If it should come to be,
This proof of you and me,
This type and sign
Of hours that smiled and shone,
And yet seemed dead and gone
As old-world wine:
Of Them Within the Gate
Ask we no richer fate,
No boon above,
For girl child or for boy,
My gift of life and joy,
Your gift of love.
If I had known you--oh, if I had known you!
In other days when youth and love were strong,
I would have raised a temple to enthrone you
On some fair pinnacle of cloudless song.
If you had touched me then with your dear laughter,
As now its echo smites me in my grief,
I would have given my soul to you, and after
Lived in my love, grown old in my belief.
If you had loved me,--oh, you would have loved me!
Earth would have worshipped us, its seers sublime,
My song had been a psalm, and Saints had proved me
No, I will smile no more. If but for pride
And the high record of these days of pain,
I will not be as these, the uncrucified
Who idly live and find life's pleasures vain.
The garment of my lofe is rent in twain,
Parted by love and pity. Some have died
Of a less hurt than 'twas my luck to gain,
And live with God, nor dare I be denied.
No, I will smile no more. Love's touch of pleasure
Shall be as tears to me, fair words as gall,
The sun as blackness, friends as a false measure,
Some act of
Love's
bound to reherse,
I thought to bind him, in my verse:
Which when he felt, Away (quoth he)
Can Poets hope to fetter me?
It is enough, they once did get
Mars, and my
Mother
, in their net:
I weare not these my wings in vaine.
With which he fled me: and againe,
Into my rimes could ne're be got
By any art. Then wonder not,
That since, my numbers are so cold,
When
Love
is fled, and I grow old.
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.
Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art:
I warm'd both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
IF life were but a dream, my Love,
And death the waking time;
If day had not a beam, my Love,
And night had not a rhyme, —
A barren, barren world were this
Without one saving gleam;
I'd only ask that with a kiss
You'd wake me from the dream.
If dreaming were the sum of days,
And loving were the bane;
If battling for a wreath of bays
Could soothe a heart in pain, —
I'd scorn the meed of battle's might,
All other aims above
I'd choose the human's higher right,
To suffer and to love!
If I were a raindrop, and you were a leaf,
I would burst from the cloud above you
And lie on your breast in a rapture of rest,
And love you, love you, love you.
If I were a brown bee, and you were a rose,
I would fly to you, love, nor miss you;
I would sip and sip from your nectared lip,
And kiss you, kiss you, kiss you.
If I were a doe, dear, and you were a brook,
Ah, what would I do then, think you?
I would kneel by the bank, in the grasses dank,
And drink you, drink you, drink you.
Dear love, if you and I could sail away,
With snowy pennons to the wind unfurled,
Across the waters of some unknown bay,
And find some island far from all the world;
If we could dwell there, ever more alone,
While unrecorded years slip by apace,
Forgetting and forgotten and unknown
By aught save native song-birds of the place;
If Winter never visited that land,
And Summer's lap spilled o'er with fruits and flowers,
And tropic trees cast shade on every hand,
I told you the winter would go, love,
I told you the winter would go,
That he'd flee in shame when the south wind came,
And you smiled when I told you so.
You said the blustering fellow
Would never yield to a breeze,
That his cold, icy breath had frozen to death
The flowers, the birds, and trees.
And I told you the snow would melt, love,
In the passionate glance o' the sun;
And the leaves o' the trees, and the flowers and bees,
Would come back again, one by one.
I shall not forget you. The years may be tender,
But vain are their efforts to soften my smart;
And the strong hands of Time are too feeble and slender
To garland the grave that is made in my heart.
Your image is ever about me, before me,
Your voice floats abroad on the voice of the wind;
And the spell of your presence, in absence, is o'er me,
And the dead of the past, in the present I find.
I cannot forget you. The one boon ungiven,
The boon of your love, is the cross that I bear.
