Wealth and dominion fade into the mass
Of the great sea of human right and wrong,
When once from our possession they must pass;
But love, though misdirected, is among
The things which are immortal, and surpass
All that frail stuff which will be--or which was.
After the fierce midsummer all ablaze
Has burned itself to ashes, and expires
In the intensity of its own fires,
There come the mellow, mild, St. Martin days
Crowned with the calm of peace, but sad with haze.
So after Love has led us, till he tires
Of his own throes, and torments, and desires,
Comes large-eyed Friendship: with a restful gaze.
He beckons us to follow, and across
Cool verdant vales we wander free from care.
Is it a touch of frost lies in the air?
Why are we haunted with a sense of loss?
In the glad springtime when leaves were green,
O merrily the throstle sings!
I sought, amid the tangled sheen,
Love whom mine eyes had never seen,
O the glad dove has golden wings!
Between the blossoms red and white,
O merrily the throstle sings!
My love first came into my sight,
O perfect vision of delight,
O the glad dove has golden wings!
The yellow apples glowed like fire,
O merrily the throstle sings!
O Love too great for lip or lyre,
Blown rose of love and of desire,
O God, where does this tend—these struggling aims?
What would I have? What is this ‘sleep’, which seems
To bound all? can there be a ‘waking’ point
Of crowning life? The soul would never rule—
It would be first in all things—it would have
Its utmost pleasure filled,—but that complete
Commanding for commanding sickens it.
The last point I can trace is, rest beneath
Some better essence than itself—in weakness;
This is ‘myself’—not what I think should be
And what is that I hunger for but God?
From love's first fever to her plague, from the soft second
And to the hollow minute of the womb,
From the unfolding to the scissored caul,
The time for breast and the green apron age
When no mouth stirred about the hanging famine,
All world was one, one windy nothing,
My world was christened in a stream of milk.
And earth and sky were as one airy hill.
The sun and mood shed one white light.
From the first print of the unshodden foot, the lifting
Hand, the breaking of the hair,
If you would have me love once more,
The blissful age of love restore;
From wine's free joys, and lovers' cares,
Relentless time, who no man spares,
Urges me quickly to retire,
And no more to such bliss aspire.
From such austerity exact,
Let's, if we can, some good extract;
Whose way of thinking with this age
Suits not, can ne'er be deemed a sage.
Let sprightly youth its follies gay,
Its follies amiable display;
Life to two moments is confined,
Let one to wisdom be consigned.
THE voiceless symphony of moor and highland,
The rainbow on the mist,
The white moon-shield above the slumber-island,
The mirror-lake, star-kist,
The life of budding leaf and spray and branches,
The dew upon the sod,
The roar of downward-rushing avalanches
Are eloquent of God.
My eye sweeps far-extended plains of vision
And golden seas of light;
Upon my ear fall cadences elysian,
Like music in the night;
But all the glories to my sense appealing
Like the stamen inside a flower
The steeple stands in lovely blue
And the day unfolds around its needle;
The flock of swallows that circles the steeple
Flies there each day through the same blue air
That carries their cries from me to you;
We know how high the sun is now
As long as the roof of the steeple glows,
The roof that's covered with sheets of tin;
Up there in the wind, where the wind is not
Turning the vane of the weathercock,
O Son of mine, when dusk shall find thee bending
Between a gravestone and a cradle's head---
Between the love whose name is loss unending
And the young love whose thoughts are liker dread,---
Thou too shalt groan at heart that all thy spending
Cannot repay the dead, the hungry dead.
Love, under Friendship's vesture white,
Laughs, his little limbs concealing;
And oft in sport, and oft in spite,
Like pity meets the dazzled sight,
Smiles thro' his tears revealing.
But now as Rage the God appears!
He frowns, and tempests shake his frame!
Frowning or smiling, or in tears,
'Tis Love; and Love is still the same.
