I MARKED all kindred Powers the heart finds fair: Truth, with awed lips; and Hope, with eyes upcast, And Fame, whose loud wings fan the ashen Past To signal-fires, Oblivion's flight to scare; And Youth, with still some single golden hair Unto his shoulder clinging, since the last Embrace wherein two sweet arms held him fast; And Life, still wreathing flowers for Death to wear. Love's throne was not with these; but far above All passionate wind of welcome and farewell He sat in breathless bowers they dream not of; Before thy face, their altar, solemnize The worship of that Love through thee made known? Or when in the dusk hours, (we two alone.) Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies, And my soul only sees thy soul its own? O love, my love! if I no more should see Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee, Nor image of thine eyes in any spring, How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope, The wind of Death's imperishable wing? V. HEART'S HOPE By what word's power, the key of paths untrod, Shall I the difficult deeps of Love ex plore, Till parted waves of Song yield up the shore Even as that sea which Israel crossed dryshod? For lo! in some poor rhythmic period, Lady, I fain would tell how evermore Thy soul I know not from thy body, nor Thee from myself, neither our love from God. Yea, in God's name, and Love's, and thine, would I Draw from one loving heart such evidence As to all hearts all things shall signify; Tender as dawn's first hill-fire, and intense As instantaneous penetrating sense, In Spring's birth-hour, of other Springs gone by. IX. PASSION AND WORSHIP ONE flame-winged brought a white-winged harp-player Even where my lady and I lay all alone; Saying: "Behold, this minstrel is unknown; Bid him depart, for I am minstrel here: Only my strains are to Love's dear ones dear." Then said I: "Through thine hautboy's rapturous tone Unto my lady still this harp makes moan, And still she deems the cadence deep and clear." Then said my lady: "Thou art Passion of Love, And this Love's Worship: both he plights to me. Thy mastering music walks the sunlit sea: But where wan water trembles in the grove And the wan moon is all the light thereof, This harp still makes my name its voluntary." X. THE PORTRAIT O LORD of all compassionate control, O Love! let this my lady's picture glow Under my hand to praise her name, and show Even of her inner self the perfect whole: That he who seeks her beauty's furthest goal, Beyond the light that the sweet glances throw And refluent wave of the sweet smile, may know The very sky and sea-line of her soul. Lo! it is done. Above the enthroning throat The mouth's mould testifies of voice and kiss, Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial; Her mouth's culled sweetness by thy kisses shed On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led Back to her mouth which answers there for all: What sweeter than these things, except the thing In lacking which all these would lose their sweet: The confident heart's still fervor: the swift beat And soft subsidence of the spirit's wing, Then when it feels, in cloud-girt wayfaring, The breath of kindred plumes against its feet? XXIV. PRIDE OF YOUTH EVEN as a child, of sorrow that we give The dead, but little in his heart can find Since without need of thought to his clear mind Their turn it is to die and his to live: Even so the wingèd New Love smiles to receive Along his eddying plumes the auroral wind, Nor, forward glorying, casts one look behind Where night-rack shrouds the Old Love fugitive. There is a change in every hour's recall, And the last cowslip in the fields we see On the same day with the first corn |