This morning, full of breezes and perfume,
Brimful of promise of midsummer weather,
When bees and birds and I are glad together,
Breathes of the full-leaved season, when soft gloom
Chequers thy streets, and thy close elms assume
Round roof and spire the semblance of green billows;
Yet now thy glory is the yellow willows,
The yellow willows, full of bees and bloom.
Under their dusty blossoms blackbirds meet,
And robins pipe amid the cedars nigher.
Thro' the still elms I hear the ferry's beat.
The swallows chirp about the towering spire;
The whole air pulses with its weight of sweet,
Yet not quite satisfied is my desire!
IN SEPTEMBER.
This windy, bright September afternoon
My heart is wide awake, yet full of dreams.
The air, alive with hushed confusion, teems
With scent of grain-fields, and a mystic rune,
Foreboding of the fall of Summer soon,
Keeps swelling and subsiding, till there seems
O'er all the world of valleys, hills, and streams,
Only the wind's inexplicable tune.
My heart is full of dreams, yet wide awake.
I lie and watch the topmost tossing boughs
Of tall elms, pale against the vaulted blue;
But even now some yellowing branches shake,
Some hue of death the living green endows:—
If beauty flies, fain would I vanish too.
CONCERNING CUTHBERT THE MONK.
Cuthbert, open! Let me in!
Cease your praying for a minute!
Here the darkness seems to grin,
Holds a thousand horrors in it;
Down the stony corridor
Footsteps pace the stony floor.
Here they foot it, pacing slow,
Monk-like, one behind another!—
Don't you hear me? Don't you know
I'm a little nervous, Brother?
Won't you speak? Then, by your leave,
Here's a guest for Christmas Eve!
Shrive me, but I got a fright!
Monks of centuries ago
Wander back to see to-night
How the old place looks.—Hello!
This the kind of watch you keep!
Come to pray—and go to sleep!
Ah, this mortal flesh is weak!
Who is saintly there's no saying.
Here are tears upon his cheek,
And he sleeps that should be praying;—
Sleeps, and dreams, and murmurs. Nay,
I'll not wake you.—Sleep away!
Holy saints, the night is keen!
How the nipping wind does drive
Through yon tree-tops, bare and lean,
Till their shadow seems alive,—
Patters through the bars, and falls,
Shivering, on the floor and walls!
How yon patch of freezing sky
Echoes back their bell-ringings!
Down in the gray city, nigh
Severn, every steeple swings.
All the busy streets are bright.
Many folk are out to-night.
—What's that, Brother? Did you speak?—
Christ save them that talk in sleep!
Smile they howsoever meek,
Somewhat in their hearts they keep.
We, good souls, what shifts we make
To keep talking whilst awake!
Christ be praised, that fetched me in
Early, yet a youngling, while
All unlearned in life and sin,
Love and travail, grief and guile!
For your world of two-score years,
Cuthbert, all you have is tears.
Dreaming, still he hears the bells
As he heard them years ago,
Ere he sought our quiet cells
Iron-mouthed and wrenched with woe,
Out of what dread storms who knows—
Faithfulest of friends and foes!
Faithful was he, aye, I ween,
Pitiful, and kind, and wise;
But in mindful moods I've seen
Flame enough in those sunk eyes!
Praised be Christ, whose timely Hand
Plucked from out the fire this brand!
Now in dreams he's many miles
Hence, he's back in Ireland.
Ah, how tenderly he smiles,
Stretching a caressing hand!
Backward now his memory glides
To old happy Christmas-tides.
Now once more a loving wife
Holds him; now he sees his boys,
Smiles at all their playful strife,
All their childish mirth and noise;
Softly now she strokes his hair.—
Ah, their world is very fair!
—Waking, all your loss shall be
Unforgotten evermore!
Sleep alone holds these for thee.
Sleep then, Brother!—To restore
All your heaven that has died
Heaven and Hell may be too wide!
Sleep, and dream, and be awhile
Happy, Cuthbert, once again!
Soon you'll wake, and cease to smile,
And your heart will sink with pain.
You will hear the merry town,—
And a weight will press you down.
Hungry-hearted, you will see
Only the thin shadows fall
From yon bleak-topped poplar-tree,—
Icy fingers on the wall.
You will watch them come and go,
Telling o'er your count of woe.
—Nay, now, hear me, how I prate!
I, a foolish monk, and old,
Maundering o'er a life and fate
To me unknown, by you untold!
