river
Thee my last hope of all, and watch with ghastly shiver
All sunlight fade out of the air and sea:—

If I must lose thee—thee my flower so pure and tender
Who gatherest into one all past bright blossoms' splendour—
If I must give up thee,—
Why then all prayer must cease, save only this one bitter
Wild cry—could any wild heart-broken words be fitter?—
“God help me,—and have mercy upon me!”

XXV. “HOW COULD I HELP IT?’

How could I help it?—Climbing out of hell,
Can one refuse to love the flower that grows
Close by the hell-brink? Is not the first rose
One sees in a green hedge adorable?—
So sweetness more than I can ever tell
Crowns thee, and round about thy being flows.
My love is measured by my former throes
Of pain: the light by darkness visible.

It is not much I ask. Pay love's old debt
With this, Lord God. I only ask to see
This woman's face: that it may shine on me
From time to time: that this star may not set:—
That I may look, for many a sweet day yet,
Loving, on her, who have, fearless, looked on thee.

XXVI. THIS ONE THING

I have not feared hell's fires, nor feared the pang
Of bitterest suffering, if so I might hear
Her bright girl-laughter ringing silver-clear
As on the day when first we met it rang.
Wilt thou take from me now this one thing dear
And hush the bird that at my window sang
So sweetly that her note outsoared the clang
Of prison-labour torturing mine ear?

Oh not this one thing?—Take not from the sea
The morning's vast unutterable light!
Take not the first nor last star from the night!
Take not this tender star-love, God, from me!
Stay not the swallow in her Southern flight
Nor my wings seeking love's deep purity.

XXVII. BECAUSE

Because I looked into the eyes of pain
Fearless,—and into thine eyes when the sword
Of punishment was in thine hand, O Lord;
Yea, bade thee smite me often and again
If so I might re-enter the old fane
Of love, and thus escape the ghastly horde
Of sins and passions loathsome and abhorred
That surge around me with their mocking strain:—
Because I did not dread thine awful eyes
When there was anger in them and the fire
Of a strong God's invincible desire
And in thine hand the thunders of the skies,—
Let me now watch this woman's eyes instead
And touch her white hand for thine own dyed red.

XXVIII. ONE JUNE-DAY

O Love that hast within thy kingly store
Junes numberless, and canst bestow their bloom
Just where thou willest, raising from their tomb
The flower-white ghosts of Junes that came before
And June-sweet ghosts of flowers that died of yore,—
Filling green aisles of gardens with perfume
And spectral blossom-wings that through the gloom
Sail, flinging marvel round them as they soar:—
O Love that hast within thy kingly hand
All dead June-days and perfect Junes to be,
Wilt thou not spare one sweet June-day to me,
And let my gentle love beside me stand
While step by step the shifting hour-glass' sand
Gives air and bloom and sunlight back to thee?

XXIX. TIMELESS WOE

If thou shouldst ever sin, O flower of mine,
And mar the whiteness that I worship so,
Great tides of sorrow would throughout me flow;
Yea, I should marvel at that deed of thine
As at some solemn desecrated shrine
Where once the steps of pilgrims used to go.
Thy fall would work me such exceeding woe
That in one giant glimpse I should divine
With an unearthly horror past all speech
The giant agony that drew God down
And made him sternly cast aside his crown
The sin and suffering of the earth to reach.
God help me then,—for then I might impeach
God's justice, and Love's whole long toil disown!

XXX. THE LOVE-SONG OF THE SEA

Thou hast so little share or part in me
And that, God knows, is why I love thee so!
Just as the great white waves that shoreward go
After their journey o'er the bitter sea
Love past all speech the emerald-shining lea
And the blue river-waves that towards them flow,—
And love beyond all human words the glow
Of pink cliff-thyme, and singing of the bee.

Thou art the river bringing to the deep
Thoughts of the flowers that by its banks are seen,
Woven in white amid the entangled green,—
Dreams of the meadows where the daisies sleep.
But what gifts, loved one, can I give to thee?
Only the love-song of the restless sea!

XXXI. SONG'S INSUFFICIENCY

I cannot tell thee why I love thee so,
Or how I love thee. Can the black night tell
The star that lights its heart wherein is hell
Why past all passion it adores the glow
That shoots its golden sweet rays to and fro
Across its murky depths unfathomable?
Can the dark water in the hollow well,
Star-holding, praise the star that stoops so low?—

The night is silent, and the dark deep disk
Of water in the well is silent too.
Nor is there much that even Song can do:
All words are open to the endless risk
That she who hears the words may fail to hear
The actual true heart sighing at her ear.

XXXII. WORDLESS

I cannot tell thee, love, how utterly I love thee!
But may the skies of night bend tenderly above thee
And whisper in thine ear,
And may the flowers of June bring thee some word of greeting
And every sacred star a swift kiss, sweet if fleeting:
May the soft June-night bear love's message, dear!

The message of the flowers is sweet and very tender,
And gracious are the stars in all their golden splendour,
Ready their joy to impart.
But none of all these things,—thou knowest it, God above us,—
Not star nor flower nor night, though each of these may love us,
Could speak the full love of my throbbing heart.

XXXIII. THE GIFTLESS DAYS

The days whereon I bring no gifts to thee
Seem wasted days; like days wherethrough there blows
No soft wind laden with the scent of rose,
But only salt strange vapours from the sea.
All gifts I give thee are sweet gifts to me:
When I bring no gift, not mine own heart knows
The stream of strong despair that through it flows,
For it transcends all measuring potency.

It is my grief that I can give no more.
When God had given its crown of stars to night
And to the sea its awful robe of white
And golden raiment to the glittering shore,
What then was left? This only:—to deplore
That no new gifts could give God new delight.

XXXIV. JUST ONCE

If we must part—though the mere sound of this
Is horror to me—oh remember then
Of all the thronging clamorous crowd of men
I loved thee best who never won thy kiss.
The choking strange sweet suffocating bliss
It is to me to see thee, and the pain
Beyond all words when thou art hidden again,—
These show my soul how fierce a king Love is.

O Love, strong Love, who hast within thy hand
Not pleasures only, but a keen-edged sword,—
Who art the whole world's pitiless great lord,
Lord of the snow-clad and the rose-clad land,—
Give her, just once, the heart to understand
My heart before her utterly outpoured!

XXXV. THE FLOWER AND THE NIGHT

The flower for but one night of rapture born
Said to the night: “New flowers and nights will be,
But I shall never look again on thee;
Meet now my flower-gaze fully, without scorn.
To-morrow night thou wilt not be forlorn,
For flowers and stars to all eternity
Within thy fragrant wide arms thou shalt see:—
New loves will rise, as each from thee is torn.

“But this one hour I hold thee, sacred night.”—
As said the flower, I murmur, love, to thee.
This once thy dark eyes and dark hair I see,
And with unknown unfathomable delight
Watch the slow fragrant soft hours wing their flight,—
While each hour's pulse involves eternity.

XXXVI. TOO HARD TO BEAR

When I think sometimes that for years and years
New springs may clothe the hills in mocking green
And new blue skies with their high azure sheen
Gladden the hearts of men,—and that men's ears
May mark new love-songs woven of joy and tears
And all things else be just as they have been
Save only that thou art not here, my queen,—
I tremble with interminable fears.

That I should lose thee—thee my one delight,
While God keeps crowds of throstles at his ear,—
Thee my one lily, while God's lilies white
Are numberless and sweet and ever near
His throne,—my one star, while he has the night
Of stars,—great God, this seems too hard to bear!

XXXVII. FOR THEE AND ME

The charm and beauty of this world of things
And all the sunlight of the summer sea
And sweetest notes of every bird that sings
For thee!—
The dark night's sombre face and starless wings
For me!

A future of delight and all men's praise
And laughter ringing out like love's own glee
And happy walks in radiant rose-hung ways
For thee!—
A leaf or two of dark blood-spotted bays
For me!

Bright flowers upon the river-banks, and all
God's love made manifest in bird and bee;
Joy ever close at hand whereon to call
For thee!—
Sorrow that shrouds the wide world like a pall
For me!

Life and the gifts of life,—its fairest flowers
To gather, and its fairest sights to see;
Its tenderest avenues and deepest bowers
For thee!—
A lonely watch beside thy gate for hours
For me!

A glance or two that haunt me evermore,
That tarry yet though all things else may flee;
The memory of thy sweet face to adore
For me!—
My whole soul's love till life and death are o'er
For thee!

XXXVIII. O FACE!

Lift me by thy strange beauty evermore
And gift me nobly as with God's own grace
And give me holiest wings whereon to soar,
O face!

There never yet on loveliest hill or shore,
In old-world lands, or fair undreamed-of place,
Shone beauty such as thine for man to adore,
O face!

Love-gifts round Helen all men came to pour;
The strong world maddened for her white embrace:
Beauty past speech she had; yet thou hast more,
O face!

I never dreamed till half my life was o'er
That beauty such as thine God's hand could trace.
Nor was such beauty moulded ever of yore,
O face!

Lift me to lands where Beauty evermore
Is one with Love, and Love is one with grace.
Let me with all my strength of soul adore,
O face!

XXXIX. IS IT ALL IN VAIN?

Is my strong holy passionate love for thee
Just a thing wasted? Are all prayers in vain?
Or do they some high heavenly summit gain
Whence their fruition they shall one day see?
Is it worth nought with holy purity
And desperate throes of a Titanic pain
Ever at Love's high altar to remain
Watching, though all men smile in mockery?—

Does God who cares for flowers, and smooths the wings
Of his storm-crumpled dainty butterflies,
Care nought for Prayer's torn plumage when it tries
To part the thunder-clouds whose purple rings
Hem in and guard his palace in the skies?—
Can subjects gain the ear of the King of kings?

XL. A BLIND MAN'S AGONY

A blind man's agony who sees no more
The gorgeous plumage of the summer day,
Nor the young blue waves splashing with light spray
The golden sand on the receding shore,
Nor butterflies who steer with feathered oar
Through flower on flower, or thread their dainty way
Through branch on green branch,—nor the moonlit bay,
Nor ardent wings wherewith the sun's steeds soar:—

The agony that grasps with one vast pang
That all these things prevail outside his brain,
Yet that their light will enter not again
Now once the gates of iron darkness clang,
Is like my pain O sun, O love, O sea,
Dreading lest I may look no more on thee.

XLI. LOVE'S LONGING

Lo! I would give my utter self to thee:—
As God was not content to give the rose
The every tint wherewith its bright heart glows,
Nor to bestow its whiteness on the sea,
Nor robe of summer verdure on the tree,
Nor on the mountain-steep its awful snows,
Nor on the night its fathomless repose
Wherethrough the stars' wings sweep eternally;—

As God was not content to give to these
Sweet gifts and many—to the flower its bloom,—
Its tender moss-wreath to the granite tomb,—
Its voice of silver to the singing breeze—
But must do more; must the world's ransom be,
Hanging upon the Cross of Calvary.

XLII. SAFE

Is the rose safe within its sheath of leaves?
The sea-bird safe upon the crest of foam?
Is the fern safe within its forest-home?
Is the gold corn-ear safe amid the sheaves?
Are the blue swallows safe beneath the eaves?
Is the star safe within the darkling dome
Of night? However far the wild winds roam,
Is there an eye which follows and perceives?—

These things are safe? Then thou art safe with me.
Safe as the pale star clinging to the night:
Safe as the sea-gull's breast of plumy white
Upon the waters that uprise and flee:
Safe as the lamb Christ folds within his bright
Calm breast is safe for all eternity.

XLIII. THE DEADLIEST PANG

Was there a thought in God's heart when he died
Upon the Cross, that all might be in vain?
That after all his immemorial pain
The mocking world his love-suit might deride?
That she might nestle by another's side,—
That other feet love's temple might profane,
And other hearts of little worth might gain
The poor frail doubting faint heart of his Bride?—

Was this, and nothing else, the death-pang true,
The awful darkness darkening sea and land?
To give without reserve; although he knew
Whose blow would drive the last nail through his hand.—
It took one little hour to pierce Love through:
It takes the world all time to understand.

XLIV. A FINAL BLESSING

May God who guards the flowers and all the wildwood places
And tints with red the sea-weeds in the sea,—
May God who folds the skies in his superb embraces
Have still more heed of thee!

The power of man is slight: I cannot guard or follow:
Where thy steps fall, often, I may not be.
But on the mountain-steep, or in the daisied hollow,
May God's love circle thee!

May somewhat of my love pass into God, and find thee
And watch thy footsteps though I may not see:
May my love and God's love be guardian fire behind thee
And flame in front of thee!

May God's love and my love be ever round about thee
As the dense thronging soft leaves guard the tree:
A hallowing light within, a saving shield without thee;
May our love follow thee!

God loves the stars and winds and all frail human creatures:
He sends them sorrow and he sends them glee.
Shall he not love as I thy sweet love-breathing features?
Past all love, wonder at thee?

I wonder and I love: and God himself who made thee
Must wonder, as deep wonder thrills through me.
Must stoop himself from heaven with veil of clouds to shade thee:
Must long to die for thee.

Oh, this I envy God,—that he so far above thee
Can pour out blessings till all pain shall flee:
While I, O love of mine, can only, only, love thee,
Can only die for thee.

In this I envy God,—that he can send heaven's flowers
And all heaven's gifts from heavenly grove and lea:
Blossoms of passionate love from his strange starlit bowers:
I—but one song to thee.

Yet can God love thee more? Has not my love created
The very love wherewith God loveth thee?
Hath not God's love for thee in mine originated?
Did God not learn from me?

Ah! surely I learnt from God: and therefore God must love thee
More even than I (Great God, can this thing be!)—
Must yearn with infinite and pure desire above thee,
As I yearn over thee.

Yet he can do so much, and I can do so little.
The combat is not fair: the rivalry
Shuts out the human heart, for human swords are brittle:—
God's sword must flash for thee!

God's sword must flash, and hover like a bright flame o'er thee:
God's fiery steel must sweep the pathway free.
But I will be God's sword, till, broken, I fall before thee,—
Dead in the path for thee!

LOVED BEYOND WORDS

II.

LOVE'S PORTRAIT

Truly it is a deed presumptuous, very daring,
Thus to devise in song a golden frame, preparing
To set therein thy face:
It is as if God gave the rough stern wind the power
To sing for evermore the soul of some white flower
And this flower's soul before the world to place.

The task is very large.—Love, give thy singer passion
Pure as the sea and sun, that pure strong words may fashion
A frame wherein to place,
So that the world may see (and never, having met it
Once eye to eye, could heart of mortal man forget it!)
Love's portrait of the loveliest living face.

I. ETERNAL JUNES

Guard her for ever for my great love's sake,
Lord God.—Be as a light about her head:
Shield her through solemn hours of darkness dread,
And when the golden summer mornings break.
If one must suffer, let not her heart ache,
But pierce my own strong suffering heart instead!
If sacrificial blood-drops must be shed
Wilt thou not honour me, and my blood take?—

Thou couldst not give us that one sweet June-day!
Most hard it seems, and ever will seem hard.
But give to her eternal Junes, I pray,
Full of flower-happiness, divine, unmarred
E'en by one petal falling from one spray:
And let me share with thee the right to guard.

June 30, 1883.

II. LOVE AND LOVE

I

I raised my arms to heaven in agony
And cried out wildly, “Frail are women fair!
Their love is as a breath of sunlit air
Or white cloud floating o'er a summer sea.
What is her passion of soul compared to me,
Me—for the storm-wreaths nestle in my hair
And I the inexorable anguish bear
Of one whose love outstrips eternity.

“Her love is measured by the sands of time,—
But mine is as the mountains or the stars:
It snaps all manacles, it laughs at bars,
Nor findeth the high blue airs too sublime.
Her love is dainty as a rose's wings,—
But through the plumes of mine the thunder sings.”

II.

I weeping said, “What is her love to this?”
But, smiling, God said, “What is yours to mine?
I am the sun that lightens the sea-line,
And my lips meet the fragrant morning's kiss.
I die with love for all. Yet all that is
United my one pale thorn-wreath to twine.
Because my love is perfect and divine
It never knows fruition's final bliss.

“What is her love to yours? Small, it may be.
But yours to mine is as the rippling lake
To the shore-margin where the vast waves break
Full of song-echoes from the open sea.
Your song is as the singing of a day:—
My song laughs golden-haired when Time turns grey.”

III. THE SEA'S BLESSING

I would give the sea's blessing unto thee,
O London blossom; as the salt sea-flowers
Send up their blessing to our inland bowers
And all the tameless freshness of the sea.
The greeting of the sea-shore thyme and bee
And of the wild spray's laughter-riven showers
I bring thee,—and the gladness of long hours
When inland thoughts recede eternally.

Thou art not quite a daughter of the sea!
Thou art so beautiful that he must claim
Surely in the end thy beauty and thy name
And in his strong divine arms gather thee,
And add one inland sweet flower to his store
Where fair-stemmed buds rejoice for evermore.

