Love is the center and circumference;
The cause and aim of all things—'tis the key
To joy and sorrow, and the recompense
For all the ills that have been, or may be.

Love is as bitter as the dregs of sin,
As sweet as clover-honey in its cell;
Love is the password whereby souls get in
To Heaven—the gate that leads, sometimes, to Hell.

Love is the crown that glorifies; the curse
That brands and burdens; it is life and death.
It is the great law of the universe;
And nothing can exist without its breath.

O LOVE ! if those clear faithful eyes of thine
Were ever turned away there then should be
No heav'nly looks to take the gloom from mine,
Nor any hills, nor any dales for me,
Nor any honeyed cups of eglantine,
Nor morning spilth of dew on land or sea.
No sun should rise, and leave his eastern tent
To wake the music of the rambling wave,
Nor any freshness of the West be sent
To sweep away night's savours of the grave.
But, when I gaze into those fadeless eyes,
Methinks I am in some mysterious land,
Where far-off seas take colour from the skies,

Now say what thing remains
When the smiles fly;
When the lips keep
A stillness deep
As death or sleep,
And the smiles fly;
Now say what thing remains
When the smiles fly.

One thing remains for thee;
From grief's moist sphere.
Without thy call
Ripe fruit will fall
On thee, the thrall
Of Love's last fear;
One thing remains for thee,—
There comes the tear.

Now say what thing remains
When the tears pass;
When from grief sown
New Love upgrown
Leads forth his own,
And the tears pass;

Where rolls in silent speed through cave on cave
Soul-freighted Acheron, and no other light
Evokes the rocks from an eternal night
Than the pale phosphorescence of the wave,

Shall we not meet, and have one chance to crave
Forgiveness for rash deeds—one chance to right
Old earthly quarrels, and, in Death's despite,
Unsay the said, and heal the pang they gave?

See, see! there looms from yonder soul-filled barque
That passes ours, a long-loved, long-lost face,
And with a cry we stretch our ghostly arms.

On the edge of the wild-wood
Grey doves fluttering:
Grey doves of Astarte
To the woods at daybreak
Lazily uttering.
Their murmured enchantment,
Old as man's childhood;

While she, pale divinity
Of hidden evil,
Silvers the regions chaste
Of cold sky, and broodeth
Over forests primeval
And all that thorny waste's
Wooded infinity.

‘Lovely goddess of groves,’
Cried I, ‘what enchanted
Sinister recesses
Of these lone shades
May still be haunted
By thy demon caresses,
Thy unholy loves?’

But clear day quelleth

Whene'er I see soft hazel eyes
And nut-brown curls
I think of those bright days I spent
Among the Limerick girls;
When up through Cratla woods I went
Nutting with thee,
And we plucked the glossy clustering fruit
From many a bending tree.

Beneath the hazel boughs we sat,
Thou, love, and I,
And the gathered nuts lay in thy lap,
Beneath thy downcast eye;
But little we thought of the store we'd won,
I, love, or thou;
For our hearts were full, and we dared not own
The love that's spoken now.

Oh, there's wars for willing hearts in Spain,

What tender love name can I call you by?
Not that of every hour and every one;
I would not take what others have begun
To soil by common use; nay, I would try

To lift our loving to some far-hung sky,
To bear it swift beyond each blazing sun
And in a demi-dark divinely spun
Of silver moons, to syllable it shy.

I yield to none; your mother's early way
Of calling you; your name in heaven writ clear,
These stand for holiness; but mine must be
Other, and more: its very sound must say:
“My dear, mine own, belovéd utterly,

E VA , thy beauty comes to me
To solace and to save;
A marvel and a mystery,
A beacon o'er the wave,—
A star above the jasper sea,
A hope beyond the grave.

Oft, when thy harp-tones wild and sweet
The waves of passion move,
Methinks pale Sappho's songs I hear
Murmuring of Phaon's love,—
Pale Sappho's passion songs I hear
Lamenting her lost love.

But in those tender, thoughtful eyes,
That look so far away,
A pleading Pysche bids me rise
To realms of purer day,—
A Psyche soaring to the skies,
To realms of perfect day.

She dreams of Love upon the temple stair,—
About her feet the lithe green lizards play
In all the drowsy, warm, Sicilian air.

The winds have loosed the fillet from her hair,
Sea winds, salt-lipped, that laugh and seem to say,
“She dreams of Love, upon the temple stair.

“Then let us twine soft fingers, here and there,
Amid the gleaming threads that drift and stray
In all the drowsy, warm, Sicilian air,

“And let us weave of them a subtle snare
To cast about and bind her, as to-day
She dreams of Love, upon the temple stair.”

Here in this room where first we met,
And where we said farewell with tears,
Here, where you swore “Though you forget,
My love shall deeper grow with years,”

Here, where the pictures on the wall,
The very rugs upon the floor,
The smallest objects you recall,—
I am awaiting you once more.

The books that we together read,—
From off their shelves they beckon me.
All here seems living! What is dead?
What is the ghost I fear to see?

Unchanged am I. Did you despise
My love as “small”?—it fills my heart!