• High grace, the dower of queens; and therewithal
• Some wood-born wonder's sweet simplicity;
• A glance like water brimming with the sky
• Or hyacinth-light where forest-shadows fall;
• Such thrilling pallor of cheek as doth enthral
• The heart; a mouth whose passionate forms imply
• All music and all silence held thereby;
• Gold tresses, her embo rd wering co [?] ronal;
• Added Text Gold tresses, her embordering coronal
• Added Text Deep golden locks, her queenly coronal
• Added TextDeep golden locks, her flowering sovereign coronal
• A round reared neck, meet column of Love's shrine ,
• 10 To cling to when the heart takes sanctuary;
• Hands which for ever at Love's bidding be,
• And soft-stirred feet still answering to his sign:—
• These are her gifts, as tongue may tell them o'er , .
• Breathe low her name, my soul; for that means
• more.
• Added TextThou knowst her name, O Love; and that means more.

   

• Lady, I thank thee for thy loveliness,
• Because my lady is more lovely still.
• Glorying I gaze, and yield with glad goodwill
• To thee thy tribute; by whose sweet-spun dress
• Of delicate life Love labours to assess ,
• My lady's absolute queendom; saying, “Lo!
• How high this beauty is, which yet doth show
• But as that beauty's sovereign votaress.”

• Lady, I saw thee with her, side by side;
• 10 And as, when night's fair fires their queen sur-
• round,
• An emulous star too near the moon will ride,—
• Even so thy rays within her luminous bound
• Were traced no more; and by the light so drown'd,
• Lady, not thou but she was glorified.

   

• Could Juno's self more sovereign presence wear
• Than thou, 'mid other ladies , throned in grace?—
• Or Pallas, when thou bend'st with soul-stilled face
• O'er poet's page gold-shadowed in thy hair?
• Dost thou than Venus seem less heavenly fair
• When o'er the sea of love's tumultuous trance
• Hovers thy smile, and mingles with thy glance
• That sweet voice like the last wave murmuring
• there?

• Before such triune loveliness divine
• 10 Awestruck I ask, which goddess here most claims
• The prize that, howsoe'er adjudged, is thine?
• Then Love breathes low the sweetest of thy
• names;
• And Venus Victrix to my heart doth bring
• Herself, the Helen of her guerdoning.

   

• Sometimes she is a child within mine arms,
• Cowering beneath dark wings that love must
• chase ; ,—
• With still tears sho erw wering 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.

   

• Sometimes I fain would find in thee some fault,
• That I might love thee still in spite of it:
• Yet how should our Lord Love curtail one whit
• Thy perfect praise whom most he would exalt?
• Alas! he can but make my heart's low vault
• Even in men's sight unworthier, being lit
• By thee, who thereby show'st more exquisite
• Like fiery chrysoprase in deep basalt.

• Yet will I nowise shrink; but at Love's shrine
• 10 Myself within the beams his brow doth dart
• Will set the flashing jewel of thy heart
• In that dull chamber where it deigns to shine:
• For lo! in honour of thine excellencies
• My heart takes pride to show how poor it is.

   

• Not in thy body is thy life at all
• But in this lady's lips and hands and eyes;
• Through these she yields thee life that vivifies
• What else were sorrow's servant and death's thrall.
• Look on thyself without her, and recall
• The waste remembrance and forlorn surmise
• That lived but in a dead-drawn breath of sighs
• O'er vanished hours and hours eventual.

• Even so much life hath the poor tress of hair
• 10 Which, stored apart, is all love hath to show
• For heart-beats and for fire-heats long ago;
• Even so much life endures unknown, even where,
• 'Mid change the changeless night environeth,
• Lies all that golden hair undimmed in death.

   

• “When that dead face, bowered in the furthest
• years,
• Which once was all the life years held for thee,
• Can now scarce bid the tides of memory
• Cast on thy soul a little spray of tears,—
• How canst thou gaze into these eyes of hers
• Whom now thy heart delights in, and not see
• Within each orb Love's philtred euphrasy
• Make them of buried troth remembrancers?”

• “Nay, pitiful Love, nay, loving Pity! Well
• 10 Thou knowest that in these twain I have confess'd
• Two very voices of thy summoning bell.
• Nay, Master, shall not Death make manifest
• In these the culminant changes which approve
• The love-moon that must light my soul to Love?”

   

• “Thou Ghost,” I said, “and is thy name To-day?—
• Yesterday's son, with such an abject brow!—
• And can To-morrow be more pale than thou?”
• While yet I spoke, the silence answered: “Yea,
• Henceforth our issue is all grieved and grey,
• And each beforehand makes such poor avow
• As of old leaves beneath the budding bough
• Or night-drift that the sundawn shreds away.”

• Then cried I: “Mother of many malisons,
• 10 O Earth, receive me to thy dusty bed!”
• But therewithal the tremulous silence said:
• “Lo! Love yet bids thy lady greet thee once:—
• Yea, twice,—whereby thy life is still the sun's;
• And thrice,—whereby the shadow of death is
• dead.”

