• 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;
• Deep golden locks, her 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.

   

• 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.

   

• 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.

   

• Not I myself know all my love for thee:
• How should I reach so far, who cannot weigh
• To-morrow's dower by gage of yesterday?
• Shall birth and death, and all dark names that be
• As doors and windows bared to some loud sea,
• Lash deaf mine ears and blind my face with spray;
• And shall my sense pierce love,—the last relay
• And ultimate outpost of eternity?

• Lo! what am I to Love, the lord of all?
• 10 One murmuring shell he gathers from the sand,—
• One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand.
• Yet through thine eyes he grants me clearest call
• And veriest touch of powers primordial
• That any hour-girt life may understand.

   

• 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 that 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 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 wold,—
• 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 One 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!

   

• Bless love and hope. 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:—
• Bless love and hope, true soul; for we 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 gyres 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.