Yet I know you're like to weep
Soon, so, Brother, this night sleep.
IMPULSE.
A hollow on the verge of May.
Thick strewn with drift of leaves. Beneath
The densest drift a thrusting sheath
Of sharp green striving toward the day!
I mused—"So dull Obstruction sets
A bar to even violets,
When these would go their nobler way!"
My feet again, some days gone by.
The self-same spot sought idly. There,
Obstruction foiled, the adoring air
Caressed a blossom woven of sky
And dew, whose misty petals blue,
With bliss of being thrilled athrough,
Dilated like a timorous eye.
Reck well this rede, my soul! The good
The blossom craved was near, tho' hid.
Fret not that thou must doubt, but rid
Thy sky-path of obstructions strewed
By winds of folly. Then, do thou
The Godward impulse room allow
To reach its perfect air and food!
THE ISLES—AN ODE.
I.
Faithful reports of them have reached me oft!
Many their embassage to mortal court,
By golden pomp, and breathless-heard consort
Of music soft—
By fragrances accredited, and dreams.
Many their speeding herald, whose light feet
Make pause at wayside brooks, and fords of streams,
Leaving transfigured by an effluence fleet
Those wayfarers they meet.
II.
No wind from out the solemn wells of night
But hath its burden of strange messages,
Tormenting for interpreter; nor less
The wizard light
That steals from noon-stilled waters, woven in shade,
Beckons somewhither, with cool fingers slim.
No dawn but hath some subtle word conveyed
In rose ineffable at sunrise rim,
Or charactery dim.
III.
One moment throbs the hearing, yearns the sight.
But tho' not far, yet strangely hid—the way,
And our sense slow; nor long for us delay
The guides their flight!
The breath goes by; the word, the light, elude;
And we stay wondering. But there comes an hour
Of fitness perfect and unfettered mood,
When splits her husk the finer sense with power,
And—yon their palm-trees tower!
IV.
Here Homer came, and Milton came, tho' blind.
Omar's deep doubts still found them nigh and nigher,
And learned them fashioned to the heart's desire.
The supreme mind
Of Shakspere took their sovereignty, and smiled.
Those passionate Israelitish lips that poured
The Song of Songs attained them; and the wild
Child-heart of Shelley, here from strife restored,
Remembers not life's sword.
A SERENADE.
Love hath given the day for longing,
And for joy the night.
Dearest, to thy distant chamber
Wings my soul its flight.
Though unfathomed seas divide us,
And the lingering year,
'Tis the hour when absence parts not,—
Memory hath no tear.
O'er the charmed and silent river
Drifts my lonely boat;
From the haunted shores and islands
Tender murmurs float,
Tender breaths of glade and forest,
Breezes of perfume;—
Surely, surely thou canst hear me
In thy quiet room!
Unto shore, and sky, and silence,
Low I pour my song.
All the spell, the summer sweetness,—
These to thee belong.
Thou art love, the trance and rapture
Of the midnight clear!
Sweet, tho' world on world withhold thee,
I can clasp thee here.
OFF PELORUS.
Crimson swims the sunset over far Pelorus;
Burning crimson tops its frowning crest of pine.
Purple sleeps the shore and floats the wave before us,
Eachwhere from the oar-stroke eddying warm like wine.
Soundless foams the creamy violet wake behind us;
We but see the creaking of the labored oar;
We have stopped our ears,—mad were we not to blind us,
Lest our eyes behold our Ithaca no more.
See the purple splendor o'er the island streaming,
O'er the prostrate sails and equal-sided ship!
Windless hangs the vine, and warm the sands lie gleaming;
Droop the great grape-clusters melting for the lip.
Sweet the golden calm, the glowing light elysian.
Sweet were red-mouthed plenty mindless grown of pain.
Sweeter yet behold—a sore-bewildering vision!
Idly took we thought, and stopped our ears in vain.
Idly took we thought, for still our eyes betray us.
Lo, the white-limbed maids, with love-soft eyes aglow,
Gleaming bosoms bare, loosed hair, sweet hands to slay us,
Warm lips wild with song, and softer throats than snow!
See the King! he hearkens,—hears their song,—strains forward,—
As some mountain snake attends the shepherd's reed.
Now with urgent hand he bids us turn us shoreward,—
Bend the groaning oar now; give the King no heed!
Mark the luring music by his eyes' wild yearning,
Eager lips, and mighty straining at the cords!
