romantic poems

" LOVE purifies his acts, " my lady said,
" As first Apollo in his Castaly
His votaries dipped, and in thy turn dipped thee,
And healed thee of thy wounds of hardihead,
Whom great desires into great perils led
And made thee bonds even of thy liberty;
True service of the god, whate'er it be,
Doth in the action heavenly pardon shed.

" Only great sorrows can him greatly bless
Who shall from great ideals his nature draw;
Who doth no other lord than love confess,
And aye shall own not any other law,

Well from the first I knew how long deferred
My rapture, unaccomplished here below;
Yet must I upon all the winds that blow
Speak to all creatures my adoring word,
So burning in my bosom's depth was stirred
The power of loving; loving must I go,
Though crowning of desire I shall not know,
A soul enamored, of the people heard.

All of my lady is this spreading fire,
And mystical the quality thereof,
That, parted farthest, unto her goes nigher,
And seeming most to stoop, most springs above,

She is not a pale visionary thing;
She cometh not to me in dream or trance,
Nor ever with phantasmal feature haunts
The passages where thought goes wandering
Its shadow-world; night's sky-embracing wing,
That in the sleepy vault all things enchants,
Captures not there her form and countenance;
Fancies of her to me no fevers bring.

But when my conscious spirit doth purest ride
In its full being and sentiency of life,
When reason standeth at her height of pride,
And my quick mind, with germination rife,

All earthly loves to me are of the earth;
But not for that are they to me less sweet,
Although I hold within my soul conceit
Of higher things that have a heavenly worth.
In my mortality I take my mirth,
And crown my head with roses, with swift feet
Run in the race-course, and in song compete
With others, and have joys of home and hearth.

For if in exile I should disappear,
And my true friends I never more might see,
Never to love, never to hold them dear,
Save in thought only, happier would they be

WAS it merely so at first
When a pale star in the tremulous air
Palpitated, and the nightingales outburst
In the rich-breathed laurels there?

And he loved me then, I know,
And I know how much I loved him then:
And again these nightingales' quick raptures flow
To the hearts of women and men.

Over the ends of the world on wings of fire
Over the folded night
Flies the soul of my love to my soul's desire
Flies with the stars for light.
Lilies among her hair, and about her feet
Daffodils flash their fire:
From the ends of the world, where world ways meet
Nearing my soul's desire.
" Am I not near thee now,
I, thy love's soul?
Dost thou not hear me now,
Nearing my goal,
Thee, and thy soul's desire?
Are not my lips afire
Kindled for thee?
Will not thy soul aspire
For love of me?

Love in the solemn chilliness of April rain,
Among fresh greening leaves at dusk of evening;
Love in the call of air-washed rooks; love in this lane
Muddy beneath my feet; — here is not love most vain,
Though with strange summer thoughts some birds would ever sing?

Is my love any love? A flash of glorious eyes,
A wilder gleam of sea beyond the dusty ways,
Is this love love indeed? Ah, these gray shadowed skies
All the cold, all the rain, each fickle false sunrise
Cry to me timeless love knoweth nor years nor days.

Sweet eyes afire with light
Adream with tears:
On you will fall a night
On you fall fears:
Yet would I suffer gladly, if I might,
Your hidden years.

Will not you smile on me,
For so much love?
Ah, shall it ever be
That I may move
Your light of love to lighten even me
With all your love?

Passionate fragrance of hyacinth bloom
Through the still calm o' the night
Shot to the depth of the gathered gloom
A scent, a sound, a light;
[Ideally] with thought of an endless land
Hid in this triune power,
A beautiful scorn that the soul may understand,
The wordless oracle sweet in the breathing flower —
A passion of infinite glory, of vision pent
In the sight and touch of a flower,
Where lies the land of the light, the sound, the scent,
The land of one hour?

To walk with him in the lane of May,
Were it not well?
To drink the glory of perfect day,
In a new, sweet way,
While our hearts should tell
The thing that we two should know so well!
But afar in this north of Wales
The wind chills and wails
While I shiver alone in a desolate air
And the eyes that I love are otherwhere.