This hour has shut us like a tent

From all but night; we two, alone,

So close, so poignantly alert, have grown,

That trivial speech, from silence rent,

Breaks off—a useless instrument.

For all the opening world is ours,

And you, tho scarce a woman yet,

Your eyes with feasts of lights and vintage set,

Hold all the dewy wealth of flowers,

And gold of Babylonian towers.

Our lives will alter if we move—

It were so easy now to rise

And tell my unimpassioned soul it lies—

And claim youth’s heritage of love,

Let bald life prove what it may prove!

It were so easy to conceive

Your lack my lack would compensate—

And by one stroke undo the knot of fate;

It were so easy to believe

The lies that such a thing could weave!

The house is still; the midnight seems

Inscrutable—no answer there.

Oh God!—to break this tension of despair.

Between us the calm lamplight streams—

“Good night!” and “Pleasant dreams!”—yes—dreams.

I would I had lain with my love to-night;

Her eyes trembled for her body said,

“I have smoothed a pillow and made a bed”—

But I smiled against it

And turned away my head

To come into the cold starlight.

I would I had lain with my love to-night,

For I know how flowers are shed,

And the cynical scintillant stars are dead—

Dead, dead utterly!

Yet I turned away my head

To come into the cold starlight.

I would I had lain with my love to-night!

Oh, indolent Gods, we too can tread

On the silent spirits, the uncomforted!

She did not reproach me,

Tho I turned away my head

And came into the starlight.

Love (as a cloud on the sea

Hung between poles of blue)

Hangs in the heart of me

Between the eyes of you.

Love, as a cloud on the sea,

Claims the tears of two.

Love (as a wind in a tree

Shaking its tower of green)

Shakes all the heart of me

And leaves no peace between.

Love, as the wind the tree

Tears with hands unseen.

Love (as a storm on the sea

Shatters the sleep of the wave)

Shatters the heart of me

With desires that grope and crave.

Love, as the storm the sea,

Boasts not me his slave.

You, flower-named, and as a flower arrayed,

Open to all the wandering airs that pass,

Opened to me—yet I drew back afraid,

Craven to the blood that would have preyed

And the sly viper coiling in the grass.

Love, when you smiled and beckoned

My cold thought stood aloof and reckoned

Some heights above you.

But now you have turned and gone

Smiling, fugitive as dawn,

I know (oh fool!) I love you.

Love, with her queen’s face and child lips

Walked at my side; her hair about her head

Streamed, with riotous and exuberant spread

Like sails and cordage of sea-breasting ships,

And as the tides, her mirthful glints and dips

Tugged at my anchor’d calmness—then she said,

Chilling to gravity, “You are lead.”

It was as when the bright blade cruelly slips,

For in my soul that hid its vain desires

Under closed hatch, I knew the stifled fires

Devoured in silence, as stealthy serpents writhe

Their folds about their prey; and seemed to hear

The passing of some irrevocable year,

And faint for whistle of a monstrous scythe.

Pain of widest range—

The intimate grown strange.