IV. “I THINK OF THEE”

If thou forgettest, love, I think of thee.—
What if the white light-hearted wandering foam
That hath the whole waste for its passionate home
Of blue broad strong interminable sea
Thinks little more of this than thou of me?
What if the ferns, wherethrough the sun's rays roam
Fostering, are heedless as smooth fronds they comb
Of their sun's warm and genial potency?

It matters little. Back into the breast
Of the deep sea the foam-bell falls at last,
And, when the hot sun's chariot seeks the West,
The sweet ferns' sweetest tenderest hours are past.—
So wouldst thou through the world have walked in shade
Had not song's sunlight round about thee played.

V. “IF I HAD NEVER SEEN THEE!”

If I had never seen thee, what had then
My life been! Just as much the lesser thing
As the whole sea without one sea-bird's wing,
Or the Scotch rocky deep grouse-haunted glen
Without one blade of heather,—or, again,
The fervent merry boyish-hearted Spring
Without its festive choir of birds that sing,
Or the dull world without the sun's gold ken.

So much the lesser had my life been, love,
Hadst thou not stepped therein its worth to seal.—
God, when he made me a poet, knew that I,
Born just to feel and sing, and sing and feel,
Thee seeing, should leap my song's old heights above
And in Love's name forbid thy name to die.

VI. “WHAT CAN I DO FOR THEE?”

This much at least, O love, for thee I do.—
I give thee songlight round about thine head:
Song's starlight and song's moonlight round thy bed
And song's strong sunlight when the skies are blue.
I hold thy beauty up to the world's view:—
Death thou hast feared: I give thee life instead;
Yea, life that shall not pause though we be dead
And o'er our graves falls the soft tearless dew.

Beautiful eyes and blue-black lovely hair!
Sweet is it just to think that but for me
Few might have known how passing sweet ye were.
Even as no eyes might deem, far out at sea,
The white sea-bird so nobly fair a thing
Save for yon cloud that outlines breast and wing.

VII. “I WANDERED ALL THROUGH HEAVEN”

I wandered all through heaven, and saw its leafy arches,
And breathed its scent of pines and fragrance of its larches,
And watched its white seas break;
I saw the clover wave upon its hill-sides spacious,
And saw the gold corn bend in undulations gracious,
And marked green islands float on many a lake:

I wandered through new towns in heaven, and marked fair faces
Full of the wondrous light that gleams through heavenly places,—
Eyes brown and all divine:
But, all through heaven, I saw, though far and wide I wandered,
And where I wandered, searched, and sought and dreamed and pondered,
No eyes so clear, so beautiful, as thine.

VIII. FROM THE THEATRE TO THE COUNTRY

My whole heart longs to see thee, sweetheart mine,
No longer where the gaslights flame and flare,
But where the pure sweet-scented country air
Plays with green tender boughs of larch and pine.
Had ever forest Dryad eyes like thine
I wonder, or wood-nymph with leafy hair
So sweet a smile?—For thee the ferns prepare
Their soft fresh scent, and the beech-leaves their shine.

I long to see thee where the sunlight falls
Upon some grassy bank which bees pervade
Or where some giant oak-tree casts deep shade,
Or where the circling sea-mew curves and calls.
Thine are not only the theatric boards,
But also dew-kissed leaves and velvet swards.

Aug. 8, 1883.

IX. CENTRALISATION

It is so strange to think that of ten thousand faces
Thine have I loved and sung.—The summer wind embraces
The flowers of all the hills,
And yet it tarries, perhaps, with special love and yearning
Beside some hare-bell,—back, and ever backward turning,
While with deep love the wild wind's dark glance fills.

And God turns back at times from all the tropic blossoms
That with their warm white deep sweet-scented tropic bosoms
Lure down from heaven the sun
And concentrates his love on English fern, or daisy
Whose gold heart heavenward gleams through English grasses mazy,
Turns from all other flower-loves,—loves that one.

For ages through the stars' wild endless complication
God steered his course,—and through the struggles of each nation
And history's streams of gore,
His eyes on you and me:—just as to-day's azalea
Or purple-petalled deep strong sun-confronting dahlia
Was planned in Eden, and designed of yore.

Then through the crush and crowd of fierce star-systems meeting
And tides of human strife advancing and retreating
And all the clash of things
God makes that we should meet: and foldeth round about me,
That I may quite forget the rattle of arms without me,
Thy white eternal soft angelic wings.

X. “THE SUNSETS CAME TO ME”

The sunsets came to me, with red cheeks flushed and burning:
“Not one of us survives, for all our love and yearning
And beauty,” so they said.
The honeysuckle came; and violets from the meadows;
And king-cups; and their eyes were full of soft sad shadows:
“Lo!” said they, “soon we too shall join the dead.”

And many blue waves came, and green waves, and grey waters,
And dark-eyed woodland nymphs the dark-leaved forests' daughters,
And mermaids from the sea,
And river-maids with blue long dripping watery tresses:
And each one said, “How sweet are Love's warm soft caresses;
Why should Love's lustrous white wings ever flee?”

And then I thought: “If these survive not, what, I wonder,
Of thee, fair lady mine? Will death's malign black thunder,
Across thy pathway roll
Never? If all the world thus groans in ceaseless bondage,—
Wave, sunset, river, lake, mermaiden, golden frondage—
Nymphs of the woodland, daisies of the knoll—

“If this be so with each,—if each be born to suffer,
Do death and pain on these lay hands less courteous, rougher,
Than they will lay on thee?
Canst thou escape thy fate more than the dark-eyed maiden
Whose leafy hair with scent of dim pine-woods is laden,
Or than the blue-haired goddess of the sea?”

XI. CONTRASTS

After the tossed white sea a pool of green still water
Wherein some white-limbed nymph the great green oaktree's daughter
Bathes with blue laughing eyes:
After the fierce wild storm the blue sky pure and tender:
After bronzed brows of men a woman's untanned splendour:
After the night the royal red sunrise:

After the weary day the night-time cool and gracious:
After the city-walls a golden cornfield spacious
Wherein red poppies gleam:
Upon the Atlantic surge a lonely wave-tossed vessel
Whose masts in the mad wind bend, shriek, and toil, and wrestle,—
Yet in the cabin eyes where love-thoughts dream;

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These contrasts all are sweet:—Yet sweeter than the sweetest
It was when thou didst come, of all loves far the fleetest,
The swiftest tenderest thing,—
Contrasting with my past thine own ethereal brightness
And with the black pain-cloud thy more than sea-bird's whiteness,
As through yon rain-cloud flashes one white wing.

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XII. ENGLISH ART

I long for the great day when English Art
Shall be the outcome of the English race.
When every woman shall have Venus' face
And the Madonna's beauty, and her heart.
When we shall seek no longer strength to impart
And beauty, and a far-off foreign grace,
To our own Art from any alien place,
In English field and street and house and mart
Seeking our models:—for the day I long
When beauty, love, like thine shall fill the land
Inspiring some great English Titian's hand
And some great English Dante's sea-winged song.
I wait the day when English Art shall be
Commensurate with sunlight, and with thee.

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XIII. THEE, THE CROWN OF HISTORY

Time through the patient centuries struggled hard
And moulded many an English face divine
And set song's sunlight round each for a sign
And brought to Beauty's feet full many a bard.
Time moulded the supreme charm evil-starred
Of Mary, and Time wove the golden shine
Of countless tresses, and prolonged the line
Of English beauty, keeping patient guard
Over the English type through year on year:—
But now Time's work is over and complete
For, sweetheart, thou, the crown of all, art here.
Now the whole past of history giveth ear:
The English ages bend before thy feet:
The English white-browed chainless waves revere.

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XIV. “WHEN BEAUTY LIKE THINE”

When beauty like thine is a common thing
(If ever such surpassing grace may be!)—
When English womanhood doth copy thee
As the white sea-foam copies the white wing
That hovers o'er it: when the far years bring
Grace in their train: when senseless fashions flee:
When future artists' happier eyes may see
A nobler English architecture spring
Upward around them: when the clothes we wear,
The homes we build, are no more deadliest foes
To Art: when England wins a great repose
And for the first time sees how very fair
Her towns and people might be—she will bear
Art that will blossom like her heavenliest rose.

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XV. THE REVOLT OF NATURE

If thou dost go, Summer will follow thee
With eager lips and eager hair back-blown,
Leaving one hasty sandal by his throne;
And moon and sun and stars and white-waved sea
And flowers and leaves will cry, “Let not this be!”
And Spring will start and stay her girlish laughter
And, seeing thee go, will straightway follow after;
And in thy wake the fall's red leaves will flee.

Summer will dally with the expectant rose,
Waiting for thee to flush its cheek to red:
Lorn he will stand beside the garden bed:
The sun's brush by the sunset will repose
Ungrasped; and not one love-word will be said
To any flower by any wind that blows.

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XVI. A SUNSET

I watched a sunset,—and I noted down
The cosmic river of colours as they came.
First golden splendour: then clear crimson flame:
Then one pale-blue pure sky-spot like a crown.
But the wind saw me writing with a frown
And drove new clouds across the heavens so fast
That new tints shone before I seized the last,—
Green, lemon-colour, lilac, purple-brown.

Half in despair I flung my “notes” aside,
And owned the cosmic spirit's superb excess.—
So, lady, having for a long year tried
Thee to describe, I feel defeat no less.
The cosmic spirit has set more beauty in thee
Even than in sunsets over windy sea.

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XVII. THE MARVELLOUS NIGHT

This was the glory of thee,—that all the sweet night found me
Because of thee, and wound its starlit wings around me
And kissed me into sleep.
Yea, every star stepped forth, between me and the sorrow
Of pale accustomed life that waited on the morrow:
Thine was the army of night's purple deep.

Between me and my past the whole star-army waited.—
Therefore it was that all my soul, set loose, elated,
Sprang forth with chainless glee.
The innumerable stars were as a hedge behind me
That never one fell throb of old-world pain might find me;
And all this vast star-army followed thee.

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Thou wast the chieftainess of all the gathered legions
Whose golden serried spears filled the blue heavenly regions,
Each spear a valiant friend:
Yea, onward through the night the star-hosts marched together,
A night so still that one might hear a falling feather;
Onward they came, an army without end.

And then I heard strange voices;—voices of the flowers
And voices of my past; the voices of old hours
Of summers long since dead;
Voices of streams and hills, and voices of the mountains,
And voices of far-off white-footed laughing fountains;
Whispers of autumn sunsets golden-red;

Voices of leaves of trees, and voices of green meadows,
And voices of the limes tender with summer shadows;
And last of all to me
Came thrilling through the dark, sudden, without a presage,
The deep-voiced stern immense inevitable message,
Winged with large storm-winds, of the awful sea.

And this was what they said: “Deep in thy spirit know it;
Grasp this with grasp intense; cling to the knowledge, poet!
Through all thy days be sure

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That never again the night will open thus her bosom
Nor ever again the leagues of golden star-flowers blossom
Enfolding thee in vast embrace and pure.

“This night thou hast the deep of heaven spread out before thee
And all the golden stars shake out their banners o'er thee
And rapture like a sea
Surges. But not again shall the deep heaven be tender.”—
Yet, love, that sacred night's unfathomable splendour
Took all its deathless boundless light from thee.

Sept. 17, 1883.

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XVIII. FOR ONE HOUR

I heard a voice that said: “Take up thy pen
And write. Tell all the world how vast a deed
The star-winged God of starry love decreed
Once, that can come to pass now never again.
Tell the world how the whole night's endless fane
Opened, and all the armies of the night
Filled the black vistas with gold flow and flight
And all dark things and doubtful were made plain.

“Tell all the world how strange and great a thing
Then came to pass, that for one silent hour
The hosts who the deep walls of heaven embower
Halted, and peered from heaven's heights wondering:
Gazing with all the eyes of all their throng
Upon one form,—the lady of thy song.”

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XIX. A YEAR AGO

A year ago to-day we met: and yet it seemeth
That in thine eyes, as then, to-day my whole soul dreameth—
And ever, evermore,
I shall dream in thine eyes, and call to mind our meeting;
Not only through the years of earth-life pale and fleeting,
But where blue heaven's waves strike a golden shore.

Thy beauty never fades: thine eyes will never darken:
Still to thy silvery laugh with my whole soul I hearken:
Yes, in a thousand years,
If I could be alive, the mere thought of our meeting
Would set my ancient heart's each giant pulse a-beating
And fill my eyes with the forgotten tears.

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XX. GOD'S GOSPEL

This day, one year ago, God preached his Gospel to me
And sent his spirit of flame with fiery shaft that through me
All on a sudden sped:
This day, one year ago, God woke old dreams of wonder
And brake long ages' chains with sudden stroke asunder
And raised Love's Christlike pale form from the dead.

This day, one year ago, God sent his servant passion
To recreate the world in golden gracious fashion
And renovate the skies.
This day, one year ago, not needing marble “table”
Nor priest nor prophet grim, nor help of myth nor fable,
God preached his Gospel through a woman's eyes.

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XXI. “THIS CHANGELESS GRACE”

If thou must ever come, then pass away,
Like the sad ending of a dream too sweet
For treading therein with cold wakeful feet—
A dream that vanishes when morning grey
Peers in the chilly loveless face of day
And summons him from his forlorn retreat
Long hours of pain and labour to repeat—
If thou must thus the laws of time obey,
Yet is it not unalterably good
That once at least in life I have seen thy face,
Once touched thy hand, and once beside thee stood?
Have I not won at least this changeless grace
That in the heart of him who loved and sang
Thou hast left love endless,—and an endless pang?

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XXII. LOVE'S FINAL SWEETNESS

For this it is which is so sweet to me,
To suffer for thee:—When the last days came
And Byron with his eyes and heart aflame
Looked round the earth to see what cause might be
Worthy to die for, had he known but thee
His grim forlorn heart had not tarried long
Seeking an altar meet for love and song
And sacrifice heaven-sweet eternally.

To die for Greece! Yes, sweet: but sweeter far
To die for thee, if only so I might
Prove that my love for thee is winged with light
And passionately true, O one sweet star
Brightening with glory of one golden bar
My shield that else were sable as the night.

“Lui qui, rassasié de la grandeur humaine,
Comme un cygne à son chant sentant sa mort prochaine,
Sur terre autour de lui cherchait pour qui mourir.”

—Alfred de Musset

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XXIII. “REMEMBER”

If ever comes the day when thou dost fail
My heart's deep inner truth to understand,—
If sorrow invades us,—if this songful land
Be ever darkened and love's skies turn pale
While summer's bright leaves tremble at the gale,—
Remember then—remember evermore—
I loved thee, loved thee, loved thee; through the roar
Of evil wintry winds, let that wild wail
“I loved thee, loved thee, loved thee,” reach thine ear.
By heaven, by God, if all else were untrue,—
If all the stars in heaven's height quaked for fear
And tremor shook the sea's eternal blue,—
“I loved thee, loved thee, loved thee” yet would be
Heard above death-throes of the stars and sea.

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XXIV. MY LIFE'S BEST DEED

Think gently of me, if the day should come
When thou (ah God, the sorrow!) hast to go.
Think gently of me when the blossoms blow:
Think gently of me when the lilac-bloom
Covers Spring's brow with many a purple plume:
Think gently of me when the wintry snow
Whitens the streets, and when the red flames glow
On the bright hearth at Christmas, in thine home.

Think gently of me, if the day should dawn
When thou must (God, the sorrow!) pass from sight:
Think how thy passing makes the whole world night:
I shall be very tired, when thou art gone.
Think gently,—even tenderly,—of me:
Far my life's best deed was my love of thee.

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XXV. STARLIGHT

What I would ask thee is to let me give—
Give love, give help, give perfect tenderness.
I ask no flower: I ask no soft caress:
But only just to worship while I live.
Love's dreams alas! are often fugitive:
Only the love whose chief joy is to bless
Outlasts life's anguish and its stormy stress;
Love that bestows, not hoping to receive.

Let me love so. And let me sometimes see
Thy face.—God sets ten million stars each night
Upon the brow of heaven to give man light;
Do thou my sweet eternal star-love be:
Let me when starlight gleams upon my grave
Feel—“I asked nothing. I but loved and gave.”

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XXVI. MY SONG

I am so far, far, nearer death than thou
That I can love thee with the next world's strong
Sweet love, and hear its music in my song
And set its sacred starlight on thy brow.
Not for to-day do I allegiance vow,
But for all time. Not for to-day I long
To crown thee,—but to crown thee 'mid the throng
Before whose feet even Time himself must bow.

If thou must leave me, let my song be thine
For ever; let it be a token of this
That though God never let me win thy kiss
Yet in some strange sweet sense he made thee mine.
Mine,—for till God's hand smite the heaven and sea
Man's heart will love not as my heart loves thee.

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XXVII. NEVER

Never will any man be stricken deep
By thy sweet arrow of beauty quite as I
When after weary passionless long sleep
I looked up suddenly,—and thou wast nigh!
No man will ever love thy wondrous face
Quite as I love it. Though a thousand may
Admire thy beauty and thy girlish grace,
Still true it is that I am not as they.
They gaze and they pass on. But I adore.
They think they love. I love till time doth grow
Weary of rose-hung hill and wave-white shore:
Yea, till the Alps wax weary of their snow.
I stand alone in this—that no man brings
His heart, and counts its blood-drops while he sings.

