  O HEART full of song in the sweet song-weather, A voice fills each bower, a wing shakes each tree, Come forth, O winged singer, on song’s fairest feather, And make a sweet fame of my love and of me. The blithe world shall ever have fair loving leisure, And long is the summer for bird and for bee; But too short the summer and too keen the pleasure Of me kissing her and of her kissing me. Songs shall not cease of the hills and the heather; Songs shall not fail of the land and the sea: But, O heart, if you sing not while we are together, What man shall remember my love or me? Some million of summers hath been and not known her, Hath known and forgotten loves less fair than she; But one summer knew her, and grew glad to own her, And made her its flower, and gave her to me. And she and I loving, on earth seem to sever Some part of the great blue from heaven each day: I know that the heaven and the earth are for ever, But that which we take shall with us pass away. And that which she gives me shall be for no lover In any new love-time, the world’s lasting while; The world, when it looses, shall never recover The gold of her hair nor the sun of her smile. A tree grows in heaven, where no season blanches Or stays the new fruit through the long golden clime; My love reaches up, takes a fruit from its branches, And gives it to me to be mine for all time. What care I for other fruits, fed with new fire, Plucked down by new lovers in fair future line? The fruit that I have is the thing I desire, To live of and die of,—the sweet she makes mine. And she and I loving, are king of one summer And queen of one summer to gather and glean: The world is for us what no fair future comer Shall find it or dream it could ever have been. The earth, as we lie on its bosom, seems pressing A heart up to bear us and mix with our heart; The blue, as we wonder, drops down a great blessing That soothes us and fills us and makes the tears start. The summer is full of strange hundredth-year flowers, That breathe all their lives the warm air of our love, And never shall know a love other than ours Till once more some phoenix-star flowers above. The silver cloud passing is friend of our loving; The sea, never knowing this year from last year, Is thick with fair words, between roaring and soughing, For her and me only to gather and hear. Yea, the life that we lead now is better and sweeter, I think, than shall be in the world by and bye; For those days, be they longer or fewer or fleeter, I will not exchange on the day that I die. I shall die when the rose-tree about and above me Her red kissing mouth seems hath kissed summer through: I shall die on the day that she ceases to love me— But that will not be till the day she dies too. Then, fall on us, dead leaves of our dear roses, And ruins of summer fall on us erelong, And hide us away where our dead year reposes; Let all that we leave in the world be—a song. And, O song that I sing now while we are together, Go, sing to some new year of women and men, How I and she loved in the long loving weather, And ask if they love on as we two loved then. |
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