love poem

STROPHE I

Oh Love! oh Love! whose shafts of fire
Invade the soul with sweet surprise,
Through the soft dews of young desire
Trembling in beauty's azure eyes!
Condemn not me the pangs to share
Thy too impassioned votaries bear,
That on the mind their stamp impress,
Indelible and measureless
For not the sun's descending dart,
Nor yet the lightning-brand of Jove,
Fall like the shaft that strikes the heart,

The mutilated choir boys
When I begin to sing
Complain about the awful noise
And call my voice too thick a thing.

When light their voices lift them up,
Bright notes against the ear,
Through trills and runs like crystal,
Ring delicate and clear.

They sing of Love that's grown desirous,
Of Love, and joy that is Love's inmost part,
And all the ladies swim through tears
Toward such a work of art.

Tell me where thy lovely love is,
Whom thou once did sing so sweetly,
When the fairy flames enshrouded
Thee, and held thy heart completely.

All the flames are dead and sped now
And my heart is cold and sere;
Behold this book the urn of ashes,
'Tis my true love's sepulchre.

Since nought avails, let me arise and leave,
Though down the way of swords I wounded crawl;
Perchance I shall attain to touch her sleeve,
And surely on her threshold dying fall.

Should any ask me on His form to dwell,
Helpless I say, — " He hath no parallel. "
The lovers by the loved one all are slain,
No voice can answer from the dead again.

He is no friend who in thine hour of pride
Brags of his love and calls himself thy kin.
He is a friend who hales his fellow in,
And clangs the door upon the wolf outside.

Hail , Thou great mysterious Being!
Thou, the unseen yet All-seeing,
To Thee we call.
How can a mortal sing thy praise,
Or speak of all thy wondrous ways,
God over all?

God of the great old solemn woods,
God of the desert solitudes
And trackless sea;
God of the crowded city vast,
God of the present and the past,
Can man know Thee?

God of the blue vault overhead,
Of the green earth on which we tread,
Of time and space;
God of the worlds which Time conceals,

II

Upon the Book and Picture of the Seraphical Saint Teresa

Conclusion

O Heart! the equal poise of love's both parts,
Big alike with wound and darts,
Live in these conquering leaves; live all the same;
And walk through all tongues one triumphant flame.
Live here, great Heart, and love and die and kill,
And bleed and wound, and yield and conquer still,
Let this immortal life, where e'er it comes,
Walk in a crowd of loves and martyrdoms.
Let mystic deaths wait on't, and wise souls be

Bride loved old words, and found her pleasure marred
On the first night, her expectations jarred,
And thirty inches short of being a yard.