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XXVIII. THE PATH OF DEATH

At last the sacred path is opening out before me:
Its mists and dews of night and scents of flowers fold o'er me
Ceaseless and sudden wings.
The path that Byron trod, and Keats,—are we to tread it?
So many have passed along the road, and shall we dread it?
Lo! the whole road with weird soft whispers rings.

Whispers there are of men, and whispers soft of lovers
Among the groves that line the path and fill the covers
With soft luxuriant bloom.
Ah! this is not the path of death. Nay surely, surely
Death's path is darker far, and tenanted obscurely
By grey-winged ghost-shapes shuddering from their tomb.

This path is very fair. We mark old well-known faces:
Full are the banks of ferns, and full are the wild places
Of flowers whose scent is meet:—

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We deemed the path of death was terrible. We tread it,
And lo! that moment cease, for ever cease, to dread it;
And even its terrors wax exceeding sweet.

What terror can be left when, rocky, grassy, gravelled,
Flowerless or full of flowers, not one yard is untravelled
Of the once lonely way?
Thousands have gone before, and made the pathway brighter:
Yea, women's souls have left the roadside blossoms whiter
And men's strong souls have left its ghosts less grey.

We soon shall have the right to tread the lonely valley.
The buglers of the ghosts will sound their wrathful rally;
But we reck not of these:
We think of poets great who trod the valley-border
And entered heaven beyond in spite of watch and warder
And drank the fragrance of the heavenly breeze.

And I,—I think of thee. No road that thou wilt travel,
Though o'er it mists and fogs their wild wet locks unravel,
Can deadly or dangerous be.
If thou must one day pass along the road, it follows
That Love dreads not the path's dim darkest deepest hollows
More than sea-birds the green gulfs of the sea.

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XXIX. “YET THIS I ASK”

Yet this I ask, this simple thing, of thee.
Be always good and noble for my sake.—
Because thou hast the very power to break
The heart of man, and move it utterly,
Use thy divine sweet gift unselfishly:—
While I the cloud-swept lonely sea-path take
Let me look back to the furze-golden brake
Of morning, bright with butterfly and bee,
Remembering one, bright as the morning, there,
Who powerless yet with the sea-wind to cope
Still gathered from her singer heart of hope
Ever towards heights of nobleness to dare,
And, queen of all the flowers, was queen besides
Of her own spirit, and sovereign of its tides.

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XXX. “FATHER AND LOVER”

Father and lover am I all in one.—
Father; since half my life was lived before
I met thy glance,—and loved thee evermore:
Father; since more than half my work was done
Before I knew thee, daughter of the sun
And child of morning:—Lover, since I found
Heaven in thy presence, heeding nought around
So only one sweet answering look was won.

Father; since ever greedily I sought
To shield thee from the world and all its woes:
Lover; since songful flower on flower I brought,—
Violet and jonquil and great trembling rose:
And madman too; since all I gave had nought
Of power my true deep yearning to disclose.

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XXXI. MY ANCHOR

Thou art my anchor in a stormy sea,
My one sweet anchor,—holding fast my life
In the dim mist of trouble and wild strife
To the pure vision of the love of thee.—
Without thine help where would my harbourage be?
Life's billows fierce and iron-tongued and strong
Would slay my spirit, and engulf my song,
And the fair golden hope of heaven would flee.

This thou hast taught me,—that a weary man,
Weary with life and tired-out past all speech,
May suddenly a new road-corner gain
Whence, fair beyond all hope of words to reach,
New lovely flowerful meads may stretch away,
While golden sunset gilds the death of day.

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XXXII. “THIS THOU HAST TAUGHT ME”

This thou hast taught me,—that it may be grand
Beyond all words to feel oneself grow old:
To watch the mists from brightening summits rolled
And pass from sweet youth's to strong manhood's land.
Thou hast turned my life's page with thy dear white hand;
Lo! with glad gaze my wondering eyes behold
Undreamed-of mountains touched by morning's gold,
And at the borders of new realms I stand.

This thou hast taught me,—that the land of death
To which, long ere thou tread'st it, I shall go
May be a sweet and gracious land to know
If only till his last long mortal breath
A man shall strive to love unselfishly,
As God's sure stars love the tumultuous sea.

125

XXXIII. GOD'S LAURELS

Not fame; not high repute; not praise of men;
Not to be worshipped loudly when he died
As king or poet,—honoured far and wide;
No pedestal of large renown to gain;
Only the pangs of immemorial pain:—
For his chief honour? To be crucified.—
For his companions? Thieves on either side.—
For his bright cordon? The slow red blood-stain.—

This was his crown. To die 'mid shouts of scorn;
Lonely, forsaken, yes of God it seemed,
Pain-stricken, cursed, unutterably forlorn,—
While even yet with love the deep eyes gleamed.
To be the man of all men most downtrod—
These were the laurels of the Son of God.

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XXXIV. ANOTHER YEAR

Another year has passed,—and still my soul may love thee,
And still my wings of song may hover, sweet, above thee:
God still lets this thing be.
Then shall I not be glad, yea past all strong words grateful,
That still I have the right in this world wild and hateful
To love, to love,—to break my heart for thee.

That still I have the right, supreme and past denial,
To pray to God to lift thy soul through every trial;
That still God looks to me
By prayer and anguish strong to be thy guardian lover
And with stern wings, blood-splashed but outspread yet, to cover
And shield thine head; that still I fight for thee.

127

Another whole long year,—and still I stand before thee,
And still song's sword is drawn and flames and flashes for thee
Like lights far out at sea
Seen through the sombre mirk and rain-splashed deadly weather
When the great ships shriek out and wail and plunge together
Towards the wild whiteness thundering on their lee.

Another whole long year,—and still I am thy lover;
And still my song may seek, and still my shield may cover,
Protect and safeguard thee.
This is most good and great,—that all the flowers of summer
Have passed and died, yet thou most sweet autumnal comer
With the wild autumn comest back to me.

This is most sweet to think,—that flowers beyond all number
Have sought the Western slopes and sunk in pallid slumber,
Soft bloom of shrub and tree,
But still thou art mine own. Not all the stormiest weather
Can move my soul when thou and I stand close together,
For then the fierce winds seem to shout for glee.

128

It is so sweet to know that though the summer passes,
And all its scented flowers and all its feathery grasses
Tremble and weep and flee,
Yet thou art still the same. Thank God, thou hast not vanished!
Oh, God, when, weary at last, the summer's face he banished
Dreaded to banish thee.

Yes, though the year has passed, the same glad love-chains bind me.
So sweet thou art to me I dare not look behind me
Or round, lest thou shouldst flee:
When thou art with me, love, I only watch thy glances
Lest thou shouldst pass away, and all the world's romances
Vanish along with thee.

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XXXV. MY REWARD

This reward have I for my love and pain:
To feel through pain the sweet love deeper grow;
The more I sacrifice, the more to know
Of the pure secrets of love's inner fane.
Yes, this is great and worth sharp pangs,—to gain
Exquisite tender priceless knowledge so
Of how the passionate heart of Love can glow
Immortally, while mortal we remain.

To feel my love wax deeper day by day:
This is love's tender and divine reward;
To find that perfect love no boundary keeps,
But ever with inevitable sword
That hurls all base and evil things away
Through heights and depths of light and darkness sweeps.

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XXXVI. “HAUNTED FOR EVER”

Not once in many days,—once in a generation,
Doth beauty such as thine dawn forth upon a nation:—
As, ever, Romney's art
Struggled, in vain, to paint the beauty that he cherished
Which but for him had past from the eyes of men and perished,
So would I picture thee ere I depart.

Yes: I was born for this. Wherever now I wander,
Whatever dreams of life or dreams of Art I ponder,
Most surely I still shall see,
Down to my day of death, and far beyond (if over
The mystic stream may pass the soul of man or lover),
Through all far future time, the eyes of thee.

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For this end was I born, and sense of form and metre
God gave me,—that thy laugh, than all fair music sweeter,
Might in my song abide:
For this God let us meet,—that I might ever after
Be haunted by a dream—the dream of thy soft laughter,
And by one yearning—to be at thy side.

God trained my soul for this, and gave me power of singing,
That when the moment came and thy soft laugh went ringing
Down valley and sunlit dell
My ear and soul might catch the deathless music in it
And through all time be thine, to death-land from that minute,
Haunted for ever by its mystic spell.

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XXXVII. THE CROWNING GRACE

No wonder I was dazed: no wonder I was gladdened.
Thy beauty is of the type that now and then hath maddened
A whole great nation's heart:
Priceless to all who meet the sacred God-sent jewel;
Priceless if it be kind, death's dart if it be cruel,
But ever deathless in the land of Art.

This hath been given to thee. The beauty that can harm us,—
Redeem or sink to hell,—lift us, delight us, charm us
Into a worship wild.
But oh be more than this! Add to thy beauty's splendour
The grace that crowneth all, when through a woman's tender
Deep eyes shine forth the pure eyes of a child.

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XXXVIII. PERFECT REST

This gives me perfect rest,—this is my exceeding rapture.
Quite to forget myself, and my own thoughts, and capture
Some new sweet sense of thee.
To lose myself in thee. To watch, soul-pale and breathless,
The beauty that gleams forth, inevitably deathless:
To see nought else but this,—yet this to see.

I never knew the rest that God could give a poet
Till thee I saw, and now I never more can know it
Save when thou art with me.
It rests my whole deep soul past words and past all measure
And gives my weary heart unfathomable pleasure
To wonder and gaze, and gaze and wonder at thee.

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XXXIX. “IF CHRIST BE ‘RISEN INDEED’”

If Christ be “risen indeed,” is this not then the presage
Of a strange deathless sweet immeasurable message,—
A token of what shall be
Not only for the hills and limitless blue mountains
And silver-laughing hearts of fern-embroidered fountains
And for all flowers, but also, love, for thee?

Not only will all lands hear somewhat of the token:
Not only will death's deep dark evil spell be broken
For the immemorial past:
Not only will the stars rejoice and sing together
And newly risen birds spread forth bright deathless feather
As on the laughing winds their wings they cast:

Not only will the heaven to Cleopatra's splendour
Sweeter and nobler now, great peerless homage render:
All past fair queens shall rise

135

With the eternal light of heaven within their glances
And all the fire of old beloved and high romances,
Flaming, shall be rekindled at their eyes.

The message is for all: for all the world of roses
And for the violet blue whose humbler head reposes
Beside the roses' feet.
The message is for each: for every generation;
For the deep heart of each vast struggling heaving nation:—
Lo! “Christ is risen.” Is not the news most sweet?

The news that Love and Life are after all the stronger:
That if pale hate holds out, sweet rose-flushed Love lasts longer:
The news that death is dead,
And that triumphant Love, though weary with long labour
And fiercer strife, may sheathe at last his bloodied sabre
And raise towards stainless airs his golden head.

The beauty that struck deep,—the wondrous look that maddened,—
The summer sunful eyes that, as they glistened, gladdened
The whole world like the morn,—
These shall not pass away. Nay, with a glance supremer
Thine eyes shall seek in heaven for me thy poet-dreamer,
Demanding that new nobler song be born.

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XL. MY POST

Oh, have I not this post—to sing for ever for thee?
To shed the glory of song and love's vast sunshine o'er thee,
Watchful lest harm befall.
Oh, have I not this right, supremely grand and fateful,
For which of all God's gifts I am to God most grateful,—
The right to suffer for thee more than all?

This is my part, my post. No man can take it from me.
No strength can now disarm, no sword-edge can displume me:
In front of thee I stand.
To die for thee were sweet. To live for thee is harder.
Yet, patient, this I do,—an ever watchful warder
At the sweet golden gates of fairy-land.

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XLI. STARS AND THE SUN

All other faces fade before thy face imperial.
As the dark night fades out when once the blue ethereal
Bright daylight fills the air:
As all the flowers draw back behind their leafy curtain
Instinctively afraid when regnant, red-lipped, certain
Of amplest homage, the grand rose draws near.

The man who has seen thee may well draw back in wonder.—
O man, the years may pass, the purple skies may thunder,
The clear spring freshets run,
New crimson dawns may break, new golden mist-wreaths brighten,
Yet till thy head at last with weary hair doth whiten
What stars are left thee, having seen the sun?

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XLII. FAIRY-LAND

Pure must the warder be whose anxious footstep waits,
Watchful for evermore, beside the fairy-gates:
But who would enter there
Must even purer be, and stronger, and his hand
Spotless,—if he would tread the sacred fairy-land
And breathe its mystic air.

If I would worship thee, and tread, with thee beside,
The grass of fairy-land, how pure and strong and wide
And deep my soul must be!
“God! purify my heart,—that it may have the power
To enter fairy-land with this sweet fairy flower.’
“Fairy: I follow thee!’

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XLIII. OLD DREAMS

Old dreams of fairy-land, pure boyish dreams delightful,
Returned along with thee. My soul once more with rightful
Strong energy took flame.
Old dancing glancing thoughts the long sad years had hidden
Sprang forth to life renewed, at thy sweet mandate bidden:
Along thy path the dead romances came.

These all leapt up alive, and sang in chorus round thee.
The boyish woods took leaf, and bloom of old flowers found thee
And pure old dreams once more
Filled all my heart. Again I longed with knightly daring
To carry thee away, through some green forest faring,
Captive and hostage of some border war.

140

Ah! those old days are dead. We cannot reillume them,
Nor wake their worn-out hearts; we cannot disentomb them;
We cannot bring them back,
Nor mark once more, divine, and bright with laughter airy,
Titania, loveliest queen and most delicious fairy,
Weaving red heather-bloom beside the track.

But thou hast brought them back. Thou in triumphant measure
Hast quite renewed for me the lost days' boyish pleasure
And given me heart to hear
Slow, sweet, throughout the woods the fairy voices calling,
And thine own laugh is like Titania's laughter, falling
With lovelier cadence on my ravished ear.

141

XLIV. A MESSAGE

I want thee, dear, to know—if my life's work is over
Nearly,—how proud I am that as thy songful lover
I entered these last lists.
Of all strong final work this I would choose the sureliest:
A true man sings the best, as ever too the pureliest,
With love's gold fetters round about his wrists.

There is not any work,—if this indeed be nearly
The end of all,—that I with vision keen, and clearly
Discerning all, would take
Sooner than this. To sing thy girlish beauty peerless
And then to pass,—content and satisfied and fearless,—
While all hearts love thee for the sweet song's sake.

142

XLV. MADAME

Madame!—no English word gives quite the shade of meaning,—
What will you do when I on heaven's white sills am leaning
Or singing high songs there?
Will you bestow a thought on the old vanished lover
As through the green-blue grass where lurks the scented clover
You wander, breathing the June evening air?

Madame! will you think much,—when at the play your laughter
Rings out,—of one who heard and marvelled ever after
With tenderest sweet surprise?
As your soft blue-black hair falls round your shapely shoulder
Will you remember one to whom all life grew colder
When that dark hair-knot vanished from his eyes?

143

XLVI. “THEE I CANNOT ESCAPE”

Thee I cannot escape.—The whole great world remindeth
My soul of thee. Whate'er of joy my spirit findeth
It longs with thee to share:
The glory of the moors alight with purple heather;
The splendour of the calm untroubled summer weather;
The low soft laughter of the moonlit air.

When I behold the tides for ever surging, breaking,
Against the granite walls that guard with base unshaking
The wind-swept Cornish shore,
I long for thee to see with me the vast Atlantic
As the great waves with leap delirious and gigantic
Charge upward,—and foam backward evermore.

144

When I see white clear walls, and Southern hills and towers,
I long for thee to thread the Southern vine-tressed bowers,
Sweetheart, along with me:
And so it comes to pass that I escape thee never;
That every star of night bids me love on for ever,
And every fern and flower suggest but thee.

145

XLVII. LATE IN LIFE

God! thou hast late in life bestowed upon me a treasure
And given me one late sweet illimitable pleasure,—
This maiden's eyes to see.
God, turn them not away,—or how can I behold thee?
God, take her not away. For mists will then enfold thee,
And faith and hope will perish out of me.

This treasure cometh late,—and after years of sorrow.
O God of life and love, ward off the awful morrow
When I shall wake and find
Her hand removed from mine, and death's cold fingers grasping
The poet's hand that laughed for tenderest pleasure clasping
The slender fingers now by force untwined.

146

XLVIII. ONLY AT TIMES

'Tis only at times I know how much my spirit loves thee.—
When a brief sudden strain of heavenliest music moves me
And thrills my soul to tears,
I see my love designed and shadowed out before me
And see its power and force still fierce and urgent o'er me
Beyond the furthest years.

It is as if God knew by briefest glimpses only
The wonders of his worlds—the measureless weird lonely
Star-space,—as if the dim
Vast legions of his flowers defiled in ranks amazing
Once in a thousand years, with spears and petals blazing
Sunlike in front of him.

147

It is as if the sea spake once in voice of thunder
To God its Maker and Lord, and God was wrapt in wonder
Even at the sea his child:
Then spake not thus again for centuries long and weary,
Lapping along time's shores with whisper grey and dreary,
No more stern-voiced and wild.

