• Have you not noted, in some family
• Where two were born of a first marriage-bed,
• How still they own their gracious bond, though fed
• And nursed on the forgotten breast and knee?—
• How to their father's children they shall be
• In act and thought of one goodwill; but each
• Shall for the other have, in silence speech,
• And in a word complete community?

• Even so, when first I saw you, seemed it, love,
• 10 That among souls allied to mine was yet
• One nearer kindred than life hinted of.
• O born with me somewhere that men forget,
• And though in years of sight and sound unmet,
• Known for my soul's birth-partner well enough!

   

• Those envied places which do know her well,
• And are so scornful of this lonely place,
• Even now for once are emptied of her grace:
• Nowhere but here she is: and while Love's spell
• From his predominant presence doth compel
• All alien hours, an outworn populace,
• The hours of Love fill full the echoing space
• With sweet confederate music favourable.

• Now many memories make solicitous
• 10 The delicate love-lines of her mouth, till, lit
• With quivering fire, the words take wing from it;
• As here between our kisses we sit thus
• Speaking of things remembered, and so sit
• Speechless while things forgotten call to us.

   

• What dawn-pulse at the heart of heaven, or last
• Incarnate flower of culminating day,—
• What marshalled marvels on the skirts of May,
• Or song full-quired, sweet June's encomiast;
• What glory of change by nature's hand amass'd
• Can vie with all those moods of varying grace
• Which o'er one loveliest woman's form and face
• Within this hour, within this room, have pass'd?

• Love's very vesture and elect disguise
• 10 Was each fine movement,—wonder new-begot
• Of lily or swan or swan-stemmed galiot;
• Joy to his sight who now the sadlier sighs,
• Parted again; and sorrow yet for eyes
• Unborn, that read these words and saw her not.

   

• Beauty like hers is genius. Not the call
• Of Homer's or of Dante's heart sublime,—
• Not Michael's hand furrowing the zones of time,—
• Is more with compassed mysteries musical;
• Nay, not in Spring's or Summer's sweet footfall
• More gathered gifts exuberant Life bequeathes
• Than doth this sovereign face, whose love-spell
• breathes
• Even from its shadowed contour on the wall.

• As many men are poets in their youth,
• 10 But for one sweet-strung soul the wires prolong
• Even through all change the indomitable song;
• So in likewise the envenomed years, whose tooth
• Rends shallower grace with ruin void of ruth,
• Upon this beauty's power shall wreak no wrong

   

• Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,—
• The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
• Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and
• glooms
• 'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.
• All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
• Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
• Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
• 'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

• Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
• 10Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky:—
• So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above,
• Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
• This close-companioned inarticulate hour
• When twofold silence was the song of love.

   

• Even as the moon grows queenlier in mid-space
• When the sky darkens, and her cloud-rapt car
• Thrills with intenser radiance from afar,—
• So lambent, lady, beams thy sovereign grace
• When the drear soul desires thee. Of that face
• What shall be said,—which, like a governing star,
• Gathers and garners from all things that are
• Their silent penetrative loveliness?

• O'er water-daisies and wild waifs of Spring,
• 10 There where the iris rears its gold-crowned sheaf
• With flowering rush and sceptred arrow-leaf,
• So have I marked Queen Dian, in bright ring
• Of cloud above and wave below, take wing
• And chase night's gloom, as thou the spirit's grief.

   

• Sometimes she is a child within mine arms,
• Cowering beneath dark wings that love must
• chase,—
• With still tears showering and averted face,
• Inexplicably filled with faint alarms:
• And oft from mine own spirit's hurtling harms
• I crave the refuge of her deep embrace,—
• Against all ills the fortified strong place
• And sweet reserve of sovereign counter-charms.

• And Love, our light at night and shade at noon,
• 10 Lulls us to rest with songs, and turns away
• All shafts of shelterless tumultuous day.
• Like the moon's growth, his face gleams through
• his tune;
• And as soft waters warble to the moon,
• Our answering spirits chime one roundelay.

   

• Sweet dimness of her loosened hair's downfall
• About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head
• In gracious fostering union garlanded;
• Her tremulous smiles; her glances' sweet recall
• Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial;
• Her mouth's culled sweetness by thy kisses shed
• On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led
• Back to her mouth which answers there for all:—

• What sweeter than these things, except the thing
• 10 In lacking which all these would lose their sweet:—
• The confident heart's still fervour: the swift beat
• And soft subsidence of the spirit's wing,
• Then when it feels, in cloud-girt wayfaring,
• The breath of kindred plumes against its feet?

   

• I stood where Love in brimming armfuls bore
• Slight wanton flowers and foolish toys of fruit:
• And round him ladies thronged in warm pursuit,
• Fingered and lipped and proffered the strange store.
• And from one hand the petal and the core
• Savoured of sleep; and cluster and curled shoot
• Seemed from another hand like shame's salute,—
• Gifts that I felt my cheek was blushing for.