Well we guess the song, the subtle words and burning,
Sung to him, the subtle king of burning words.
"Much-enduring Wanderer, wondrous-tongued, come nigher!
Sage of princes, bane of Ilion's lofty walls!
Whatsoe'er in all the populous earth befalls
We will teach thee, to thine uttermost desire."
So, we rise up twain, and make his bonds securer.
Seethes the startled sea now from the surging blade.
Leaps the dark ship forth, as we, with hearts grown surer,
Eyes averse, and war-worn faces made afraid,
O'er the waste warm reaches drive our prow, sea-cleaving,
Past the luring death, into the folding night.
Home shall hold us yet, and cease our wives from grieving,—
Safe from storm, and toil, and flame, and clanging fight.
A BALLADE OF CALYPSO.
The loud black flight of the storm diverges
Over a spot in the loud-mouthed main,
Where, crowned with summer and sun, emerges
An isle unbeaten of wind or rain.
And here, of its sweet queen grown full fain,—
By whose kisses the whole broad earth seems poor,—
Tarries the wave-worn prince, Troy's bane,
In the green Ogygian Isle secure.
To her voice our sweetest songs are dirges.
She gives him all things, counting it gain.
Ringed with the rocks and ancient surges,
How could Fate dissever these twain?
But him no loves nor delights retain;
New knowledge, new lands, new loves allure;
Forgotten the perils, and toils, and pain,
In the green Ogygian Isle secure.
So he spurns her kisses and gifts, and urges
His weak skiff over the wind-vext plain,
Till the gray of the sky in the gray sea merges,
And nights reel round, and waver, and wane.
He sits once more in his own domain.
No more the remote sea-walls immure.—
But ah, for the love he shall clasp not again
In the green Ogygian Isle secure!
L'ENVOI.
Princes, and ye whose delights remain,
To the one good gift of the gods hold sure,
Lest ye too mourn, in vain, in vain,
Your green Ogygian Isle secure!
RAIN.
Sharp drives the rain, sharp drives the endless rain.
The rain-winds wake and wander, lift and blow.
The slow smoke-wreaths of vapor to and fro
Wave, and unweave, and gather and build again.
Over the far gray reaches of the plain—
Gray miles on miles my passionate thought must go,—
I strain my sight, grown dim with gazing so,
Pressing my face against the streaming pane.
How the rain beats! Ah God, if love had power
To voice its utmost yearning, even tho'
Thro' time and bitter distance, not in vain,
Surely Her heart would hear me at this hour,
Look thro' the years, and see! But would She know
The white face pressed against the streaming pane?
MIST.
Its hand compassionate guards our restless sight
Against how many a harshness, many an ill!
Tender as sleep, its shadowy palms distil
Weird vapors that ensnare our eyes with light.
Rash eyes, kept ignorant in their own despite,
It lets not see the unsightliness they will,
But paints each scanty fairness fairer still,
And still deludes us to our own delight.
It fades, regathers, never quite dissolves.
And ah that life, ah that the heart and brain
Might keep their mist and glamour, not to know
So soon the disenchantment and the pain!
But one by one our dear illusions go,
Stript and cast forth as time's slow wheel revolves.
THE TANTRAMAR REVISITED.
Summers and summers have come, and gone with the flight of the swallow;
Sunshine and thunder have been, storm, and winter, and frost,
Many and many a sorrow has all but died from remembrance,
Many a dream of joy fall'n in the shadow of pain.
Hands of chance and change have marred, or moulded, or broken,
Busy with spirit or flesh, all I most have adored;
Even the bosom of Earth is strewn with heavier shadows,—
Only in these green hills, aslant to the sea, no change!
Here where the road that has climbed from the inland valleys and woodlands,
Dips from the hill-tops down, straight to the base of the hills,—
Here, from my vantage-ground, I can see the scattering houses,
Stained with time, set warm in orchards, and meadows, and wheat,
Dotting the broad bright slopes outspread to southward and eastward,
Wind-swept all day long, blown by the south-east wind.
Skirting the sunbright uplands stretches a riband of meadow,
Shorn of the laboring grass, bulwarked well from the sea,
Fenced on its seaward border with long clay dikes from the turbid
Surge and flow of the tides vexing the Westmoreland shores.