Even so I see my love spread out at times before me
And awe and trembling dread and deep delight fall o'er me
To think that time will cease
And pain and death will end, and star on star grow tired,
Ere thou shalt fail to be by my whole soul desired,—
Ere love's strife end in peace.

148

XLIX. WEARY

Yes: I am weary indeed. But thou,—thou art not weary.
What hath thy soul to do with grey thoughts dim and dreary?
Thou art the morning's rose!
Long after I am dead, the flowers will gather round thee:
But still my glory is that mine the first hand crowned thee
With love no heart else knows.

This is my glory and gift; that I of all men brought thee
The deepest truest love, and with sweet singing sought thee
And gifts through long pain won.
This is my crown; to know that though love's sword was keener
Than grief's, I met its point with heart and glance serener
Than flowers that meet the sun.

149

L. STRENGTH AND SWEETNESS

True love is very strong; yet love is very tender.—
Just as the breeze to which the sea-waves' crests surrender
First o'er the sea-waste goes
Exulting in its strength: then seeks the garden bowers
And mixes with the dreams of even the softest flowers
And adds new beauty to the red-cheeked rose.

True love is very strong; yet is it full of sweetness.
Strength gives it grace, and grace adds to its full completeness
Of power and force of wing.
Sweetness and strength are one,—divinely, purely blended
In love; in love that through the golden stars descended
With thee, and gave me strength of soul to sing.

150

LI. “EVER UPON THY LIPS A GLEAM OF SADNESS LINGERS”

Ever upon thy lips a gleam of sadness lingers.—
As if the god of love when with caressing fingers
He touched thy lips and cheek
Had sad thoughts in his mind, and some of these had wandered
To thee,—and thou hadst since, upon the sad thoughts pondered
And ceased sweet dreams to seek.

More beautiful thou art for this one touch of sadness.
Not all God's blossoms speak of infinite heaven-gladness:
Not all the rivers dream
Of joy. The blue waves sing, and laughter rings above them:
Yet though we smile as well, and in our souls' depths love them,
Far-off faint foam-crests gleam.

151

Not all the woods are bright. Deep forest-arches darken.
Not to the songs of birds do all the dense leaves hearken:
Nay, some are sombre green.
Sweeter they are for this.—With tenderer fascination
The forest-vistas lure our love and admiration
For shadows through them seen.

So thou art sweeter far for this strange touch of sadness
Upon thy lips and cheek.—It is as if when gladness
Flushed all the rose's bloom
One petal still was left devoid of scent and colour,
In that behind sweet thought lurks ever the cold duller
Dark sad thought of the tomb.

152

LII. LOVE'S TASK

I think a task so sweet, and yet so strangely solemn,
Was never given to man.—Not with bright shaft and column
A temple high to raise:
No sculptured stone to blend with dreams of love and passion:
Not through sweet music-chords to wander in wild fashion:
Not by large song to win the Epic bays.

Only to sing thy face: this is the task Love giveth.
To sing the soul as well that in the deep eyes liveth:
To sing,—as best I can.
The task seems simple at first; yet, as the work proceedeth
It seems, the while the heart is pierced of love and bleedeth,
The cruellest sweet task ever set to man.

153

LIII. LOVE'S MESSAGE

All Nature hath its voice.—The meadows have their message.
The river leaping down the rocky narrow passage
Hath its own voice and heart.
Each star hath its own voice, each sun its speech excelling;
The fountain its soft voice of mystery upward welling.
Tongued is the lightning's dart.

Each poet hath his word.—Some in triumphant measure
Sing of the reign of sweet old-world Saturnian pleasure:
Some thunder like the sea.
I sing of Love, Love, Love. I give the world for token
The message that strong Love with sweetness never broken
Himself has given to me.

154

LIV. “HOW LITTLE DOES IT MATTER!”

So, after thee comes death? How little does it matter!
When Summer's fragrant hand has no more flowers to scatter
And Autumn's keen-edged breath
Thrills all the saddened fields that once were full of laughter,
It matters little then if swiftly following after
The Autumn's foot, comes death.

If one face is so fair that all the others darken:
If one laugh is so sweet one cares not now to hearken
To laughter less divine:
What matters it if death, upon their passing, follow?—
What help is it to one forlorn autumnal swallow
To see three red leaves on the eglantine?

155

LV. THE SUMMER AND LOVE

The Summer fluttered south, and gathered all its flowers
From English woods and hills, and English lanes and bowers;
Soft leaves from every tree:
All these it gathered up, bright fragrant laughing legions,
And sought with footstep glad the southern stormless regions,—
But on a sudden paused and looked for thee.

Love saw sweet rest at last spread meadowlike before him
And felt the robe of death fall soft and dewlike o'er him
And knew what peace may be
Within the arms of death; but, as he sighed for pleasure
Supreme, he felt the loss, still, of one earthly treasure,—
And with large eyes Love looked around for thee.

156

LVI. THE DEATH OF ALL FLOWERS

Now that I see thee, sweet, so very very little,
It is as if the world lacked every blossom-petal.
Bright golden stars abound
And the fair silver moon is full of light, and tender,
And all along the shore the white waves' olden splendour
Breaks, with the same large sound:

The world is full of grace: the summer dawns superber
Even than of old: the wind finds still no hand to curb her
As o'er the hills she flies:—
But, when I see thee not, it is as if all flowers
Lay dead.—All else is here, but bloomless are the bowers;
Like me, they miss the sunlight of thine eyes.

157

LVII. “MORE THAN THE FLOWERS FOR JUNE”

More than the flowers for June,—more than the lonely surges
Long for the sweet West wind that combs their crests and urges
Their white steeds on the way:—
More than the lonely stars when all the heaven is pallid
Long for the countless hosts that round about them rallied
Ere the first gleam of morning's banner grey:

More than the river's heart that longs to hear the laughter
Of the strong far-off sea, and yearneth wildly after
The shadeless waves and sun:
More than the dark-green woods, their bowers with leaves adorning,
Long for the eager kiss of buoyant-hearted morning,
I long for thee,—till love and pain grow one.

158

LVIII. LIKENESS IN UNLIKENESS

Because my soul is strong, but thine is as a flower;
Because I am a cloud that stoops above thy bower
With thunder in its song:
Because thou art so sweet, and full of beauty gracious;
Because my soul is large, and through its vistas spacious
Roam dreams of pain all day and all night long:

Because we are alike in nothing, and can never
Be more like than the flower and cloud that shields for ever
The simple flower and fair:
Because the bitter god, the singing god Apollo,
Is ever unto me the one god whom I follow,
I love past loving thy black bayless hair.

159

LIX. FAIRY-TALES

Yes: “fairy-tales” you love.—But was there ever fairy
So full of love and life, and laughter light and airy,
And soft coquettish glee,
As thou art? All the tales the thought of man has fashioned
Held never yet a queen so graceful and impassioned:
The sweetest fairy never equalled thee.

Ah, dear old fairy-tales! I would that thou mightst love them
For ever, and with eyes quite tearless bend above them
For ever and evermore.
Life is no fairy-tale. There comes an hour for waking.
Yet when I gaze at thee, I see the soft waves breaking
On sacred dreamland's ever-golden shore.

160

LX. GIFTS

And still I may bring gifts?—As, on a sudden waking,
God hears the same soft waves upon the same shores breaking
And knows that he may bring
Gifts to the waves, and laughs for very joy and pleasure,
I laugh for very joy in my small mortal measure,
Glad that my heart may still bring gifts, and sing.

The whole expanse of sea needs sea-birds, and the ocean
Of blue tumultuous air in wild incessant motion
Needs radiant plumes of stars:
The fiery vast superb broad-meadowed sunset-region
Needs flowers of crimson clouds and many a vaporous legion
And fleecy coronets and golden bars.

161

And ever God exults that day by day new-waking
The right to pour out stars and flowers with hand unshaking
Is his,—the right supreme.
The power and right to deck the world his love eternal
With infinite blue sky sun-lighted and diurnal
And stars her hand caresses in a dream.

The world is God's own love. He hastens to adorn her:
Her robe is bright with stars; it gleams at every corner;
And sunshine fires by day
The splendour of the world's illimitable raiment:—
God takes his own delight for amplest sweetest payment
When laughter flashes from her eyes of grey.

And, when thine eyes of brown flash tenderer sweeter pleasure,
I am repaid, O love, in measureless sweet measure
For any gifts I bring.—
God gives the world each day gifts sacred and eternal:
The glory of its noon; its moonlit peace nocturnal;
Its jewelled flash of many a sea-bird's wing.

162

And I,—I do rejoice to know that I may bring thee
Just one small gift or two; that, living, I may sing thee
With love's own tuneful breath:
That, living, I may love,—and if I die to-morrow
May love thee in the world that knows not change or sorrow
With love that bridges the abysm of death.

163

LXI. STARS, AND STARS

I kept account of all the times we met,
Just as a prisoner watching through his bars
Might keep account of the few friendly stars
On which each night his longing eyes were set.
And each star-meeting was an endless debt
To God and Fate for infinite delight:—
Those sweet star-meetings! few and soft and bright
Upon life's background carved in starless jet.

But now it may be we may oftener meet.—
The thought thrills through me just as if there went
Along the prisoner's soul a large content
And sudden sense of something strangely sweet
When, free at last, outside his prison-door
He saw his five stars lost in millions more.

164

LXII. “SO GREAT A THING”

If Life with all its songs and all its dreams—
Its flowers and scents of June, its songs of May,—
Its early dreams of love that pass away
And float like red leaves down the autumn streams
Of pale remembrance; Life with all its gleams
Of moonlit storm-clouds seen through sheets of spray
And sunny noons that merge themselves in grey
Dim afternoons wherethrough no sunlight beams:—

If all these things be but of little worth—
If it be hardly worth while to be born
Just to feel Fate's black-browed sinister scorn
And watch all sunlight slowly fade from earth,—
Yet to have seen thee is so great a thing
That even Life was worth encountering.

165

LXIII. SONG

I

The fleet-winged sea-bird stays not for the sea,
Nor thou for me
O love most fleet!
The strongest prayer that passionate love can pray
Holds not one day
The rose's feet.

II

God weeps each night to see the flying beams
And golden gleams
Of stars that fail.
Love's very soul would die to hold the flowers,
But sweetest bowers
Turn soonest pale.

166

III

One little moment, love, I hold thee fast;
Then is it past?
One fairy day!
One little tender moment;—ah, how soon
The woods of June
Turn gaunt and grey!

167

LXIV. “IF SO THINE EYES WOULD NOT FORSAKE THE DREAM!”

I dreamed of thee last night.—All night thine eyes before me
Shone strangely clear and sweet, and strange delight flowed o'er me
In rippling wave on wave.
All night I dreamed of thee: and dreamed in tenderest fashion
Of the great boon of death that crowns a perfect passion
And of large light that gleams beyond the grave.

How gladly would I cease the feverish pain of living
If only thy sweet eyes might ever be forthgiving
The same soul-maddening gleam:
How gladly would I let the one night's dream continue
Into the dream of death, if therein I could win you,—
If so thine eyes would not forsake the dream!

168

LXV. A DREAM

“Since thou hast loved with love so wild and sweet
That life and time have faded quite away
And thou hast learned to count the hours of day
By love's heart's inner and triumphant beat
At the dear coming of thy lady's feet;
Since, when she is not with thee, dark and grey
Is all the world—thy service to repay
And thy soul's strong forlorn desire to meet,
I send a dream:” even so the Love-god said.
Then I was 'ware that round about my bed
Crowded dim forms of angels and of men,
And the next world shone clear as in a glass.
They bowed before my might of love and pain,
And Death, bare-headed, moved to let me pass.

169

LXVI. MY LADY'S POST OF DANGER

Oh have I not beyond all other men
By love's sheer power eternal and supreme
And by the absorbing might of passion's dream
And by the solemn majesty of pain
Earned the great right the foremost post to gain
Where the white wild delirious sword-blades gleam?
Have I not struggled, that love's light might beam
Upon a knightly shield without a stain?

O Lord of love, if recompence there be
In the eternal universe of things
For anguished love that surges like a sea
Yet rides above the rolling waves, and sings,
Grant me for recompence superbly fair
Her foremost post of danger. Put me there.

170

LXVII. PAIN'S AGONY PASSES INTO AN AGONY OF LOVE

As through the winter's gates the joyous spring-tide passes,
Her bright brow wreathed with flowers and buds and clinging grasses,—
And then the summer shines,
With songs of many birds and sound of many rivers
And laughter of the leaves that rustles down and shivers
Through the concordant leafage of the pines:

As still there is a sense of agony just over
That even pales the rose and troubles the sweet clover
At times, and thrills the grove,
So, in our human lives, an agony of weeping,
Though summer's silent peace upon the hills be sleeping,
Becomes, not joy, but agony of love.

171

LXVIII. “IS THIS TOO MUCHO?”

If my deep strong love yearns for sympathy,—
Yearns that at least its solemn depth and height
Should flash before thee like the sudden white
Vision of cliff that overhangs the sea:
If I would by the love that burns through me
Win for my soul the unspeakable delight
Of knowing that my own love's mastering might
Is in a measure understood of thee,
Is this too much? Did not the Lord Christ long
With passionate heart whose yearning knew no bound
That even on earth might some response be found
To his own love most tender and most strong?
Does God himself in heaven not yearn at whiles
For answering tears of man, and answering smiles?

172

LXIX. THY DESCENT

Straight from the Roman women thou art sprung,—
Though many generations intervene
Since in thine home the Roman spears were seen
And the strong steel-bound Roman harness rung.
Thine ancient home is where the wind hath sung
In Cornwall to the Atlantic's vast blue-green
For ages, and Iseult herself hath been
Upon thy cliffs, and heard the wild wind's tongue.

But thou art Roman. Strange it is to think
That through thy Roman (not Italian) eyes
Shines the triumphant light of Latin skies:
That, as new generations rise and sink,
Still the old Roman blood at times appears:—
Thy dark glance traverses a thousand years.

173

LXX. A WINTER'S DREAM

After this winter, sweet beyond a poet's power
To tell, though every word were tender, each a flower,
What shall the new year bring?
If winter is so sweet, can summer days be sweeter?
Can summer's voice sound forth in yet more passionate metre?
Can fairer blossoms deck the brow of spring?

Selfish were such a thought, else I would long to follow
Sweet winter, and to pass from life before the swallow
Returns to English skies.
O love, if thou art gone, my soul will hate the flowers!
I dread to think how dark will be the brightest hours
If summer takes its light not from thine eyes.

174

LXXI. THE DEATH OF SONG

With his soul lost within the rose's scent,
How can the poet or lover sing the rose,
Or discompose
Even for song's sake his passionate content?

When thou art near me, and thine eyes I see,
The very spirit of singing fades away,—
For thou to-day
Art song, and wilt be song eternally.

What are our songs and verses of the deep
When close beside its awful strength we stand
And watch the land
Against whose breast the sweet warm billows leap?

What are all songs and loving words to-day
Save only mere wild mockeries of thee,—
Whom when I see
Song into silent wonder dies away.

175

LXXII. NOT IN VAIN

If through strong strife of mine, my life may shine forth purer,
So that these prayers may fly with steadier flight and surer
Towards God's high throne for thee,
Why then the strife is worth mine uttermost endurance,—
If only so I gain some inward sweet assurance
That thou hast grown in spirit, and grown through me.

If only one strong prayer of mine has brought thee nearer
To happiness and heaven, and made the blue sky clearer
For thee, or lightened pain,
Why then, though weary I am, and heavy at heart, full often,
Gazing at life and death with eyes that seldom soften,
I have not lived, and have not loved, in vain.

176

LXXIII. MY SWEETEST BLOSSOM

I know that day by day death's cypress-grove more clearly
Shines, that the flowers of life for me have perished nearly,
And that the sunrise glows
Far-off, the sunset near.—I know that thou art tender
And young and fair and sweet, like the white maiden splendour
Ere the sun kissed it of the first white rose.—

I know that I shall pass while yet for thee the rivers
Are blue and full of light,—while yet the alder quivers
With young leaves o'er the tide;
That, long ere thou art old, I may feel slowly wreathing
Around my head death's cold inevitable breathing
And mark his shadowy gaunt form at my side.

177

Remember me, if death should take me while thou tarriest
Still with the flowers of earth and thy light laughter marriest
Still to the bright birds' song:
Remember,—like a dream,—the poet-heart which found thee
And the true poet-hand which circled thee and crowned thee
With praise most tender, and with love most strong.

Remember me.—Of all the flowers that I have gathered
On slopes made bright with gorse, or hill-sides purple-heathered,
Or cliffs that front the sea,
The sweetest flower by far, the brightest and the truest,
Of lilies my most white, of fairy bells my bluest,
Is the sweet blossom of my love for thee.

178

LXXIV. UNTRAVERSED TIME

“Le ciel ayant á peine assez d'éternité!”
—Victor Hugo

Not here on earth I find half flowers enough to bring thee,
Nor half the might of voice with which I fain would sing thee:
The heaven with all its stars
Would not be wide enough to give my soul expression;
Nay, even there my heart would feel a grim repression
And love would chafe against its prison-bars.

