Classic Poem

I DO not ask it thee! That is not love
Which waits to be entreated. Love is free
As God's own life, and of itself doth move.
Should I say, Love me? Rather let me prove
Myself to be love-worthy: then let be!

And yet what wretched shams our sad eyes see!—
“I love my Love because my Love loves me;”—
Oh, pitiful! Hast thou no gauge above
Another's thought by which to rate thine own?
No worthier trust, no surer corner-stone
To build thy temple of sweet hopes upon?
God help thee at thy need and give thee strength
To bear the shock of trial when at length
Thine hour shall write thee desolate, undone.

Sitting in this sweet stillness all alone,
I thank my God that with my eyes upon
His holy stars, I can say reverently,
“I love my Love because in him I see
Great nobleness, worthy of all my love,
A soul all meanness and all feints above;
A manly front that dares to face the Right,
That, shouldering Truth, stands ready for the fight,
And following Duty, walks in her sweet light.”

O ye glad stars that overspread the night!
I cannot see you for these happy tears,
Yet know you shining still; so Love appears:
I cannot pierce these misty human years
That hide God's great Hereafter, yet I know
My love still shining there as here below,
Only with purer, more ecstatic glow.
For is not Love immortal? Stars shall fall,
And the weird music of the jostling spheres
Crash into silence! Love, supreme o'er all,
Shall throb its calm, grand pæan undismayed,
By nothing daunted and of nought afraid,
Though old worlds crumble or though new be made.