Yonder, toward the left, lie broad the Westmoreland marshes,—
Miles on miles they extend, level, and grassy, and dim,
Clear from the long red sweep of flats to the sky in the distance,
Save for the outlying heights, green-rampired Cumberland Point;
Miles on miles outrolled, and the river-channels divide them,—
Miles on miles of green, barred by the hurtling gusts.
Miles on miles beyond the tawny bay is Minudie.
There are the low blue hills; villages gleam at their feet.
Nearer a white sail shines across the water, and nearer
Still are the slim, gray masts of fishing boats dry on the flats.
Ah, how well I remember those wide red flats, above tide-mark
Pale with scurf of the salt, seamed and baked in the sun!
Well I remember the piles of blocks and ropes, and the net-reels
Wound with the beaded nets, dripping and dark from the sea!
Now at this season the nets are unwound; they hang from the rafters
Over the fresh-stowed hay in upland barns, and the wind
Blows all day through the chinks, with the streaks of sunlight,
and sways them
Softly at will, or they lie heaped in the gloom of a loft.
Now at this season the reels are empty and idle; I see them
Over the lines of the dikes, over the gossiping grass.
Now at this season they swing in the long strong wind, thro' the lonesome
Golden afternoon, shunned by the foraging gulls.
Near about sunset the crane will journey homeward above them;
Round them, under the moon, all the calm night long,
Winnowing soft gray wings of marsh-owls wander and wander,
Now to the broad, lit marsh, now to the dusk of the dike.
Soon, thro' their dew-wet frames, in the live keen freshness of morning,
Out of the teeth of the dawn blows back the awakening wind.
Then, as the blue day mounts, and the low-shot shafts of the sunlight
Glance from the tide to the shore, gossamers jewelled with dew
Sparkle and wave, where late sea-spoiling fathoms of drift-net
Myriad-meshed, uploomed sombrely over the land.
Well I remember it all. The salt raw scent of the margin;
While, with men at the windlass, groaned each reel, and the net,
Surging in ponderous lengths, uprose and coiled in its station;
Then each man to his home,—well I remember it all!
Yet, as I sit and watch, this present peace of the landscape,—
Stranded boats, these reels empty and idle, the hush,
One gray hawk slow-wheeling above yon cluster of haystacks,—
More than the old-time stir this stillness welcomes me home.
Ah the old-time stir, how once it stung me with rapture,—
Old-time sweetness, the winds freighted with honey and salt!
Yet will I stay my steps and not go down to the marsh-land,—
Muse and recall far off, rather remember than see,—
Lest on too close sight I miss the darling illusion,
Spy at their task even here the hands of chance and change.
THE SLAVE WOMAN.
Shedding cool drops upon the sun-baked clay,
The dripping jar, brimful, she rests a space
On the well's dry white brink, and leans her face,
Heavy with tears and many a heartsick day,
Down to the water's lip, whence slips away
A rivulet thro' the hot, bright square apace,
And lo! her brow casts off each servile trace—
The wave's cool breath hath won her thoughts astray.
Ah desolate heart! Thy fate thou hast forgot
One moment; the dull pain hath left those eyes
Whose yearning pierces time, and space, and tears.
Thou seest what was once, but now is not,—
By Niger thy bright home, thy Paradise,
Unscathed of flame, and foe, and hostile spears.
THE MARVELLOUS WORK.
"Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me"—Whitman
Not yet, for all their quest of it, have men
Cast wholly by the ignoble dread of truth!
Each of God's laws, if but so late discerned
Their faiths upgrew unsuckled in it, fills
Their hearts with angry fears, perchance lest God
Be dwarfed behind his own decrees, or made
Superfluous through his perfectness of deed!
But large increase of knowledge in these days
Is come about us, fraught with ill for them
Whose creeds are cut too straight to hold new growth,
Whose faiths are clamped against access of wisdom;
Fraught with some sadness, too, for those just souls
Who, clothed in rigid teachings found too scant,
Are fain to piece the dear accustomed garb,
Till here a liberal, there a literal fragment,
Here new, there old, here bright, there dark, disclose
Their vestiture a strange discordant motley.
But O rare motley,—starred with thirst of truth,
Patched with desire of wisdom, zoned about
With passion for fresh knowledge, and the quest
Of right! Such motley may be made at last,
Through grave sincerity, a dawn-clear garment!
But, for the enfranchised spirit, this expanse
Immeasurable of broad-horizoned view,—
What rapt, considerate awe it summons forth,
What adoration of the Eternal Cause!
