• The mother will not turn, who thinks she hears
• Her nursling's speech first grow articulate;
• But breathless with averted eyes elate
• She sits, with open lips and open ears,
• That it may call her twice. 'Mid doubts and fears
• Thus oft my soul has hearkened; till the song,
• A central moan for days, at length found tongue,
• And the sweet music welled and the sweet tears.

• But now, whatever while the soul is fain
• 10 To list that wonted murmur, as it were
• The speech-bound sea-shell's low importunate
• strain,—
• No breath of song, thy voice alone is there,
• O bitterly beloved! and all her gain
• Is but the pang of unpermitted prayer.

   

• There came an image in Life's retinue
• That had Love's wings and bore his gonfalon:
• Fair was the web, and nobly wrought thereon,
• O soul-sequestered face, thy form and hue!
• Bewildering sounds, such as Spring wakens to,
• Shook in its folds; and through my heart its
• power
• Sped trackless as the immemorable hour
• When birth's dark portal groaned and all was new.

• But a veiled woman followed, and she caught
• 10 The banner round its staff, to furl and cling,—
• Then plucked a feather from the bearer's wing,
• And held it to his lips that stirred it not,
• And said to me, “Behold, there is no breath:
• I and this Love are one, and I am Death.”

       

• I sat with Love upon a woodside well,
• Leaning across the water, I and he;
• Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me,
• But touched his lute wherein was audible
• The certain secret thing he had to tell:
• Only our mirrored eyes met silently
• In the low wave; and that sound came to be
• The passionate voice I knew; and my tears fell.

• And at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers;
• 10And with his foot and with his wing-feathers
• He swept the spring that watered my heart's
• drouth.
• Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair,
• And as I stooped, her own lips rising there
• Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth.

   

• And now Love sang: but his was such a song,
• So meshed with half-remembrance hard to free,
• As souls disused in death's sterility
• May sing when the new birthday tarries long.
• And I was made aware of a dumb throng
• That stood aloof, one form by every tree,
• All mournful forms, for each was I or she,
• The shades of those our days that had no tongue.

• They looked on us, and knew us and were known;
• 10 While fast together, alive from the abyss,
• Clung the soul-wrung implacable close kiss;
• And pity of self through all made broken moan
• Which said, “For once, for once, for once alone!”
• And still Love sang, and what he sang was this:—

   

• “O ye, all ye that walk in Willowwood,
• That walk with hollow faces burning white;
• What fathom-depth of soul-struck widowhood,
• What long, what longer hours, one lifelong night,
• Ere ye again, who so in vain have wooed
• Your last hope lost, who so in vain invite
• Your lips to that their unforgotten food,
• Ere ye, ere ye again shall see the light!

• Alas! the bitter banks in Willowwood,
• 10 With tear-spurge wan, with blood-wort burning
• red:
• Alas! if ever such a pillow could
• Steep deep the soul in sleep till she were dead,—
• Better all life forget her than this thing,
• That Willowwood should hold her wandering!”

   

• So sang he: and as meeting rose and rose
• Together cling through the wind's wellaway
• Nor change at once, yet near the end of day
• The leaves drop loosened where the heart-stain
• glows,—
• So when the song died did the kiss unclose;
• And her face fell back drowned, and was as grey
• As its grey eyes; and if it ever may
• Meet mine again I know not if Love knows.

• Only I know that I leaned low and drank
• 10A long draught from the water where she sank,
• Her breath and all her tears and all her soul:
• And as I leaned, I know I felt Love's face
• Pressed on my neck with moan of pity and grace,
• Till both our heads were in his aureole.

   

• What of her glass without her? The blank grey
• There where the pool is blind of the moon's face.
• Her dress without her? The tossed empty space
• Of cloud-rack whence the moon has passed away.
• Her paths without her? Day's appointed sway
• Usurped by desolate night. Her pillowed place
• Without her? Tears, ah me! for love's good
• grace,
• And cold forgetfulness of night or day.

• What of the heart without her? Nay, poor heart,
• 10 Of thee what word remains ere speech be still?
• A wayfarer by barren ways and chill,
• Steep ways and weary, without her thou art,
• Where the long cloud, the long weeds wood's counterpart,
• Sheds doubled darkness up the labouring hill.

   

• Sweet Love,—but oh! most dread Desire of Love
• Life-thwarted. Linked in gyves I saw them stand,
• Love shackled with Vain-longing, hand to hand:
• And one was eyed as the blue vault above:
• But hope tempestuous like a fire-cloud hove
• I' the other's gaze, even as in his whose wand
• Vainly all night with spell-wrought power has
• spann'd
• The unyielding caves of some deep treasure-trove.

• Also his lips, two writhen flakes of flame,
• 10 Made moan: “Alas O Love, thus leashed with
• me!
• Wing-footed there thou, wing-shouldered, once born
• free:
• And I, thy cowering self, in chains grown tame,—
• Bound to thy body and soul, named with thy
• name,—
• Life's iron heart, even Love's Fatality.”

