Till love up-caught her to his chariot's glow. Yet, voluntary, happier Proserpine,

This drooping flower of youth thou lettest fall

I, faring in the cockshut-light, astray,
Find on my 'lated way,

And stoop, and gather for memorial, And lay it on my bosom, and make it mine. To this, the all of love the stars allow me, I dedicate and vow me.

I reach back through the days A trothed hand to the dead the last trump shall not raise.

The water-wraith that cries From those eternal sorrows of thy pictured eyes

Entwines and draws me down their soundless intricacies!

And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the

moon.

I said to dawn, Be sudden; to eve, Be soon; With thy young skiey blossoms heap me

over

From this tremendous Lover! Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see! I tempted all His servitors, but to find My own betrayal in their constancy, In faith to Him their fickleness to me, Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal . deceit.

To all swift things for swiftness did I sue; Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.

But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,

The long savannahs of the blue;

Or whether, Thunder-driven, They clanged his chariot 'thwart a heaven

Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their feet:

Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.

Still with unhurrying chase, And unperturbed pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, Came on the following Feet, And a Voice above their beat"Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me."

I sought no more that after which I strayed In face of man or maid;

But still within the little children's eyes Seems something, something that replies;

They at least are for me, surely for me!
I turned me to them very wistfully;
But, just as their young eyes grew sudden

On the wilful face of skies;
I knew how the clouds arise
Spumèd of the wild sea-snortings;
All that's born or dies

Rose and drooped with-made them

shapers

Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine -
With them joyed and was bereaven.
I was heavy with the even,
When she lit her glimmering tapers
Round the day's dead sanctities.
I laughed in the morning's eyes.
I triumphed and I saddened with all
weather,

Heaven and I wept together,

And its sweet tears were salt with mortal

mine;

Against the red throb of its sunset-heart I laid my own to beat,

And share commingling heat; But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.

In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.

For ah! we know not what each other says, These things and I; in sound I speak Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.

Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth;

Let her, if she would owe me, Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show

His sacerdotal stoles unvest

Sets, for high close of the mysterious feast, The sun in august exposition meetly Within the flaming monstrance of the West.

O salutaris hostia,

Quae coeli pandis ostium!

Through breachèd darkness' rampart, a
Divine assaulter, art thou come!

God, whom none may live and mark,
Borne within thy radiant ark!-
While the Earth, a joyous David,

Dances before thee from the dawn to dark.
The moon, O leave, pale ruined Eve;
Behold her fair and greater daughter*
Offers to thee her fruitful water,

Which at thy first white Ave shall conceive!
Thy gazes do on simple her
Desirable allures confer;
What happy comelinesses rise
Beneath thy beautifying eyes!

Who was, indeed, at first a maid

Such as, with sighs, misgives she is not fair, And secret views herself afraid,

Till flatteries sweet provoke the charms they

swear:

Yea, thy gazes, blissful lover,

Make the beauties they discover!
What dainty guiles and treacheries caught
From artful prompting of love's artless
thought

Her lowly loveliness teach her to adorn, When thy plumes shiver against the conscious gates of morn!

And so the love which is thy dower,
Earth, though her first-frightened breast
Against the exigent boon protest,
(For she, poor maid, of her own power
Has nothing in herself, not even love,
But an unwitting void thereof),

Gives back to thee in sanctities of flower;
And holy odours do her bosom invest,
That sweeter grows for being prest:
Though dear recoil, the tremorous nurse of
joy,

From thine embrace still startles coy,
Till Phosphor lead, at thy returning hour,
The laughing captive from the wishing
West.

Nor the majestic heavens less

Thy formidable sweets approve,

Thy dreads and thy delights confess

That do draw, and that remove.

Thou as a lion roar'st, O Sun,

Upon thy satellites' vexèd heels;

Before thy terrible hunt thy planets run;
Each in his frighted orbit wheels,
Each flies through inassuageable chase,
Since the hunt o' the world begun,
The puissant approaches of thy face,

* The Earth.