I want a whole vast deep eternity to love in:
The endless boundless blue for my soul's wings to move in:
A wingless shipless sea
Whereover free and large my spirit of love may wander:
Vast ages for my soul on love's sweet lore to ponder:
Untraversed time wherein to worship thee.

179

LXXV. “IF ANY STRENGTH BE MINE”

Oh, thou wilt be so fair within the deathless region.—
Yea, love shall send a vast and limitless flower-legion
To guard and line thy way:
Thou shalt have for thine own the souls of all the roses;
Armies of risen flowers the darkness sweet discloses
Shall follow thee, and thy white hand obey.

The blossoms that have died in immemorial summers
Shall throng around thy steps, bright fragrant joyous comers
From all the ends of time.
The birds that died and rose shall gather, sweet, around thee,—
And Love who sought for years but never never found thee
Shall bring thee his own wreath of deathless rhyme.

180

Then on the earth thy name shall be beloved and famous;
One with the sweet dead names whose bright lights lure and shame us
And shame our singing skill:—
If any power be mine of meadow or of mountain,
The music of the voice of even the smallest fountain
That laughs with love of the sun-lighted hill,—

If any share be mine of music of the waters,
Thou shalt be well-beloved of earth's white-handed daughters
In other days than these:
If any soul be mine, or magic in my measure,
Or part, however small, in the wild stormy pleasure
And kingly love-song of the singing seas,—

If any strength be mine of love supreme and deathless,
Love that arises grand from every battle breathless
With sorrow and fate and time,—
If any force be mine, I give it, give it over
To thee; I put my strength as singer and as lover
Completely forth in the attempt sublime.

181

I put my whole strength out for thee,—this one time only,—
And then pass back again to my old shore-side lonely
And watch the grey-eyed waves,
Content, if I have placed thy soul beyond death's power,
To know that all things else time's gulfing seas imbower
At last, and swallow in their hungry graves.

182

LXXVI. LOVE'S RIGHT

What right have I to thee! What claim in words to fashion!
Merely the right and claim of fiery love and passion
And tenderness outpoured:
Merely the right of Love the large-eyed world-redeemer;
Merely the desperate right of one wild-hearted dreamer,
And, if man doubt it, my most wakeful sword.

Merely the final right of love that knows no limit:
That gazes in death's eyes, but finds no power to dim it
Or dwarf it set therein:
Merely the right supreme by which when all the bowers
Besought the brow of God to wear their choicest flowers
He chose a thorn-crown, the world's love to win.

183

LXXVII. A MASTERING AWE

A mastering awe at times pervades me and possesses,
Remembering that my song of woman's face and tresses
Will silent one day be:
This song may be the last of love-songs I shall fashion
Before I leave behind earth's loveliest sweetest passion
And face the passionless dark storm-lit sea.

The awe is very deep and terrible that holds me
When thus I dream. Its spell with strengthening force enfolds me,
The sense of coming rest,
Not on the heart of love, not on the soul of woman,
But on a larger love than highest and best of human—
Supreme repose upon the darkness' breast.

184

Then if all men forget, it matters little to me;
So that I feel the love of the large night flow through me
And meet the night's sweet breath:
If only each morn and night, when men would gather flowers
And watch new sunrise gild the dew-kissed green-clad bowers,
They think of thee and love thee,—what is death?

I am content to end my songs, if I may fashion
This song with such a wealth within it of sweet passion
And song of flower and tree
That never through all time may man or woman gather
Violet, or leaf of beech, or tenderest stem of heather,
Or hare-bell blue, without remembering thee!

185

LXXVIII. “A DIVINER FACE”

How strange it is to think that of ten thousand faces,
Each lovely for itself, and each with its own graces,
One face stands out supreme:
How strange it is to think my steps have followed after
Face upon face, till love was changed to tears or laughter,
And yet this face outstrips my wildest dream.

It is as if a man might worship flower on flower
God smiling all the while in some eternal bower,
Some moonlit heavenly place:
Then on a sudden God, the moment ripe for meeting,
Puts beauty past aside, and to the deep soul beating
Reveals for ever a diviner face.

186

LXXIX. EACH NIGHT

Each night I think: “To-day has brought me one day nearer
To seeing thee again,”—and still the thought grows clearer
The sadder that it grows.
For if again in life mine eyes should find thee never,
Each day brings nearer death; and, after death, for ever
With happier waves the heart's deep love-song flows.

Yes: after death strange stars that mocked us in our lifetime
Sail within reach, and even the great sea's stormy strife-time
Sinks to superb repose.
And God whose hand can make the loveliest flower diviner,
Artist unequalled yet, omnipotent designer,
Creates for love an unattempted rose.

187

LXXX. LOVE

The sea is very strong.—What is the power exceeding
In strength of deathless voice the storm-wind's passionate pleading
And mightier than the waves
As o'er the rocks they leap in thundering white-lipped millions
Or surge far out at sea by trillions and quadrillions
And chant death-choruses o'er countless graves?

What is the power that o'er the measureless sea-laughter
Triumphs, and scorns the scorn that shouts and follows after
Its fair triumphal feet?
Love: raising nigher to God the love-song of the willows
Than all the angriest chant of the sinister billows,
And nigher to God love's true heart's humblest beat.

188

LXXXI. LOVE'S SORROW

When fair love's fragrant world first opens out before us,
When first its sweet winds sing and golden stars shine o'er us,
Its flowers are so divine
We never never think of what shall follow after:
We only hear the wind's caressing lovely laughter;
We see no white crests on the far sea-line.

Then when the dark days come, and all the flowers are faded,
And the green thickets, dense with leafage once, invaded
By the bleak keen wind's breath,
We have the golden thought of summer days to cling to,
And love's old image deep within the heart to sing to,
Hurling song's utterance in the teeth of death.

189

Yes. Love brings endless pain,—an infinite sword-anguish.
Yet better far to love than through dull life to languish
Devoid of love and pain.
So, sweet, though love for thee has brought me pain exceeding
Yet from my heart's true depths, though love therein lies bleeding,
I cry, “Love's sorrow is immortal gain.”

190

LXXXII. “THOU ART ALIVE”

Yes: thou art still alive. The summer forests hold thee:
The sombre clouds of night and morning's mists enfold thee:
Though thou art not with me
The great world has thee safe. Its golden-smiling meadows
Caress thee, and thy laugh sounds ringing through the shadows
That fall at even over the dim sea.

It is not much to know; yet something is it, even
If one's own soul be far,—past language far,—from heaven,
To know that it is there.
Ah me! the sight that I, each starry night, would die for
The stars and blossoms gain, though this they never sigh for,
Content with visions of the eyeless air.

191

LXXXIII. CONCENTRATION

I concentrate on thee with passionate concentration
An age of undivulged unspoken adoration
Of all things sweet and fair.—
Lo! when I am with thee, the light that fell with glory
Unspoken in my youth o'er mountains grey and hoary
Streams o'er life's hill-tops, and fills all the air.

I seem like one whose heart through years of pain has battled,
Heedless of whistling bolts whose red wings round him rattled,
Heedless of awful grief,—
Who now stands, dead at last and risen and conqueror pallid,
Upon the very field where round about him rallied
The last stern square, ere death brought large relief.

192

Therefore I love thee so. Because thou bring'st the message
Of rest beyond the strife, and art thyself the presage
Of lordlier peace to be,
I love thee as a man might, in the midst of fighting,
Love some sweet sudden glimpse, his angry eye delighting,
Of far-off smokeless blue calm bloodless sea.

The messenger thou art to me of life immortal.
Thou standest evermore by death's dark secret portal
And all its secrets close
Are as the secrets then, most priceless and most tender,
That God's own great hands sealed within the bloom and splendour
Of the august and ever-gracious rose.

It will be very sweet for ever and for ever
To know that through the world with worn-out foiled endeavour
While all things mocked at me
I wandered through my youth, then when my manhood darkened
And when my heart was numb with deadliest long pain hearkened
To Christ and hope,—and to the voice of thee.

193

Yes,—very sweet to know that through my love and yearning
There came a gleam of hope—pale stormy wild hope turning
Towards God its anguished eyes—
Hope that there may be yet for each heart a Redeemer
And that the deep-eyed Christ was more than merely a dreamer;
Hope that love's song may reach supremer skies:

Just one wild gleam of hope that God was in our meeting,
And that thou art mine own beyond the feverish fleeting
Small laws of time and space:
Thou, even thou, O love; thou and the soul that gleameth
For ever through the eyes of which thy singer dreameth
For ever, worshipping thy deathless face.

194

LXXXIV. “YET WHEN I STRIVE TO CEASE”

Yet when I strive to cease, yea when I think of ending,
It is but as a man whose eyes stoop downward, bending
Towards river-banks made sweet
With peppermint and thyme and tall reeds bright and gracious;
Who says, “I am content: I need no more the spacious
High hills and mountains for my wandering feet”:—

It is but as a man who merely loving rivers
And willow green that waves and alder dark that quivers
O'er blue tides tenderly,
Thinking to sing of these in some fair inland prison,
Lifts sudden eyes of awe when lo! before his vision
God stands majestic, and pours out the sea.

195

So, infinite thou art. Though I may cease to sing thee
Yet never will my heart through all time cease to bring thee
Love infinitely strong.
Yes: all the seasons' wealth, and every summer's flowers,
And music of my life's long heavy-hearted hours,
And my heart's tender praise and changeless song.

Yet can I cease to sing? Can sunrise fail us? Never!
My very heart is song, my love is song for ever,
My soul is song for thee:
My heart began to sing when first thy beauty found me
And the sweet love of thee encircled me and crowned me
As thy sole singer through eternity.

197

LOVED BEYOND WORDS

III.

199

LOVE'S PRAYER

I, having loved thee as none other soul
Can love thee, stand before thy face to-day
And of thy womanhood this boon I pray;
That, as to thee I give myself heart-whole,
Committing self to Love's divine control,
So wilt thou give me—(thought too sweet to say!)—
Love that shall never change or pass away
But deepen onward towards a deathless goal.

Oh change not, if I change not! Let the springs
Of new fair flower and leaf that are to be
Find, ever, only strengthening love in me:
Let nobler gold suffuse love's white first wings:
Oh, love, if this be what my true heart brings
Of love, love, ever love,—then what of thee?

200

I. “LOVE ME WITH THINE EYES’

Yes: love me with thine eyes.—If thy soft lips are dreaming
Far other dreams than ours, yet through thine eyes are gleaming
The dreams my love-songs bring.
If summer's lips are sweet, yet summer's eyes are sweeter.
If summer's hands are swift, yet summer's eyes are fleeter.
In spring's sweet eyes resides the charm of spring.

If only in thine eyes I see thy sweet soul waking,
I am content; content though all my heart be breaking
For very love of thee.
If only in thine eyes I see thy sweet soul glistening,
I am content,—for then I know thy soul is listening.
Let thine eyes love me through eternity.

201

II. “FIGHT ON”

Fight on,—until the noonday sun be dead.
Fight on, until the sun of afternoon
Fade slowly,—till the sun of evening swoon
With blood-shot eyes and smoke-wreaths round his head.
Fight on,—while rises the fierce wrathful red
Disk of the powder-grimed and sword-scarred moon.
Fight on: the army of the stars will soon
Give light. Fight on, when every star has fled.

Fight through the darkness then, with only light
Of all the enemy's eyes to guide the way
Straight to the enemy's heart.—While sword can smite
And arm can still the mastering will obey,
Fight on. And, falling, first with wild delight
See the foe stagger, in the death-dawn grey.

202

III. OUR VICTORY

Wilt thou not trust me, love, and wait the day
When listening hearts do homage to my song?
Wilt thou not trust me though the toil be long
And many nights and mornings flee away
Ere Fame's hand touch to gold the lingering grey?
Wilt thou be sweet and true, if I am strong?
—Waiting the hour when Justice slays all wrong
And when Fame's lips my conquering will obey.

Wilt thou not trust me till I bring thee indeed
A crown beyond the crown of highest kings?
The laurel crown that crowns the soul that sings
And soothes the forehead where the thorn-points bleed.—
Wilt thou not trust me till the victory's thine?
I at thy feet, love, and the world at mine.

203

IV. “ONE AGAINST MANY”

I saw as in a dream the stars arrayed
Against me,—endless legions surging nigh
From the blue depths of fathomless clear sky;
I saw their eyes flash through the golden shade.
I was afar from help and mortal aid;
My arm was weary and my lips were dry;
Through daylight I had fought, and seen them fly,
My foes,—but now new hosts the old outweighed.

And yet I stood and with most weary eyes
And weary hand and sword confronted them.
Then as I stood, defiant though alone,
The trumpet of a sudden wind was blown
And in a moment lo! the crowded skies
Were empty as seas no ships' keels ever stem.

204

V. SPRING MESSAGES

I. AFTER LONG MONTHS

Straight from the dark of months thy sweet eyes flashed, and sought me;
The light of vanished suns and former stars they brought me,
And light of their own flame:—
And from them all the sense of Spring-tide crocus-hearted
Along my weary soul, swift, on a sudden, darted;
And with thy voice the lark's new love-song came.

Thou wast the spirit of Spring.—The sense of grassy meadows
And merry leaves that dance and balmier twilight shadows
Was born along with thee.
All blossoms are not dead,—for thou art living, lady!
So once again the sun will through the foliage shady
Strike his long arrows, lighting flower and tree.

205

Thou art alive. By this I know that Spring will follow:
Now hyacinths will bloom, and hill and copse and hollow
Will gleam with fiery gold.
The silent heart of Spring that for thy mandate waited
Will break to flower at last—Spring tortured and belated,
Hiding his ferns and flowers in fold on fold.

Thou hast the spirit of Spring and Summer's heart within thee:
And who would love and hold, and worship thee, and win thee,
Must meet the Spring's own eyes
Fearless, and Summer's eyes,—and laugh for very pleasure
When the bright fields spread out their limitless gold treasure
Beneath the cloudless smile of stormless skies.

I know that Winter now has passed away before thee.
The very heart of May will worship and adore thee
And kiss thine hands ere long.—
The heart of all the world will come with love and gladness,
And silver streams will seek with silver-voiced sweet madness
To catch the echo of thy pure heart's song.

206

And once again I lift the lyre the cold had frozen,
And laugh to think how soon of all flowers thou the chosen
Wilt put the flowers to scorn.
When thou dost call on Spring, he wakes and follows after:
In thine I hear the ring of very June's own laughter:
Thine eyes are lovelier than a summer morn.

207

II. ‘THY FACE”

Among the weary crowd of weary common faces
I linger,—and I search through flowerless dreary places,
Seeking amid the throng
One vision worth a thought. Pale Death and Sorrow meet me:
Death sues me for a wreath, and Sorrow doth entreat me
To crown her wild-haired forehead with a song.

Then I take up mine harp, and sing of Death and Sorrow,—
Of how the sweetest things are saddest things to-morrow;
How pain fills every place;
How woe has set its hand upon our city's features;
How agony is grooved on brows of human creatures;—
Then on a sudden, lady, lo! thy face.

208

Then Death and Sorrow fade, and Pain smooths out before thee
Its wrinkled brow. The sun seems ever to cast o'er thee
Strange sunlight's ceaseless charm.
Greece rises at thy glance; and Youth and Beauty linger
Beside thee just to kiss one hand or one white finger,
And Life's young red lips kiss thy rounded arm.—

I wander through the crowd. I wander gloomy-hearted.
Then just as if the sun had on a sudden parted
Dense leaves that interlace
And smiled with gracious eyes adown the leafy narrows,
I weary with the points of daily pain's mute arrows
Turn round,—and on a sudden, lo! thy face.

209

III. “BEYOND”

Thy springlike spirit has stolen from very Spring the power
Whereby he clothes in robes of leaf and bud and flower
Each new year without fail.
Not even Death, I think, could meet thee and not tremble,
Yea, surely he would turn, and sorrow and dissemble:
At sight of thy flushed cheek his hand would quail.

It seems to me that thou hast endless life within thee;
That never heart of man, nor poet's heart, must win thee,
But souls of flowers and seas:
The living voice of Spring within the woods and mountains;
The laughter of the morn in rivers and in fountains:
The deathless love-song of the thornless breeze:

210

These are thine own.—But I,—what can I bring but sadness?
Thou gazest at the plain with young heart full of gladness,
The plain so bright with flowers:
I see beyond the plain the solemn hills ascending
Height beyond awful height, with black crags never ending
And snow-capped vast indomitable towers.

Life's joys are all thine own, its every sunniest pleasure:
While I with only love for sunshine and for treasure
Gaze at thee, rapt and fond.
Yet ever is it true that thou art gazing only
At the broad flowerful plain,—while I with vision lonely
(So lonely!) mark the unscaled rocks beyond.

211

IV. “NEVER TIRED?”

And art thou never tired of poems, and of singing?—
“Nay! not more tired than Spring of merry bright birds winging
Along the woods their way.
A woman never tires of love, so it be endless:
The summer, full of flowers, would feel forlorn and friendless
With one flower less on one acacia spray.