   

• Girt in dark growths, yet glimmering with one
• star,
• O night desirous as the nights of youth!
• Why should my heart within thy spell, forsooth,
• Now beat, as the bride's finger-pulses are
• Quickened within the girdling golden bar?
• What wings are these than fan my pillow smooth?
• And why does Sleep, waved back by Joy and
• Ruth,
• Tread softly round and gaze at me from far?

• Nay, night deep-leaved! And would Love feign in
• thee
• 10 Some shadowy palpitating grove that bears
• Rest for man's eyes and music for his ears?
• O lonely night! art thou not known to me,
• A thicket hung with masks of mockery
• And watered with the wasteful warmth of tears?

   

• Two separate divided silences,
• Which, brought together, would find loving voice;
• Two glances which together would rejoice
• In love, now lost like stars beyond dark trees;
• Two hands apart whose touch alone gives ease;
• Two bosoms which, heart-shrined with mutual
• flame,
• Would, meeting in one clasp, be made the same;
• Two souls, the shores wave-mocked of sundering
• seas:—

• Such are we now. Ah! may our hope forecast
• 10 Indeed one hour again, when on this stream
• Of darkened love once more the light shall
• gleam?—
• An hour how slow to come, how quickly past,—
• Which beams blooms and fades, and only leaves at last,
• Faint as shed flowers, the attenuated dream.

   

• Like labour-laden moonclouds faint to flee
• From winds that sweep the winter-bitten wo rld,—
• Like multiform circumfluence manifold
• Of night's flood-tide,—like terrors that agree
• Of hoarse-tongued fire and inarticulate sea,—
• Even such, within some glass dimmed by our
• breath,
• Our hearts discern wild images of Death,
• Shadows and shoals that edge eternity.

• Howbeit athwart Death's imminent shade doth
• soar
• 10 O ur ne Power , than flow of stream or flight of dove
• Sweeter to glide around, to brood above.
• Tell me, my heart,—what angel-greeted door
• Or threshold of wing-winnowed threshing-floor
• Hath guest fire-fledged as thine, whose lord is
• Love?

   

• I deemed thy garments, O my Hope, were grey,
• So far I viewed thee. Now the space between
• Is passed at length; and garmented in green
• Even as in days of yore thou stand'st to-day.
• Ah God! and but for lingering dull dismay,
• On all that road our footsteps erst had been
• Even thus commingled, and our shadows seen
• Blent on the hedgerows and the water-way.

• O Hope of mine whose eyes are living love,
• 10 No eyes but hers,—O Love and Hope the same!—
• Lean close to me, for now the sinking sun
• That warmed our feet scarce gilds our hair above.
• O hers thy voice and very hers thy name!
• Alas, cling round me, for the day is done!

   

• Kiss once again Bless hope & troth. Full many a withered year
• Whirled past us, eddying to its chill doomsday;
• And clasped together where the blown leaves lay,
• We long have knelt and wept full many a tear.
• Yet lo! one hour at last, the Spring's compeer,
• Flutes softly to us from some green byeway:
• Those years, those tears are dead, but only they . ,—
• Kiss once again, my love; for we are here.
  Added TextBut only they—for thou & I are here.

• Cling heart to heart; nor of this hour demand
• 10 Whether in very truth, when we are dead,
• Our hearts shall wake to know Love's golden head
• Sole sunshine of the imperishable land;
• Or but discern, through night's unfeatured scope,
• Scorn-fired at length the illusive eyes of Hope.

   

• Love, should I fear death most for you or me?
• Yet if you die, can I not follow you,
• Forcing the straits of change? Alas! but who
• Shall wrest a bond from night's inveteracy,
• Ere yet my hazardous soul put forth, to be
• Her warrant against all her haste might rue?—
• Ah! in your eyes so reached what dumb adieu,
• What unsunned gy v res of waste eternity?

• And if I die the first, shall death be then
• 10 A lampless watchtower whence I see you weep?—
• Or (woe is me!) a bed wherein my sleep
• Ne'er notes (as death's dear cup at last you drain),
• The hour when you too learn that all is vain
• And that Hope sows what Love shall never reap?

   

• Because our talk was of the cloud-control
• And moon-track of the journeying face of Fate,
• Her tremulous kisses faltered at love's gate
• And her eyes dreamed against a distant goal:
• But soon, remembering her how brief the whole
• Of joy, which its own hours annihilate,
• Her set gaze gathered, thirstier than of late,
• And as she kissed, her mouth became her soul.

• Thence in what ways we wandered, and how strove
• 10 To build with fire-tried vows the piteous home
• Which memory haunts and whither sleep may
• roam,—
• They only know for whom the roof of Love
• Is the still-seated secret of the grove,
• Nor spire may rise nor bell be heard therefrom.

   

• What shall be said of this embattled day
• And armed occupation of this night
• By all thy foes beleaguered,—now when sight
• Nor sound denotes the loved one far away?
• Of these thy vanquished hours what shalt thou say,—
• As every sense to which she dealt delight
• Now labours lonely o'er the stark noon-height
• To reach the sunset's desolate disarray?

• Stand still, fond fettered wretch! while Memory's art
• 10 Parades the Past before thy face, and lures
• Thy spirit to her passionate portraitures:
• Till the tempestuous tide-gates flung apart
• Flood with wild will the hollows of thy heart,
• And thy heart rends thee, and thy body endures.