His days unmeasured ages, His designs
Unfold through age-long silences, through surge
Of world upheaval, coming to their aim
As swerveless in fit time as tho' His finger
But yesterday ordained, and wrought to-day.
How the Eternal's unconcern of time,—
Omnipotence that hath not dreamed of haste,—
Is graven in granite-moulding aeons' gloom;
Is told in stony record of the roar
Of long Silurian storms, and tempests huge
Scourging the circuit of Devonian seas;
Is whispered in the noiseless mists, the gray
Soft drip of clouds about rank fern-forests,
Through dateless terms that stored the layered coal;
Is uttered hoarse in strange Triassic forms
Of monstrous life; or stamped in ice-blue gleams
Athwart the death-still years of glacial sleep!
Down the stupendous sequence, age on age,
Thro' storm and peace, thro' shine and gloom, thro' warm
And pregnant periods of teeming birth,
And seething realms of thunderous overthrow,—
In the obscure and formless dawn of life,
In gradual march from simple to complex,
From lower to higher forms, and last to Man
Through faint prophetic fashions,—stands declared
The God of order and unchanging purpose.
Creation, which He covers, Him contains,
Even to the least up-groping atom. His
The impulse and the quickening germ, whereby
All things strive upward, reach toward greater good;
Till craving brute, informed with soul, grows Man,
And Man turns homeward, yearning back to God.
A SONG OF DEPENDENCE.
Love, what were fame,
And thou not in it,
That I should hold it worth
Much toil to win it?
What were success
Didst thou not share it?
As Spring can spare the snows
I well could spare it!
Love, what were love
But of thy giving
That it should much prevail
To sweeten living?
Nay, what were life,
Save thou inspire it,
That I should bid my soul
Greatly desire it?
ON THE CREEK.
Dear Heart, the noisy strife
And bitter carpings cease.
Here is the lap of life,
Here are the lips of peace.
Afar from stir of streets,
The city's dust and din,
What healing silence meets
And greets us gliding in!
Our light birch silent floats;
Soundless the paddle dips.
Yon sunbeam thick with motes
Athro' the leafage slips,
To light the iris wings
Of dragon-flies alit
On lily-leaves, and things
Of gauze that float and flit.
Above the water's brink
Hush'd winds make summer riot;
Our thirsty spirits drink
Deep, deep, the summer quiet.
We slip the world's gray husk,
Emerge, and spread new plumes;
In sunbeam-fretted dusk,
Thro' populous golden glooms,
Like thistledown we slide,
Two disembodied dreams,—
With spirits alert, wide-eyed,
Explore the perfume-streams.
For scents of various grass
Stream down the veering breeze;
Warm puffs of honey pass
From flowering linden-trees;
And fragrant gusts of gum,
From clammy balm-tree buds,
With fern-brake odors, come
From intricate solitudes.
The elm-tops are astir
With flirt of idle wings.
Hark to the grackles' chirr
Whene'er an elm-bough swings!
From off yon ash-limb sere
Out-thrust amid green branches,
Keen like an azure spear
A kingfisher down launches.
Far up the creek his calls
And lessening laugh retreat;
Again the silence falls,
And soft the green hours fleet.
They fleet with drowsy hum
Of insects on the wing;—
We sigh—the end must come!
We taste our pleasure's sting.
No more, then, need we try
The rapture to regain.
We feel our day slip by,
And cling to it in vain.
But, Dear, keep thou in mind
These moments swift and sweet!
Their memory thou shall find
Illume the common street;
And thro' the dust and din,
Smiling, thy heart shall hear
Quiet waters lapsing thin,
And locusts shrilling clear.
LOTOS.
Wherefore awake so long,
Wide-eyed, laden with care?
Not all battle is life,
But a little respite and peace
May fold us round as a fleece
Soft-woven for all men's wear.
Sleep, then, mindless of strife;
Slumber, dreamless of wrong;—
Hearken my slumber-song,
Falling asleep.
Drowsily all noon long
The warm winds rustle the grass
Hush'dly, lulling thy brain,—
Burthened with murmur of bees
And numberless whispers, and ease.
Dream-clouds gather and pass
Of painless remembrance of pain.
Havened from rumor of wrong,
Dreams are thy slumber-song,
Fallen asleep.
THE SOWER.