• At last Love bade my Lady give the same:
• 10 And as I looked, the dew was light thereon;
• And as I took them, at her touch they shone
• With inmost heaven-hue of the heart of flame.
• And then Love said: “Lo! when the hand is hers,
• Follies of love are love's true ministers.”

   

• Even as a child, of sorrow that we give
• The dead, but little in his heart can find,
• Since without need of thought to his clear mind
• Their turn it is to die and his to live:—
• Even so the winged New Love smiles to receive
• Along his eddying wings the auroral wind,
• Nor, forward glorying, casts one look behind
• Where night-rack shrouds the Old Love fugitive.

• There is a change in every hour's recall,
• 10 And the last cowslip in the fields we see
• On the same day with the first corn-poppy.
• Alas for hourly change! Alas for all
• The loves that from his hand proud Youth lets fall,
• Even as the beads of a told rosary!

   

• Each hour until we meet is as a bird
• That wings from far his gradual way along
• The rustling covert of my soul,—his song
• Still loudlier trilled through leaves more deeply
• stirr'd:
• But at the hour of meeting, a clear word
• Is every note he sings, in Love's own tongue;
• Yet, Love, thou know'st the sweet strain suffers
• wrong,
• Full oft through our contending joys unheard.

• What of that hour at last, when for her sake
• 10 No wing may fly to me nor song may flow;
• When, wandering round my life unleaved, I know
• The bloodied feathers scattered in the brake,
• And think how she, far from me, with like eyes
• Sees through the untuneful bough the wingless
• skies?

   

• Thou lovely and beloved, thou my love;
• Whose kiss seems still the first; whose summon-
• ing eyes,
• Even now, as for our love-world's new sunrise,
• Shed very dawn; whose voice, attuned above
• All modulation of the deep-bowered dove,
• Is like a hand laid softly on the soul;
• Whose hand is like a sweet voice to control
• Those worn tired brows it hath the keeping of:—

• What word can answer to thy word,—what gaze
• 10 To thine, which now absorbs within its sphere
• My worshipping face, till I am mirrored there
• Light-circled in a heaven of deep-drawn rays?
• What clasp, what kiss mine inmost heart can
• prove,
• O lovely and beloved, O my love?

   

• Sometimes thou seem'st not as thyself alone,
• But as the meaning of all things that are;
• A breathless wonder, shadowing forth afar
• Some heavenly solstice hushed and halcyon;
• Whose unstirred lips are music's visible tone;
• Whose eyes the sun-gate of the soul unbar,
• Being of its furthest fires oracular;—
• The evident heart of all life sown and mown.

• Even such Love is; and is not thy name Love?
• 10 Yea, by thy hand the Love-god rends apart
• All gathering clouds of Night's ambiguous art;
• Flings them far down, and sets thine eyes above;
• And simply, as some gage of flower or glove,
• Stakes with a smile the world against thy heart.

   

• What other woman could be loved like you,
• Or how of you should love possess his fill?
• After the fulness of all rapture, still,—
• As at the end of some deep avenue
• A tender glamour of day,—there comes to view
• Far in your eyes a yet more hungering thrill,—
• Such fire as Love's soul-winnowing hands distil
• Even from his inmost ark of light and dew.

• And as the traveller triumphs with the sun,
• 10 Glorying in heat's mid-height, yet startide brings
• Wonder new-born, and still fresh transport springs
• From limpid lambent hours of day begun;—
• Even so, through eyes and voice, your soul doth
• move
• My soul with changeful light of infinite love.

   

• Not by one measure mayst thou mete our love;
• For how should I be loved as I love thee?—
• I, graceless, joyless, lacking absolutely
• All gifts that with thy queenship best behove;—
• Thou, throned in every heart's elect alcove,
• And crowned with garlands culled from every
• tree,
• Which for no head but thine, by Love's decree,
• All beauties and all mysteries interwove.

• But here thine eyes and lips yield soft rebuke:—
• 10“Then only,” (say'st thou) “could I love thee less,
• When thou couldst doubt my love's equality.”
• Peace, sweet! If not to sum but worth we look,—
• Thy heart's transcendence, not my heart's excess,—
• Then more a thousandfold thou lov'st than I.

   

• Love, through your spirit and mine what summer
• eve
• Now glows with glory of all things possess'd,
• Since this day's sun of rapture filled the west
• And the light sweetened as the fire took leave?
• Awhile now softlier let your bosom heave,
• As in Love's harbour, even that loving breast,
• All care takes refuge while we sink to rest,
• And mutual dreams the bygone bliss retrieve.

• Many the days that Winter keeps in store,
• 10 Sunless throughout, or whose brief sun-glimpses
• Scarce shed the heaped snow through the naked
• trees.
• This day at least was Summer's paramour,
• Sun-coloured to the imperishable core
• With sweet well-being of love and full heart's
• ease.