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