“A woman never tires of love, so it be tireless:
A woman never tires till passion's soul be fireless
And song's heart void of flame.
What, do my eyes not speak? Then must my lips make plainer
That Song is ever sweet, a gentle-eyed retainer
Who follows on the path where Love's feet came

212

“Sing on; and sing of me. Are still my eyes a wonder?
Sing till the hushed birds part the leafy boughs in sunder
To listen to thy song.
A woman's gentle soul of love is never weary:
Lo! lover, how the dark with songless hand and dreary
Will seek to claim me for its own ere long!

“Sing, ere the night be here.”—Song woke at her sweet warning,
And with the heart of birds and with the wings of morning
Stormed through the sunlit skies:—
For song can never cease, while dark and pure and tender,
Full of the soul of love, and full of light and splendour,
Shine ever through song's heart her unchanged eyes.

213

V. IN THE LATER DAYS

So many poets lived, and died, and never found thee!—
How countless are the hearts whose loving song had crowned thee
Had they but seen thy face!—
Now in the later days, when doubt and sorrow darken,
And when to music weird the pain-crowned poets hearken,
For one Time has reserved a nobler place.

In these the later days, when through the mad world ringing
With shock and clash of strife strange sound of fiery singing
Eddies, swift wave on wave;
In these the later days, when some are chanting only
The soul of man laid waste, and passion's heart left lonely,—
While some sing love-songs to the wan-lipped grave;

214

In these the later days, when kings and thrones are falling
And when across the waves the fierce storm-birds are calling
And answering, one by one;
When Revolution's tides across the path are foaming;
When whispers, not of love, thrill through the green-leafed gloaming
And tempests threaten God and mock the sun;

In these wild later days, when all is dark and boding;
When deadly thoughts are hurled like deadliest shells exploding
On pale belief and creed;
Strong help and high delight it is to hold a treasure
Untouched by all the storm—a gift that none may measure—
A task to which none other may succeed.

Through all the storms I hear thy gentle soft voice speaking:
Amid the fiery rain of storm-bolts round us shrieking
I listen for thy tread:
Thou wouldst remain unchanged though all the world around thee
Fell at the trump of doom. The love whose strong hand crowned thee
Would hold thee scatheless though the world lay dead.

215

Great help and pure delight it is to worship theeward:—
Like turning heart and glance no longer foamward, seaward,
But up some valley-glen
Full of gold gorse and grass and gentle pink-belled heather,
Full of the sense of sun and windless summer weather,—
Then, strengthened, meeting the grey waves again.

Such is the peace thou bring'st.—In this wild stormy season,
Full of the sound of strife and hints of wrath and treason,
It is most glad and sweet
To have on me bestowed the priceless charge to sing thee,
To love thee and to crown,—to worship thee and bring thee
Flowers gathered from betwixt the warriors' feet.

Keats, Shelley, Marlowe,—these would, each, have perished, willing,
If only through their hearts thy voice had once gone, thrilling
Those fiery hearts to praise.
They lived and sang and died, yet never never knew thee!
Their swift song followed not, nor might their love pursue thee:
They died, and, dying, panted for thy gaze.

216

VI. THE OLD DREAM

The lonely weary stars that never loved before
And who were wont across the loveless dark to pour
Sad solitary rays
Woke up for thee, and brought their gleaming crowns of gold
And gave thee all their dreams,—strange love-dreams that of old
Lighted old nights and days.

The flowers that never loved brought all their bloom and wonder,
And tender buds for thee broke green soft sheaths in sunder
Eager thine eyes to meet.—
And I thy poet bring the dreams that once forsook me,
Now caught and clasped again,—the old love-dream that shook me
And made youth's wild heart beat.

217

And now if I lose thee, I lose not half my being
But all,—and pass through life with gaze no longer seeing
Things sweet or glad or fair.—
A man gives, when he gives, with absolute devotion.
Youth's love is as a stream; but man's is a wild ocean
Whose large crests shudder through the trembling air.

Youth's love is very sweet: but man's is very strong.
Youth's singing hath its charm: man's singing is a song
Full of the storm-wind's power.
Youth's lips are very sweet: a man's lips are as fire
And life and death he holds subject to his desire
And grasps them as a woman grasps a flower.

218

VII. THY SOUL

Not love that shifts and veers, not love that wanes and passes,
Not love wherewith the light wind woos the fickle grasses
In summer on the lea;
Not love such as the love the wayward springtide brings us
Nor likened to the love June's laughing sweet hand flings us,—
Not such love bring I thee!

I know each passing gleam, each fleeting shadow and light
Within thine eyes, or on thy face or forehead white,
And long—God knows I long!—
To hold thee for mine own: and yet I love thee more
Than any poet loved who ever loved before
Because I love thy pure soul more than song.

219

I love thee more than songs of face and form and feature.—
Daily the soft veil shifts upon the face of Nature:
The violet flees the rose:
The green leaf flees the red; the love of Nature changes:
The wild sea's restless heart from cloud to sea-bird ranges:
Each warm wind's lips can melt the mountain's snows.

More than strong words can say, though they be strong and eager
(Beside the truth of love the sweetest words sound meagre!)
I love thine eyes to see.
But I with life and death and pain, firm-lipped and fearless,
Have wrestled, that thy soul, so passionate and peerless,
Might through eternity belong to me.

220

VIII. SONG

I

Will God at last give me this one sweet thing,—
That thy young lips should touch the lips that sing?

II

That thy young heart should wake a song in me
More glad than morning's to the dark cold sea?

III

If thou canst love me, let thy love abide
Unchanged for ever. Be my light and guide!

IV

But give no love that thou wilt take away.
Turn not the sea's whole blue to waste wild grey!

221

V

O love of loves, my very singing dies
Before the strange sweet light that fills thine eyes.

VI

Let me—what tenderer sweeter thing could be?—
Die at the hands and at the lips of thee!

222

IX. A LOVE-SONG

Because thou hast not made me smile, but thou
Hast made me weep,
I know that I shall love thee even as now
When death brings sleep.

Because at last I tremble as I fall
Before Love's feet,
I know I love thee, sweetheart, more than all
Who made life sweet.

Because at last I sorrow and am afraid
And dread Love's hand,—
Because an agony lest loveless shade
Blot out Love's land

223

Possesses me,—I know that all my heart
Is thine indeed,
And that strong love of thee, not love of Art,
Is now my creed.

I know that thou hast changed my being quite
And made it strong;
Thou with the coal-black hair and eyes whose light
Is light of song.

I know that thou hast made me pure and brave;
Turn not, nor flee:
Take thou not back the priceless gift Love gave:
Absorb thou me.

Hold me and thrill me with thy wondrous eyes
Till time is dead;
Till the last sunset's flush across wild skies
Fades out, blood-red.

For never since I met them—never yet—
Have mine eyes turned
From thine. The light thou didst within them set
Has duly burned.

224

And death will find me watching still thine eyes,
Not watching things
About me,—trembling shores or tottering skies
Or golden wings.

Hold me; oh, hold me ever, till the grave
Close over me.
Cast me not back to wander like a wave
O'er boundless sea.

For thee I love with all my strength of soul.
Lo! at thy feet
While years flit on and changeful seasons roll
O love, O sweet,

I rest,—as I have rested never yet.
Be true to me.
Eyes, gaze through mine till mine own eyes have met
Eternity.

225

X. KNOWN, YET UNKNOWN

Because I know thee well, yet never quite,
I love thee so.
Most sweet thou art, yet strange. Each morning's light
New blossoms blow,—

And every morn within thine eyes the light
Of unseen things
Shines. It were loss to apprehend thee quite.
Thy mystery flings

A new and ever newer charm around
Thy being here.
While others weary, thou art ever found
More and more dear.

226

XI. MY QUEEN

SONG

I

Of all girls' faces sweet and very fair
There is but one
I love.—Can all the stars that gild the air
Put out the sun?

II

Can all the flowers that fill the garden-bed
Dismay the rose?
Nay! Love's hand only over one sweet head
His glory throws.

227

III

There are fair flowers and faces—that I know—
Many to see.
But only one whose beauty lays me low;
But one for me.

IV

Eyes meet my own. They never hold me now:
Their spell is o'er.
But thine eyes hold me. At thy feet I bow
For evermore.

V

There are fair faces. Only one for me:
One mouth, I ween:
One royal look of tenderest sovereignty:
One love, one queen.

228

XII. “NOW LET ME REST”

SONG

I

I feel that I have all my life been seeking,
Seeking for thee.
Now let me rest, and listen to Love speaking
At length to me.

II

Just let me listen to Love's silver laughter
That rings in thine.
Just let me see thine eyes, and never after
For others pine.

229

III

Just let me listen to the music flowing,
Love, through thy voice;
Watch the sweet flush upon thy bright cheek glowing;
In thee rejoice.

IV

Just let me rest as if it were for ever,
Love, in thy sight,
And dream that death and parting cannot sever
Nor sorrow blight.

V

Just let me, sweetest heart that ever found me
(For love's own sake!)
Dream that thy passionate deathless love has crowned me
And never wake.

230

XIII. SUPREME REPOSE

I

Now all old storms of passionate emotion
Are no more stirred.
It is as if the whole Atlantic ocean
Loved one sea-bird!

II

It is as if the wild unbroken anguish
That surged through me
Had found new peaceful wings that droop and languish
O'er summer sea.

231

III

Old thoughts, old dreams, in thee have found their haven,
And deep repose
Sinks o'er the heart upon whose walls are graven
Strange prints of woes.

IV

Upon me rest unutterable falleth
When thou art near:
Peace from the heaven of heavens with soft voice calleth
When thee I hear.

V

Not even a kiss I ask: I only covet
That I may weep.
Thine heart I ask; but just that I may love it
And fall asleep.

232

XIV. “BE THOU HAPPY!”

I

Oh, be thou happy! Let me ever know
At least this thing—
That thoughts and dreams of mine that worked me woe
Have made thee sing!

II

There is not any man upon the earth,
Beneath God's sky,
With songs upon his lips and seeming mirth,
So weary as I.

233

III

There is not any woman on the earth
So sweet as thou:
Oh that my pain may magnify thy mirth,
Strong Love knows how!

IV

If thou art happy, I am half content
For aye to be
The weariest living soul. Mine eyes are bent
Alone on thee.

V

And while I hear thy laughter softly ring,
And thine eyes gleam,
I just have heart enough to love and sing
And sing and dream.

234

XV. SUPREME DEVOTION

I

If I can love thee with supreme devotion,
Wilt thou love me,
And mingle with my heart's wild throbbing ocean
Thy silver glee?

II

Lo! love is ne'er content. Love longeth ever
Itself to bring.
Love's one despair is this—that it can never
Its whole soul fling

235

III

Down at the loved one's feet. How small and grievous
The gifts we make!
Slight piteous wreaths Time's grudging slow hands weave us,
And these we take

IV

And crown the souls we love. But if our power
And will were one,
Each star our hands would bring, and every flower,
And every sun.

236

XVI. THE ONLY DEATH

I

When thou didst speak of death, it seemed to me
The only death would be the loss of thee.

It is not death that hurts, nor wounds nor pain;
This would be death—to see no more again

Thine eyes. There is no other death for me
Now left, O loved one, than the loss of thee.

II.

For I have so completely lost in thine
My life, that now it seemeth no more mine

But just a life that floweth, love, through thee,
As the warm land-stream mingleth with the sea.

Thou art my life; and life means now to me
The life, the beauty, and the love of thee.

237

XVII. A VISION

I saw a company whom God had crowned.—
They held the post of danger through the day
And died at night upon the blood-stained ground
And over them the moon soared gaunt and grey
And the wild leaves fled past with wailing sound:
But now, in heaven, their pain had passed away
And they were crowned and victors. Yet their eyes
Were full of tears. They knew not why there rang
Along the serried armies of the skies
So vast a shout. Their joy was like a pang,
So unexpected was it. Wild surprise
Smote through their dumb hearts as the angels sang
“Glory to these, who held the one chief post
And held it to the end,—and died at night

238

And won the battle for the whole great host
Yet saw no victory when their souls took flight
Across the red-stained meadows.” Too engrossed
With their own task to watch the waning light
They tarried till the end,—till each one fell
Prone at his post. Now unto each God says:
“Soul, thou didst win the fight. Thou hast done well.”
And, as each hears with wonder in his gaze,
Each answers, suffering having cast out pride:
“Lord, I did nought. I only loved and died.”

239

XVIII. A PRAYER

To love is heaven, and not to love is hell.—
To give sweet love away
Eternally and boundlessly is well.
For this alone I pray!

I ask the power of loving without bound:
No limit there should be.
If thine arms, love, may never close me round,
Let my arms cover thee!

Let my strong love and limitless embrace
Of fiery fervent heart
Be ever round about thee,—in each place;
Blessing, where'er thou art.

240

Let me on earth and through all worlds to be
Be just the one who so
Completely loved that he saw nought but thee;
Who loved till love was woe.

—That so thine image may not quit my side
Through all eternity:
While I thank God that I have lived and died
Madly in love with thee.

241

XIX. “YET MORE SWEET”

Let me just watch thine eyes. If nothing more,
Yet let this one thing be!
Is it forbidden to the throbbing shore
To watch the clear-eyed sea?

May not the green woods, dark and full of woe,
Watch, once, their bright birds' flight?—
Oh let me love thee, watch thee, guard thee, so:
As guards its stars the night.

Be thou one star within my dreary night;
One sweet wave on my sea;
One woman with superb eyes full of light,
Light ever turned on me!

242

If all the world of women came and fell
One by one at my feet
And offered me strange gifts too sweet to tell,
It would be yet more sweet,

O love, to me to watch thy clear brown eyes
(Though no gift else were ours!)
Than to possess all hearts beneath the skies,
And win those hearts' best flowers.

243

XX. THE WOMAN AND THE GIRL

Sometimes I see the girl within thine eyes;
Sometimes the woman there
Is manifest. So April's tender skies
Predict June's perfect air.

I sometimes mark, thee watching (and my days
Are spent in watching thee)
Thy perfect woman-face. I seem to gaze
On what shall surely be.

I seem to see the woman full of power,—
No more the girl most sweet,
But the magnificent and perfect flower.
I fall before thy feet

Thee worshipping with wonder and with awe,
For years will further grace
And perfect what is now without a flaw,
Thy royal young pure face.

244

XXI. ART AND LOVE

I used to love fair Art with golden wings;
I loved her like a bride;
I met her by blue streams and forest springs;
I wandered at her side.

The sunsets held her, and the morning's gold
Circled her peerless hair:
Deep fern and heather draped the summer wold,
And buoyant Art was there.

And in sweet music Art's sweet spirit spoke;
And over the wild sea
Her face like sudden lustrous morning broke
Triumphant upon me.

245

So all my youth was passed. I worshipped her,
Fair Art, with love supreme,
And brought her all my hopes, and I laid bare
Before her every dream.

Art was my goddess, tall and ample-eyed,—
The queen my spirit sought.
I rested at her feet, and would have died
To please the queen in aught.

But now Art's form doth change into the form
That I love better still.
Art's marble hand is cold, but thine is warm:
Art's stern touch cannot thrill.

Thy young touch thrills me, and thy deep brown eyes
Make me forget to sing
Aught else. So sacred depths of summer skies
Drown out the dreams of spring.

I have loved Art with love beyond all speech
And laboured in her fane,
And sought her secret inmost heart to reach,—
Her deepest soul to gain.

246

But now I bring my deepest love of Art
And give that love to thee.
Lo! she and I are strangers and must part:
New sails are on the sea.

There are fair crowns of labour and of birth;
Let this my one crown be—
I loved Art best of all things upon earth,
Yet loved Art less than thee!

247

XXII. THE POET AND THE LADY

THE POET

Thou canst not understand this heart of mine:
Thou art so fair.
Can the white daisy apprehend the pine
Whose branches wear
Crowns of the stormy stars that through them shine
And stormy air?

Thou canst not understand how I love thee!
How canst thou know
The storm and travail of the ceaseless sea
And all its woe?
Long centuries must it take thine heart to me
Quite close to grow.

248

If thou couldst understand my whole soul now,
It would be pain.
I would not add one wrinkle to thy brow;
Ever remain
Upon my life's tree the one blossoming bough:—
That is love's gain.

249

THE LADY

I am content, if I can bring the pine
Some gleams of blue!
Part the deep dark-tressed boughs, and softly shine
The thick leaves through.

If I can only apprehend your Art,
Know what you are,
And in some dark sad corner of your heart
Create a star.

If I can only bring you some delight,
Some bliss to win;
Pierce with glad rays your spirit's stormy night
And enter in.

250

For God made woman's eyes to comfort those
Whose souls despair.
For this God made her sweet mouth like a rose,
And set love there:

That whoso seeth her should know that rest
Is yet in store
For even the weariest soul within her breast
For evermore.

251

XXIII. GOD'S YEARNING

“Because I, being God, am deathless King
Of all men born,
Let the world's measureless wild sorrow bring
Its every thorn.