A brown sad-colored hillside, where the soil,
Fresh from the frequent harrow, deep and fine,
Lies bare; no break in the remote sky-line,
Save where a flock of pigeons streams aloft,
Startled from feed in some low-lying croft,
Or far-off spires with yellow of sunset shine;
And here the Sower, unwittingly divine,
Exerts the silent forethought of his toil.
Alone he treads the glebe, his measured stride
Dumb in the yielding soil; and tho' small joy
Dwell in his heavy face, as spreads the blind
Pale grain from his dispensing palm aside,
This plodding churl grows great in his employ;—
Godlike, he makes provision for mankind.
THE POTATO HARVEST.
A high bare field, brown from the plough, and borne
Aslant from sunset; amber wastes of sky
Washing the ridge, a clamor of crows that fly
In from the wide flats where the spent tides mourn
To yon their rocking roosts in pines wind-torn;
A line of gray snake-fence, that zigzags by
A pond, and cattle, from the homestead nigh
The long deep summonings of the supper horn.
Black, on the ridge, against that lonely flush,
A cart, and stoop-necked oxen; ranged beside,
Some barrels, and the day-worn harvest folk,
Here emptying their baskets, jar the hush
With hollow thunders; down the dusk hillside
Lumbers the wain; and day fades out like smoke.
AFLOAT.
Afloat!—
Ah Love, on the mirror of waters
All the world seems with us afloat,—
All the wide, bright world of the night;
But the mad world of men is remote,
And the prating of tongues is afar.
We have fled from the crowd in our flight,
And beyond the gray rim of the waters
All the turmoil has sunk from our sight.
Turn your head, Love, a little, and note
Low down in the south a pale star.
The mists of the horizon-line drench it,
The beams of the moon all but quench it,
Yet it shines thro' this flood-tide of light.
Love, under that star is the world
Of the day, of our life, and our sorrow,
Where defamers and envious are.
Here, here is our peace, our delight,—
To our closest love-converse no bar.
Yet, as even in the moonbeam's despite
Still is seen the pale beam of the star,
So the light of our rapture this hour
Cannot quench the remembrance of morrow.
Though the wings of all winds are upfurled
And a limitless silence hath power,
Still the envious strife we forget not;
For the future is skilful to mar,
And the past we have banished not quite.
But this hour—Ah Love, if it might
With this splendor, this shining moon, set not!
If only forever as now
In this silence of silver adrift,
In this reeling, slow, luminous sphere,
This hollow great round of the night,
We might drift with the tide-flow, and lift
With the infinite pulse of the waters,
See each but the other, and hear
Our own language alone, I and thou,
I here at the stern, at the prow
The one woman, God's costliest gift!
So only to see you, to hear you,
To speak with you, Love, to be near you,—
I should reckon this life, well content.
But this dream is in vain, is in vain;
I will dream you one other. Suppose
This one hour some nepenthe were lent,
So pain, nor remembrance of pain,
Nor remembrance nor knowledge of care,
Nor distrust, nor fear, nor despair,—
For these, and more also, God knows
We have known and endured them, full share,—
Should have power to approach us! Suppose
To us drifting and dreaming afloat
On this shadowless shining of waters,
This mirror of tide without stain,
It were possible just for one hour
To forebode, or remember, or fear,
Nothing; of one thing aware
And one only, that we two are here,
And together, unhindered: then, Dear,
This one hour were our life,—all the past
But the ignorant sleep before birth,
All the future a trance, that should last
Till we turn us again to our earth!
And this dream, hadst thou courage to hear
Me interpret, were dreamed not in vain.
For this hour, O Love, was not meant,
With its rapture of peace, to endure,
Intense, calm, passionate, pure,—
My spirit with thy spirit blent
As the odor of flower and flower,
Of hyacinth blossom and rose.
Heart, spirit, and body, and brain,
Thou art utterly mine, as I thine;
But the love of the flesh, tho' at first
When I saw you and loved you it burst
With the love of the spirit one flame,
Neither greater nor less, but the same,
Is yet finite, attains not the height
Of the spirit enfranchised, and must
With the body slip back into dust.
Our soul-passion is deathless, divine.
So, we strike now the perfectest note
That man's heart is attuned to, attain
The white light of the zenith supreme,
Pierce the seventh and innermost sphere;
We are gods! Let us cast us adrift
From the world of the flesh and its power!
It is only a plunge, a quick roll
Of our skiff—I will gather and fold
You close, for the waters are cold,—
A few sobs, and we rise one soul,
Undissevered for ever and ever.
