Love

To love and seek return,
To ask but only this,
To feel where we have poured our heart
The spirit's answering kiss;
To dream that now our eyes
The brightening eyes shall meet
And that the word we've listened for
Our hungering ears shall greet,—
How human and how sweet!

To love nor find return,—
Our hearts poured out in vain;
No brightening look, no answering tone,
Left lonely with our pain;
The opened heavens closed,
Night when we looked for morn,
The unfolding blossom harshly chilled,

This is the fashion of the nectar of my Lord's love: it is as the power of each one's inward vision

This is the fashion of the nectar of my Lord's love: it is as the power of each one's inward vision.
The worldly-wise, the Bhagat, the adorer: to all comes revelation, but to each his own.

Even as when on the plantain stem, on the Papiha, on the sea shell, the mystic rain-drop falls.
God's ways are no wise unequal: but as the soil is, so the fruit will be.

O Sweetest Maid!

O SWEETEST maid, in other days
The troubadours had sung your praise,
And knights had died and joyed to die
To win a smile as you passed by,
While lord and lackey stood at gaze.

What wonder that the task dismays
To wreathe your brow with modern bays,
Or rhyming tricks for you to try,
O sweetest maid!

For you should be those loftier lays
Of which from far the echo strays,
In matchless, murmurous melody
That dies in Love's divinest sigh—
Still Love's strong will my rhyme obeys,
O sweetest maid!

The Torch of Love

The torch of Love dispels the gloom
Of life, and animates the tomb;
But never let it idly flare
On gazers in the open air,
Nor turn it quite away from one
To whom it serves for moon and sun,
And who alike in night or day
Without it could not find his way.

Love, since it is thy will that I return

Love , since it is thy will that I return
'Neath her usurped control
Who is thou know'st how beautiful and proud;
Enlighten thou her heart, so bidding burn
Thy flame within her soul
That she rejoice not when my cry is loud.
Be thou but once endowed
With sense of the new peace, and of this fire,
And of the scorn wherewith I am despised,
And wherefore death is my most fierce desire;
And then thou'lt be apprised
Of all. So if thou slay me afterward,
Anguish unburthened shall make death less hard.

Compensation

The poet hath to sing though no man hears,
And though the dreary years
Bring nought of sympathy:
He hath the sun and sea.

The poet hath to love though hope be dead
And garlandless his head:
Though no man take his part,
He hath the rose's heart.

The poet hath to sing though all his words
Be as the notes of birds
Flung to the bitter breeze:
Yet hath he the blue seas.

The poet hath to love though all his brain
Be torn with lonely pain:
Devoid of love's delight,
He hath the sweet wild night.

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