“Because I am so strong that even the wings
Of lightning fail
Before me, let me help the humblest things,—
A rosebud pale.

“Because I have the godlike power to shun
Death's sombre night,
Let me the sun-bright pass beyond the sun,
Me, lord of light.

“Because, O world, thou hatest me indeed
And hate is loss,
Let me for thy sweet erring strange sake bleed
Upon the cross.

252

“O world, thine eyes are full of wandering light:
I love to see
The glory in thine eyes that shall wax bright
And full of me,

“When in the end the final work is done
And, one far morn,
Thy fields and gardens smile beneath the sun
Without one thorn.

“That thou, world, mayest be saved, let me be lost:
That thou mayest rise,
Let me the sinless pay sin's fullest cost
Before thine eyes.

“O world, sweet world, the very heart of God
Yearns over thee!
Wild anguish storms God's cloudless vast abode,
Eternity.

“Wild love and anguish storm the heart divine:
O world forlorn,
I kiss the hands that round my forehead twine
Thorn upon thorn.”

253

XXIV. LOVE'S OTHER HALF

Most sweet it were that thou shouldst care for me
(If only it could be so!)—
And yet my passionate deep love for thee
Has its own crown to show.

The half of love that thou couldst give away
Would make my whole heart beat.
Yet I may love thee more with each new day:
Love's other half is sweet.

254

XXV. A DYING POET'S LOVE

When Heine lay upon his bed of pain
Helpless, the end being near,
Love sought his couch, and sought it like a fane,
Brightening the prospect drear.

Young love was near him on that dying bed.
A young girl's gentle heart
Yearned over Heine's world-worn weary head
And worshipped Heine's Art.

He loved her with the love intense and wild
A genius-spirit brings:
She on this earth of ours as yet a child,—
He 'mid the next world's kings.

So when he died, their spirits could not part.
She held him with her bloom;
She held him with her girlish young live heart:
He held her from the tomb.

255

XXVI. TWO DREAMS

On one wild day when rain swirled round in showers,
I dreamed that thou wast dead:
That wandering grass and dreary grave-side flowers
Circled thy dear dark head.

I stretched out arms my vanished love to reach
And groaned in wild despair:
Then sank back into calm beyond all speech,
Seeing that thou wast there.

And yet another dream and weird I had,
And it was pain to me.—
It seemed that women loved me. Was I glad?
Nay, I looked round for thee!

Strange is it when one love so holds the heart,
So maddens with its spell,
That other love would carry hate's own dart,—
Would be not heaven, but hell.

256

XXVII. “IF ONLY THOU ART THERE!”

We know not yet what heavenly love shall be,
Save that it shall be sweet.
Yet this I know: that utmost heaven on me
Shines, when I hear thy feet.

Heaven will be glad and full of calm to me,
Dead will be all despair,
If but my glance may fall again on thee,—
If only thou art there!

257

XXVIII. “BEFORE THE THRONE OF GOD”

I dreamed I followed thee across the stars;
Thy sweet face beckoned me:
Through strange cloud-masses, bursting vaporous bars,
My spirit followed thee.

The vast and desolate and treeless track
Seemed just as nothing then;
Nought if my spirit could but win thee back
And hold thee once again.

Stars faded into gloom, and new stars rose
Upon my weary sight:
Yet still I followed,—followed to the close
Of the wild realms of night.

And then I found thee,—in a land divine,
Unknown, unseen, untrod;
And clasped at length thy soul, and sealed it mine
Before the throne of God.

258

XXIX. PRAYER

Though I be far, yet I can set in motion
By prayer for thee
A stronger force than sways the wildest sea,
The fiercest ocean.

Love passes into prayer, and desperate yearning
That crosses space
And brings our parted spirits face to face,
All distance spurning.

The soul who prays wields force by far the strongest
Of forces all:
He soonest wins love's topmost castle-wall
Who prays the longest.

259

XXX. “ETERNAL BOYHOOD”

I

Eternal boyhood deepens day by day
As the heart older grows:
The man who loves a rose
Is ever immortal, though the hair wax grey.

II

The man who loveth thee,
O thou most sweet incarnate spirit of Spring,
Becomes a strong and age-defying king
Of heaven and earth and sea.

III

No man who loves thee, sweetheart of my soul,
Can e'er be aught but young,
For Spring's self on thy tongue
Lingers for ever, while swift seasons roll.

260

IV

Thee never words may praise
Fitly, for thou art far beyond all words,—
Just as the summer singing of the birds
Outstrips our choicest lays.

V

I never shall find words in which to say
(That is my one despair!)
How past all sweet praise fair
Thou art to me,—and lovelier day by day.

VI

I never shall find song
Divine enough, my beautiful, for thee.
When we stand close beside a white may-tree
Words do the sweet bloom wrong.

VII

Song, once I thought, could never fail to show
The fervent heart within:
Yet, God knows, it seems sin
Almost to sing of thee—I love thee so!

261

VIII

My beautiful, my queen,
My sweetest of all sweet things upon earth,—
My sovereign woman with the silver mirth,
The deep glance and serene,—

IX

The harp falls from my hand! God only knows
(The God who gave to me
To love and look on thee)
How my whole soul upon thee doth repose.

262

XXXI. JACOB AND RACHEL

As Jacob served seven years
For dark-eyed Rachel, and the long years seemed
Nought for the love he bare her as they gleamed
Past, full of spring's wild tears
And summer's passion,—so it seems to me
That I have, through strange suffering, served for thee
Not seven years as decreed
But seventy times seven years, and more indeed!

263

XXXII. LOVE AND ART

Help thou me with my Art!
That thus the beauty which I worship so
May flush the world's sad cheeks with summer glow
And comfort many a heart.

Clear is our duty high.
Thou hast the gift of beauty; I can sing;
We have to bless the wintry world with spring
And sunlight, thou and I.

Help me the world to teach.
Teach me all lessons gracious with thine eyes:
Be ever, love, the most divine surprise
That e'er moved songful speech.

264

Teach me love's secrets deep.
That I may move the world, inspire thou me
And fill my spirit with the sense of thee
Till sweet thoughts make me weep.

Love must not make us blind.
We have to help the world and make it glad:
Thou by thy beauty, I by song must add
New riches to mankind.

Just gaze at me, and I
Will sing so that the world must gaze at thee
And catch the passionate refrain from me,
Prolong it when I die.

265

XXXIII. A POET'S SOUL

Eternal youth is thine.—
The man who loveth thee
Grows ageless like the sea
And youthful like the changeless mountain-line.

Love gives his vast eternal youth to God.
The man who pours his soul
Deep into Love's control
God's temple-floors hath trod.

The man who loveth thee,
O tenderest living thing,
Is crowned immortal king
Of past and present and futurity.

266

The man who loveth with the love that looks
Straight into Love's own eyes
The threatening death defies
And finds fresh water-brooks.

Others may love thee well.
But I love thee, dear heart,
With the strong soul of Art
And with a force transcending heaven and hell.

I give thee just the wildest sweetest thing
That under God's blue sky
Can sing or throb or sigh;
A poet's soul I bring:

Its fiery hopes that rise
And follow thee, and still
Would carry out Love's will
Though Death stood in the way with lurid eyes.

267

XXXIV. ‘ACROSS THE STARS”

I

Though thou art far away
Yet, sweetheart, I can pray
For thee.—No leagues of thunder-traversed air
Can bar the passage of the wings of prayer.

II

I have no strength nor power,
My tender one white flower,
To hold thee safe. The Power that sways the sea
Will for a season take the charge from me.

268

III

The Power that holds the sky
Though my arms be not nigh
Will see that through thine eyes no sad thoughts gleam
But only thine own soul's divine sunbeam.

IV

God bless and keep thee, dear!
Love whisper in thine ear!—
Hope mocks at distance, snaps all chains and bars,
And pure love reaches thee across the stars.

269

XXXV. THE SUPREME LOVE

Affections, passions, many there may be
In the soul's life. But one
Great love brings absolute fierce sovereignty:
Stars tremble at the sun.

The great love gathers in its wide embrace
Affections, passions all.
Where there were many, now shines but one face;
The old love-temples fall.

This is the wonder of surpassing love;
Its marvel and its doom.
A sudden wind sweeps grimly from above
And leaves one flower in bloom:

270

One, only one. Man rises to his height
Of being when he knows
That love for one alone can flood life's night
With the great stars' repose.

I have not loved, nor shall I love again,
While stars still kiss the sea,
With gleam of joy, or chance of awful pain,
Sweetheart, as I love thee.

271

XXXVI. “LOVE'S INVINCIBILITY”

It surely must be sweet
To be loved, sweetheart, as my soul loves thee?
It must make yet more blue the bluest sea,
More swift the summer's feet!

It must make every tender flower beside
The river thou dost seek
Smile almost, almost speak:
It must add radiance to the water wide.

It must make every day
More beautiful, my beauty, unto thee:
I have not lived for nothing if through me
Love doth his gifts convey.

272

It must make, surely, all a woman's soul
Expand and bud and bloom;
As the sun draws perfume
From every flower by his divine control.

To know that love is thine,
Love pure and passionate and all-supreme,—
This must make life to thee one sunny dream
And all the world divine.

If it is sweet to love, sweet it must be
To thee to be loved so,
And through all life to go
Guarded by love's invincibility.

273

XXXVII. A PRAYER FOR THE FUTURE

That thou wilt faithful be, and full of love and sweetness;
That thou wilt let fair Love to exquisite completeness
Round off our marriage-song,
I pray. I pray that through the years that stretch before us
God's sun may ever shine with tenderer bounty o'er us:
I pray that my love's strength may make thee strong.

I pray that every day, as day past day goes gliding,
I may be at thy side with gentlest love and guiding,
With tenderest voice and heart,—
Bestowing upon thee the love that I have lavished
On stars and flowers and waves, bright-hearted things soon ravished
Away by time's hand as the years depart.

274

I pray that thou mayest know—that God himself may teach thee—
How vast a fight I fought to win thee, love, and reach thee;
How awful was the strain.
I pray that thou mayest know that if my soul hath won thee
The power that cast its spell around thine heart and on thee
Was just the power of love and desperate pain:—

The power that moves the stars,—that reaches God and binds him;
Yea, in the farthest bower of mistiest heaven it finds him
And brings him to our side:
The power that shone through Christ when on the blood-stained gibbet
He hung for hours, that love might once for all exhibit
Its deathless kinghood through the man who died.

And oh that I may be for ever and for ever
Thy patient lover true—lose heart and sweet hope never—
For this, O love, I pray:
That I may win thine heart so utterly and sweetly
That thou mayest never need, content in me completely,
To turn, e'en for one hour, thine eyes away.

275

I pray that God will give my heart the power to hold thee
And my strong arms the right in tenderest clasp to fold thee
O sweetheart, O my queen!
I pray that I may be thy leader and thy poet
Bearing all pain for thee, that thou mayest then forego it
And mayest securely on my strong soul lean.

O darling of my heart,—if I to-day may name thee
So, once, and may for once by sweetest title claim thee—
O darling of my soul—
I pray that I may win from God the dreadful power
In spite of hell and death, to hold thee, O my flower,
And win for thee, with thee, new life's white goal.

That I may faithful be—to death if it be needed:
That ever by thy heart my love-voice may be heeded
I pray,—that I may be
Each morning more in love, and every morning truer,
Even as the sky to God is every morning bluer
And bluer all the strange depths of the sea.

276

XXXVIII. “LIFE AND DEATH”

This was the awful thing,—that once for all I knew it—
That God was in the flame, and gleaming ever through it
His panoply supreme.
Seven times hot was the flame, but God was in the fire:
So through the furnace rang, e'en there, my desperate lyre
And agony became like love's own dream.

Yet awful was the place—I, passing through pain's portal,
Grew for a season mixed with hearts and spirits immortal:
I fought,—and held my breath,
Knowing that I at length was fighting not for pastime
But for the love of thee, and fighting for the last time,
And that, this time, the stakes were life and death.

277

XXXIX. THE ENDING OF LOVE'S QUEST

For thee I have achieved hard things and dread.—I know it.
But what were heart of man, and, least of all, of poet,
If this he could not do?
The impossible to love is possible, and easy.
The God who first began his flower-work by the daisy
Conceived at last his rose of fieriest hue.

So I who first began my love-work by soft singing
Of love that passed away, now send a strong song ringing
Along the fields of air.
I who have sung of charm of meadow-sweet and daisy
And stooped to gather buds in morning's uplands hazy
Halt now at thee,—and nothing else is fair.

278

XL. “IF I HAD LOST THEE!”

I never should have sung again, if I had lost thee!
If the dark winds of time had seized on thee and tost thee
Like some sad autumn leaf
Aside, why then my soul would never once have spoken
Again in music sweet, nor the grim silence broken
Of helpless deadliest hopeless speechless grief.

The saddest sorrow of all is sorrow that is speechless,
Tearless, and motionless; like some vast ocean, beachless
Yet void of waves and sound:—
A sea that none may plumb, a waste that none may travel,
Barred by strange walls of fog that never breeze doth ravel,
Sunless and moonless,—and with no known bound.

279

XLI. “THE HIGHEST GOAL”

Not for the Stage,—nay, thou art made for higher regions!
What hath the rose to say to lesser pale flower-legions?
What hath the stainless air
To say to wreaths of cloud that linger in the valley?
When round about thy path the gold-winged angels rally
Wilt thou be less than they, who art more fair?

Thou art a poet's love. Be worthy of thy poet.
Rise to thy woman's height: abjure not, nor forego it,
The whiteness of thy soul.
Lo! there are thousands left to seek the valley-fountains:
O deathless love of mine, be ours the lordly mountains
And ours the highest and the heavenliest goal.

280

XLII. THY GIRLISH THOUGHTS

A poet's purest thoughts that heavenward turn, and seaward,
Are never pure enough, sweet love, when turning theeward:
For thou dost put to scorn
By thine unconscious white pure girlhood every hour
That I have spent in dreams, and every fancied flower
In the dim mystic bardic cloudland born.

Man's purest thoughts are nought. Thy girlish thoughts are purer.—
Upon the mountain-height of dreams with footstep surer
Thou treadest. Yea, to me
Thou bringest back lost dreams that once waved plumage saintly.
And yet these shadow forth thy girlish heart but faintly:
The purest is not pure enough for thee.

281

XLIII. THE VICTOR

What are my fairest songs beside thee real and queenly?
What is the realm of Art wherethrough men move serenely
For many and many a year
Compared to thee?—Art fails beside thee and before thee:
And, if men praise my work, I hear not, but adore thee;
My tenderest words reach not thy beauty, dear.

The tenderest words of man, be he ten times inspired,
Would fail to render thee, to touch the height desired:
Art faints before thy gaze.
When all my work had failed, God's conquering hand, thee moulding,
Set thee before the world, that every heart, beholding
My work contemned, the Victor's work might praise.

282

XLIV. “THINE HIGHEST LOVE”

I crave thine highest love.—No mere swift temporal passion,
That gives, then passes on in boyish girlish fashion;
No momentary thing;
But love that ever grows to higher tenderer beauty:
The love whose heart is one with the strong soul of duty:
The love whereat the stars rejoice and sing.

The love of thy deep soul. The love that, daily growing,
Sees ever, as the path, along the mountains going,
Winds upward day by day,
New heights of sacred joy before its footstep gleaming:
The love whose heart is one with woman's softest dreaming:
The love that triumphs when the hair turns grey.

283

This I would ask of thee—The love that, far from winning
And leaving, rather aims for ever at beginning:
The love whose birth is new
Each morn and every eve: the love that knows no sorrow
For, if the night be sombre, it can create to-morrow
New light, and blossoms fair with freshest dew.

284

XLV. FLOWER AND FRUIT

Why did I not know thee, instead of flowers and mountains?
Thy voice is sweeter far than voice of the old fountains:
Thou hast a tenderer charm
Than all the dreams of bliss Youth worshipped as he wandered
Along the flower-hung roads, and sang of love, and pondered.
White were the waves. But whiter is thine arm.

Why did I not know thee, instead of wooing sadness?
Why did I not woo thee, and, wooing thee, woo gladness
And infinite delight?
If I had only known that thou wast waiting—Known it!
If I by but one hint had only once been shown it!—
But God keeps all his best gifts out of sight.

285

And now I see thy face revealed with sudden splendour,
And all the pent-up love of the long years I render
And homage absolute.
But is it, love, too late? Will God who kept the flower
Waiting through year on year till this triumphant hour
Hold back from me the more triumphant fruit?

286

XLVI. “FORSAKE ME NOT”

It gladdens all my soul that thou dost choose to tarry,
Love, by my side. With thee, all thrusts of pain I parry:
Without thee, I am nought.
With thee, I am a god, and full of life and power:
Without thee, I am lost,—and never one song-flower
Without thee would to the world's feet be brought.

Forsake me not. My heart is thine as never any
Strong heart of singer yet was given and held, though many
Strong singers' hearts have sighed.
Hold thou my heart; 'tis thine. Stretch out thine hand and take it.
Wilt thou redeem and heal,—or past all wild words break it?
God, time, and thine own soul, love, must decide.

