LOVE AND LIFE

Thy hand I press,
And am not much afraid:
Though danger lie in wait in every glade,
Thou, Love, hast might to comfort and caress
My helplessness.

The way is steep;
But thou wilt soothe its pain;
And when at last the utmost height we gain,
To the soft shelter of thy wings I'll creep,
And sleep — and sleep.

The way is long;
But though I wearied be,

LOVE AND DEATH

A MOMENT , Death! — only a moment more!
She is my all; have pity! stay thy hand!
Behold, a fearful suppliant I stand! —
Take not away what thou canst not restore!

At thy approach the birds have ceased to sing,
The roses of my lintel droop and pine,
The genial sun itself doth coldly shine,
And in thy shadow all seems darkening.

That thou art merciless, as men declare,

Immortal Love, too high for my possessing, —
Yet, lower than thee, where shall I find repose?
Long in my youth I sang the morning rose,
By earthly things the heavenly pattern guessing!
Long fared I on, beauty and love caressing,
And finding in my heart a place for those
Eternal fugitives; the golden close
Of evening folds me, still their sweetness blessing.

Oh, happy we, the first-born heirs of nature,
For whom the Heavenly Sun delays his light!
He by the sweets of every mortal creature
Tempers eternal beauty to our sight;

" AN evil thing is honor, " once of old
The saddest of Italian shepherds sang,
And on his mouth the immortal lyric sprang
That through all ages pours the age of gold:
" Not that the earth untilled her harvests rolled,
The rose no thorn, the serpent had no fang,
The seAno furrow, nowhere ever rang
The battle, but that love was uncontrolled. "

The reminiscence of all lost desire
That love-defrauded hearts dream on for aye,
Hangs in the words, and rises from the lyre,
Whose ecstasy fails not unto this day.

In what a glorious substance did they dream
Who first embodied immortality,
And in warm marble gave this world to see
The earthly art that lifts heaven-high its beam!
Of things that only to the spirit seem
They wrought the eternal stuff of memory,
And the invisible divinity
That they so loved, did in their temples gleam.

I have no art to deify the stone,
Nor genius, later born, to limn or paint;
No instrumental music do I own,
Of choiring angel or ecstatic saint;
Best by its frailties here is true love known,

" LOVE purifies his acts, " my lady said,
" As first Apollo in his Castaly
His votaries dipped, and in thy turn dipped thee,
And healed thee of thy wounds of hardihead,
Whom great desires into great perils led
And made thee bonds even of thy liberty;
True service of the god, whate'er it be,
Doth in the action heavenly pardon shed.

" Only great sorrows can him greatly bless
Who shall from great ideals his nature draw;
Who doth no other lord than love confess,
And aye shall own not any other law,

Well from the first I knew how long deferred
My rapture, unaccomplished here below;
Yet must I upon all the winds that blow
Speak to all creatures my adoring word,
So burning in my bosom's depth was stirred
The power of loving; loving must I go,
Though crowning of desire I shall not know,
A soul enamored, of the people heard.

All of my lady is this spreading fire,
And mystical the quality thereof,
That, parted farthest, unto her goes nigher,
And seeming most to stoop, most springs above,
And borne in heaven, unquenchable desire,

She is not a pale visionary thing;
She cometh not to me in dream or trance,
Nor ever with phantasmal feature haunts
The passages where thought goes wandering
Its shadow-world; night's sky-embracing wing,
That in the sleepy vault all things enchants,
Captures not there her form and countenance;
Fancies of her to me no fevers bring.

But when my conscious spirit doth purest ride
In its full being and sentiency of life,
When reason standeth at her height of pride,
And my quick mind, with germination rife,

All earthly loves to me are of the earth;
But not for that are they to me less sweet,
Although I hold within my soul conceit
Of higher things that have a heavenly worth.
In my mortality I take my mirth,
And crown my head with roses, with swift feet
Run in the race-course, and in song compete
With others, and have joys of home and hearth.

For if in exile I should disappear,
And my true friends I never more might see,
Never to love, never to hold them dear,
Save in thought only, happier would they be

WAS it merely so at first
When a pale star in the tremulous air
Palpitated, and the nightingales outburst
In the rich-breathed laurels there?

And he loved me then, I know,
And I know how much I loved him then:
And again these nightingales' quick raptures flow
To the hearts of women and men.