   

• The hour which might have been yet might not be,
• Which man's and woman's heart conceived and
• bore
• Yet whereof life was barren,—on what shore
• Bides it the breaking of Time's weary sea?
• Bondchild of all consummate joys set free,
• It somewhere sighs and serves, and mute before
• The house of Love, hears through the echoing door
• His hours elect in choral consonancy.

• But lo! what wedded souls now hand in hand
• 10Together tread at last the immortal strand
• With eyes where burning memory lights love
• home?
• Lo! how the little outcast hour has turned
• And leaped to them and in their faces yearned:—
• “I am your child: O parents, ye have come!”

       

• To be a sweetness more desired than Spring;
• A bodily beauty more acceptable
• Than the wild rose-tree's arch that crowns the fell;
• To be an essence more environing
• Than wine's drained juice; a music ravishing
• More than the passionate pulse of Philomel;—
• To be all this 'neath one soft bosom's swell
• That is the flower of life:—how strange a thing!

• How strange a thing to be what Man can know
• 10 But as a sacred secret! Heaven's own screen
• Hides her soul's purest depth and loveliest glow;
• Closely withheld, as all things most unseen,—
• The wave-bowered pearl,—the heart-shaped seal of
• green
• That flecks the snowdrop underneath the snow.

   

• She loves him; for her infinite soul is Love,
• And he her lodestar. Passion in her is
• A glass facing his fire, where the bright bliss
• Is mirrored, and the heat returned. Yet move
• That glass, a stranger's amorous flame to prove,
• And it shall turn, by instant contraries,
• Ice to the moon; while her pure fire to his
• For whom it burns, clings close i' the heart's alcove.

• Lo! they are one. With wifely breast to breast
• 10 And circling arms, she welcomes all command
• Of love,—her soul to answering ardours fann'd:
• Yet as morn springs or twilight sinks to rest,
• Ah! who shall say she deems not loveliest
• The hour of sisterly sweet hand-in-hand?

   

• If to grow old in Heaven is to grow young,
• (As the Seer saw and said,) then blest were he
• With youth for evermore, whose heaven should be
• True Woman, she whom these weak notes have
• sung.
• Here and hereafter,—choir-strains of her tongue,—
• Sky-spaces of her eyes,—sweet signs that flee
• About her soul's immediate sanctuary,—
• Were Paradise all uttermost worlds among.

• The sunrise blooms and withers on the hill
• 10 Like any hillflower; and the noblest troth
• Dies here to dust. Yet shall Heaven's promise
• clothe
• Even yet those lovers who have cherished still
• This test for love:—in every kiss sealed fast
• To feel the first kiss and forbode the last.

   

• Love to his singer held a glistening leaf,
• And said: “The rose-tree and the apple-tree
• Have fruits to vaunt or flowers to lure the bee;
• And golden shafts are in the feathered sheaf
• Of the great harvest-marshal, the year's chief,
• Victorious Summer; aye, and 'neath warm sea
• Strange secret grasses lurk inviolably
• Between the filtering channels of sunk reef.

• All are my blooms; and all sweet blooms of love
• 10 To thee I gave while Spring and Summer sang;
• But Autumn stops to listen, with some pang
• From these worse things the wind is moaning of.
• Only this laurel dreads no winter days:
• Take my last gift; thy heart hath sung my praise.”

       

• As growth of form or momentary glance
• In a child's features will recall to mind
• The father's with the mother's face combin'd,—
• Sweet interchange that memories still enhance:
• And yet, as childhood's years and youth's advance,
• The gradual mouldings leave one stamp behind,
• Till in the blended likeness now we find
• A separate man's or woman's countenance:—

• So in the Song, the singer's Joy and Pain,
• 10 Its very parents, evermore expand
• To bid the passion's fullgrown birth remain,
• By Art's transfiguring essence subtly spann'd;
• And from that song-cloud shaped as a man's hand
• There comes the sound as of abundant rain.

   

• By thine own tears thy song must tears beget,
• O Singer! Magic mirror thou hast none
• Except thy manifest heart; and save thine own
• Anguish or ardour, else no amulet.
• Cisterned in Pride, verse is the feathery jet
• Of soulless air-flung fountains; nay, more dry
• Than the Dead Sea for throats that thirst and sigh,
• That song o'er which no singer's lids grew wet.

• The Song-god—He the Sun-god—is no slave
• 10 Of thine; thy Hunter he, who for thy soul
• Fledges his shaft: to no august control
• Of thy skilled hand his quivered store he gave:
• But if thy lips' loud cry leap to his smart,
• The inspir'd recoil shall pierce thy brother's heart.

   

• Some prisoned moon in steep cloud-fastnesses,—
• Throned queen and thralled; some dying sun
• whose pyre
• Blazed with momentous memorable fire;—
• Who hath not yearned and fed his heart with these?
• Who, sleepless, hath not anguished to appease
• Tragical shadow's realm of sound and sight
• Conjectured in the lamentable night? . . . . .
• Lo! the soul's sphere of infinite images!

• What sense shall count them? Whether it forecast
• 10 The rose-winged hours that flutter in the van
• Of Love's unquestioning unrevealèd span,—
• Visions of golden futures: or that last
• Wild pageant of the accumulated past
• That clangs and flashes for a drowning man.