287

XLVII. THY REWARD

If thou art true to me in spite of pain and danger,
What wilt thou gain, O love? The sweet divine sense, stranger
And stronger far than grief,
That thou hast saved a soul, and saved that soul for ever,
And added to my crown one flower that withers never,—
One deathless never-fading laurel-leaf.

This thou wilt gain:—A love that never words can measure;
My whole deep heart for mine of never-ceasing treasure
(If thou dost value this!)
This thou shalt gain:—The sense that when earth's loves are going
Thy golden cup of love is full to overflowing;
The sense that thou hast saved me by thy kiss.

288

XLVIII. AGONY

I

Is it not agony beyond all words
That thou art not with me?
Worse than the loss to the white wild sea-birds
Of their white restless sea?

II

Is there one single hour by day, by night
When I grieve not and sigh?
Longing for thee, as for my very light,—
And longing, till I die!

III

Art thou in pain? Hast thou one moment's grief,—
One little pang at times?
O ripple striking on the river-reef,
Think of the sea's wild chimes!

289

IV

O tender ripple of a girlish heart,
Remember how through me
Pours the remorseless anguish, for my part,
Of the despairing sea!

V

I dread the morning and I dread the night
Because thou art not there:
I know (and gladly know) thy pain is light
By what I have to bear.

290

XLIX. “UPON THE SEA!”

Fight while the timbers shriek, the rigging wails:
Thou knowest not what vast issues may depend
Upon thy courage and thy faith, O friend—
Fight while the hoarse shot whizzes through the sails.
Nail to the mast-head with defiant nails
The flag that only love's own breeze can bend:
Fight the brave vessel till the very end,—
While angry powder-smoke sweeps round in gales.

Fight while the ship rocks under thee,—and then,
When timber parts from timber, smile and thank
God in the face of all the world of men
That standing-room is left thee on one plank:
And when that plank fails, should this last thing be,
Why then in God's name stand upon the sea!

291

L. “JOY AND TEARS”

When I perceived that my love would not change
But last through all the years
And over all far heights of being range,
The thought brought joy and tears.

Deep joy to think that in thy clear brown eyes
I might gaze evermore:
That love would quite outlast the solemn skies,
Outlive the sea and shore.

Sorrow to think that it might be in vain;
That love deep as the sea
Might live eternally and live in pain,—
For wilt thou still love me?

292

LI. SONG

I

To-day thou hast the wings, O love of mine,
And over the sea's grey
Thou canst flee quite away
Leaving my lyre to weep, my soul to pine.

II

Young art thou, and thou hast the wondrous wings
Of girlhood, and the air
Of summer finds thee fair
And round about thee all the wildwood sings.

III

Oh, what can hold thee? Can I stay thy flight?
Oh love alone can hold
Thy young plumes fleet and bold
And force thy wandering wild feet to alight.

293

IV

I have no other power,—yea, nought but this;
Love,—love, and love alone,
To draw thee from thy throne;—
Love in my eyes, and on my lips love's kiss.

294

LII. GREAT AND SMALL

Not only to the stars the star-God who pervadeth
The solemn outspread heavens, and broodeth o'er and shadeth
The wide skies with his hand,—
Not only to the stars the star-God's word is given:
Not only to the blue illimitable heaven:
Not only to the sea and flower-starred land:

The God who sows the void with stars, and sows the meadows
With fragrant blossom-stars, and fills the soft June-shadows
With wind-breaths sweet and mild,—
The God who holds the whole vast cosmos in vibration
And hurls through war on war mad nation upon nation
Is pledged to help the humblest human child.

295

LIII. “THE LORD WATCH BETWEEN ME AND THEE!”

May Love be guardian over heart and heart,
Though none beside us stand!
May love be with us, when we are apart,
And keep hand locked in hand!

Though thee I see not, yet thine eyes I see:
They keep me true and strong.
Though me thou see'st not, let the message be
Still with thee of my song.

May love keep watch between us!—May his strength
Keep both our spirits true!
Till, storm and thunder past, we reach at length
The sky's eternal blue.

296

LIV. JEWELS

Jewels!—Can I not bring thee all the light
Of heaven's fair farthest stars for diadem?
Can I not give thee the dread soul of them
And clothe thee with the wild robes of the night?
Can I not win for thee in thickest fight
(Where giant spears and swords love's onset stem)
Gifts that a goddess-heart might not contemn,—
Gifts sweet to love's most penetrating sight?—

Can I not clothe thee, O thou woman fair,
With love for mantle, and with song for crown
Crown thee,—and bring thee, through life's stormiest air,
To peace and, it may be, high pure renown?
Can I not bring thee gifts of love and praise,
From love's soft dawning till the end of days?

297

LV. “IF THOU WILT LOVE ME, LOVE”

Thou art my youth.—My youth lies far behind the mountains:
Unmeasured years of pain between me and the fountains
Of young life bar the way:
To-day's November sun seems softly to remind me
Of strong old summer suns that in the years behind me
Gilded green leaves on many a forest-spray.

But thou art youth. To love old age is but a liar.
He cannot dim love's flame, he cannot quench love's fire;
For all his strength, not he!
Old age thinks scorn of love, and deems love like a river
Whose blue soft tides at cold advance of age will shiver:—
Love laughs,—and lo! love's streamlet is a sea.

298

If thou wilt love me, love,—not with a love which passes,
But with a love which stays when winter smites the grasses
And roses one by one:
If thou wilt love me, love,—with sweet love very tender,
The love which at death's gate sees through that gate the splendour
Which robes the rising of another sun:

If thou wilt love me, love,—with solemn love undying,—
Then I shall hear the heights to the far heights replying
And song will thrill the skies:
If thou wilt love me, love, I never shall grow older,
Nor watch the sunset-light upon the hills wax colder,
For heaven and earth will take light from thine eyes.

299

LVI. THY WOMANHOOD

And dost thou think that I am blind to this—
That half thine heart I cannot see?
That thou shouldst just a little love is bliss:
Yet much is hidden, woe is me!

Thy glorious woman-heart all unrevealed
Waits,—waits in silence soft and deep.
Thy soul as yet is like a form concealed
And wrapped in robes of magic sleep.

Thy perfect soul is what I long to win:
Thy perfect woman-heart indeed.
Ope thy soul's gates that Love may enter in;
To song the entrance-right concede.

300

Give me thy future. Lovely as thou art,
Yet lovelier thou wilt one day be.
I dream of this as Spring's enamoured heart
Dreams of the summer stars and sea.

As Spring's heart dreams of unarisen flowers
And of soft summer joys unseen
And of love-laughter ringing through deep bowers
As yet but touched by tenderest green,

So I dream softly, but with high delight
—Delight that fills with stars my gloom—
Of what thou wilt be,—even yet more bright
One day, and full of softer bloom.

I know how very little, love, I see
Of the deep silent heart within:
But keep that heart a sacred trust for me;
Give love the chance that heart to win.

Wait. Wait till God and Love the moment bring
When soul may leap forth soul to meet.
Pure love can rob time of its utmost sting
And make the weariest hours most sweet.

301

Give me thy soul,—not for this life alone,
But for the years beyond the grave.
When thou to perfect womanhood art grown,
Let heart and glance unite to save.

When thou art woman,—when thine eyes awake
From girlish thoughts and springlike dreams,—
Then let the splendour of love's morning break
Around thee with triumphant gleams.

When the pure spirit in thee is divine
And fair and quite complete and strong,
Place then thy woman's warm soft hand in mine
And be song's soul. My soul is song.

302

LVII. THE FRONTIER-POST

On those who held the frontier-post
And held it through the night
What of divine new light
Shall break when morning shows the golden coast
And the new cliffs in sight?

On those who gave their lives away
For very love's own sake
What wondrous dawn shall break
Rose-flushed and splendid through the parting grey?
What dead hopes shall awake?

303

LVIII. ANOTHER YEAR

Another year will soon spread speedy wings
And pass into the darkness of dead things,
But still the land is ours:
The land of love is still our own to hold;
Its blossoms white and blossoms of pure gold,
And all the next year's flowers.

All flowers and beauty of the coming year
Are still mine own, for thou art with me, dear,
Thou, chief of all things sweet.
The old dead year may carry off its spoil:
It matters not, for thy true hand can foil
Death, and avert defeat.

There is no death, if only love's fair land
Be ours for ever; if, firm hand in hand,
We face the future days.

304

Death has no power when loving hearts are one,
And winter gleams as with an August sun
And lights flower-fragrant ways.

Not only, love, the coming year is ours,
But all the next world's unforeseen great flowers
If God be good and we
Faithful. All future time before us lies
And fervent summers with unknown blue skies
And blue unheard-of sea.

Through pain and dark dread storms we have endured
And this foretaste of victory secured;
Love's fortress still we keep.
Love's flag still flies above the topmost tower,
And still thy watchman's cry from hour to hour
Rings through life's sombre sleep.

305

LIX. “THE ARMY BEHIND THE MAN”

As in a trance I saw a human form.—
The universe with peals of thunderous sound
And forked red lightnings raged and clamoured round:
Ten thousand waves, a white and angry swarm,
Swept on him. Hell belched forth a poisonous storm
Of fiends who sprang and danced from mound to mound,
Mocking. For human sympathy he found
Cold hearts and hands to meet love's hand-grasp warm.

At first I groaned, and in my sorrow deep
Despaired. “The lonely man is lost,” I said:
“The universe is armed his soul to slay.”
God touched my eyes, and I awoke from sleep
And saw the spirit hosts that leader led
Filling all time and space, and night and day.

306

LX. LOVE'S SILENCE

There is a love so deep it travels far
Beyond the reach of words. E'en love-songs jar
When the great depths are stirred.
The blue vast heaven responds to God who made
Its depths profound of awful light and shade
Sometimes without one word.

When heaven is full of love, no thunders leap
Along the heights of the abysmal steep:
Nay! all is silent then.
There is a love so full of silent peace
That even solemn stately love-chants cease
Or are not heard of men.

O love, be with me in my silent hours
And gather sweeter than the old song-flowers
With sympathy that knows

307

That as a soul may be too glad to pray
So even thus to love there comes a day
When the gold song-gates close.

Speech is not needed when the souls are one
Nor battle-cry when all the strife is done
(Yet, ah! the strife was long).
O love, come closer than song's tenderest word,
Closer than music! When no songs are heard,
Be still the soul of song.

308

LXI. OUT OF SIGHT OF LAND

From shore to shore
Far as the weariest aching sight can roam
Billows that climb and burst, billows that roar;
Wan leagues of sunless foam.

If ever we
Reach a new land of peace, of peace divine,
The first green hills will rise beyond the sea,
Beyond the waste of brine.

Far out we sail:
Far out of eyeshot of the former land.
Round us the wandering white-winged sea-birds wail,
A lonely weird strange band.

309

They know not, these,
The calm and beauty of the summer shore;
The light and laughter of the leafy trees;
The fragrance of the pine-wood floor.

No dales are theirs
Thyme-scented, gentle, full of chant of bees:
Only the wild hoarse singing of the airs,
The desolate trumpet of the seas.

Yet triumph high
They feel, those white-winged birds far out at sea.
The green wave's curve is tenderer to the eye
Sometimes than gleam of grass or tree.

And we can share
Those sea-birds' triumph and their wild delight,
Feeling around their plumes the lonely air
And the sweet lonely night.

When trees and flowers
Shine once more on us, they will be quite new,
And other than the old forsaken bowers
Will edge the undreamed-of blue.

310

Our only hope
(What hope for love but this?) is just to steer,
While grim sea-breezes rock the quivering rope,
Past reach of eye or ear.

Then when the hills
Rise, faintly glittering on another shore
That unimagined other sunshine fills,—
On whose white cliffs new billows roar,—

With tearful eyes
We shall mark forest-deeps loom forth again
And with a sudden thrilling of surprise
See summer flowers, and without pain.

But out of sight
Of trees and flowers and land to-day are we:
Above us the great star-hung arch of night;
Round us the grey-green wastes of sea.

311

LXII. GOD AND MAN

Of old God rested 'mid the heavenly flowers,
Far from all sounds and sights of man's despair:
The blue sky filled with light the deathless bowers
And perfect peace was there.

All pure delights were present to his hand:
The stars at night were ministers sublime:
Joy flooded like a stream the painless land
That took no heed of time.

Far-off man toiled amid the nether gloom,
And woman wept, and death ruled bitterly.
Ruin and dread destruction were man's doom;
To love, and then to die.

312

But Love arose and said, “While one man sighs
Shall I contented dwell beyond the gloom?
While sorrow walks the earth with burning eyes
Or shudders at hope's tomb?”

Strong Love stooped downward to the lowest hell,
And made the deepest agony divine.
Love said, “With even the saddest it is well
Now, for their pain is mine.”

And so it came to pass that man arose
And blossoms bloomed upon the paths he trod:
Yet all his joy (though man forgets) he owes
To the deep pain of God.

313

LXIII. MUTUAL LOVE

The strength of man first storms the heart:
But in the end the woman gives as well.
Man's love first plays its urgent part;
Man's passion sweeps wide-winged o'er valley and fell.

First man pursues. With strength he seeks:
For months he deems that no response is there.
Then, on a sudden, rose-red cheeks!—
He laughs, and kisses lips and throat and hair.

This is love's reciprocity divine.
Man loves,—and thinks the woman cold:
But her pure heart is learning line by line
Love-lore it may not yet unfold.

Wait. Let the love-god slowly win the heart.
One day the soft eyes full of tears
Will speak a message past the reach of Art;
Yet he may understand who hears.

314

LXIV. CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS MINISTERS

Some great unconscious ministers Love has:
The stars and roses, and the summer air;
The trefoil lurking 'mid the tufted grass;
The blue flower-jewels in the corn's gold hair.

But man stands forth as minister supreme,
As conscious witness of the life divine,
And says, “The life of God is not a dream;
In very deed God's blood is mixed with mine.”

While lightnings flash, and waves arise and break,
And all creation seems in jeopardy,—
While stormy thunder-throated doubts awake
And spread dark wings o'er lurid wastes of sea,—

Man stands upright, and conscious of his strength
Claims kindred with the Love that holds the helm;
That thrills throughout the universe's length,
And that no thunder-batteries overwhelm.

315

LXV. EVEN IN HEAVEN

Not even in heaven, if heaven I e'er attain,
A heaven bestrewed
With flowers of joy, would peace within me reign.
My risen eager spirit would

Stoop downward ever through the golden air
Seeking for thee
And pause e'en in the midst of holiest prayer
If thou hadst need of me.

No high delight of heaven, no towers of gold,
Would make me glad
If thou wert lonely on the earth,—a-cold
And lorn and tired and sad.

Thy lonely look would strike up through the sky:
Thine eyes would reach
Through all the stars and find me. One short sigh
Would move me more than angels' speech.

316

LXVI. BEAUTY OF SOUL

Beauty thou hast to thrill the hearts of men:
But wilt thou seek for nothing more?
Not seek the loveliness that lasteth when
Life's loveliness is o'er?

Win thou a glory of sweet heart and mind
As noble as thy face is sweet:
Let me, love-seeking, ever surely find
Christ's eyes when thine I meet.

317

LXVII. LOVE UNDREAMED-OF

If I love thee with love surpassing and excelling
All love that song or strange high history hath for telling,
All love-dreams of the past,
Then wilt not thou love me with love that never dreamer
In noblest moments dreamed,—love softer and supremer?
Will thy love-look not seek mine at the last?

If I can bring thee love outweighing and exceeding
The common love of man, wilt thou not hear its pleading
With tenderer than the heart
Of women who are crowned with love that lasts no longer
Than bloom of summer rose? If thus my soul be stronger
Than souls of most, wilt thou not do thy part?

If I bestow on thee a love that knows no ending,
Wilt thou be ever mine, in sweetest purest blending
Of spirit and of mind?

318

—That so our souls may teach the world before we quit it
The deathless lore of love, and write, if fate permit it,
Our story in the heart-depths of mankind.

I long to give thee, love, now that the world is aging,
The love that all its growth and life have been presaging:
The love that Dante knew.
Then give thou unto me a heart divinely moulded;
Sweeter than ever yet the touch of love unfolded;
New to my gaze, and in the world's sight new.

319

LXVIII. “THE DIVINE IN THEE”

I

When thou dost watch me with those clear brown eyes
I have the strangest sense
That some immortal spirit from the skies
Watches, with gaze intense.

II

Thou art not woman, but a spirit high
Clothed, here, in woman's form.
I shall not understand thee till I die—
And yet thy lips are warm!—

320

III

Thou hast the lips of woman, and her brow,
And thy superb black hair
Maddened me at the first, and maddens now:
And yet thou hast an air

IV

Of subtle spirithood that more than all
Allures and prisoneth me.
I love the woman:—at the feet I fall
Of the divine in thee.

321

AN EPITAPH

To beauty's sovereign grace
I would have given, had I the power,
The wide world's every flower,
Each star from God's cloud-girdled dwelling-place.

Now, though the meads in bloom
Beseech me, with most lavish hands
Fast scattering flowers, and all the seas and lands
Bring gifts, I can but place them at a tomb.

1892.