I used to love fair Art with golden wings;
I loved her like a bride;
I met her by blue streams and forest springs;
I wandered at her side.

The sunsets held her, and the morning's gold
Circled her peerless hair:
Deep fern and heather draped the summer wold,
And buoyant Art was there.

And in sweet music Art's sweet spirit spoke;
And over the wild sea
Her face like sudden lustrous morning broke
Triumphant upon me.

So all my youth was passed. I worshipped her,
Fair Art, with love supreme,
And brought her all my hopes, and I laid bare

If I love thee with love surpassing and excelling
All love that song or strange high history hath for telling,
All love-dreams of the past,
Then wilt not thou love me with love that never dreamer
In noblest moments dreamed,—love softer and supremer?
Will thy love-look not seek mine at the last?

If I can bring thee love outweighing and exceeding
The common love of man, wilt thou not hear its pleading
With tenderer than the heart
Of women who are crowned with love that lasts no longer
Than bloom of summer rose? If thus my soul be stronger

Beauty thou hast to thrill the hearts of men:
But wilt thou seek for nothing more?
Not seek the loveliness that lasteth when
Life's loveliness is o'er?

Win thou a glory of sweet heart and mind
As noble as thy face is sweet:
Let me, love-seeking, ever surely find
Christ's eyes when thine I meet.

There is a love so deep it travels far
Beyond the reach of words. E'en love-songs jar
When the great depths are stirred.
The blue vast heaven responds to God who made
Its depths profound of awful light and shade
Sometimes without one word.

When heaven is full of love, no thunders leap
Along the heights of the abysmal steep:
Nay! all is silent then.
There is a love so full of silent peace
That even solemn stately love-chants cease
Or are not heard of men.

O love, be with me in my silent hours
And gather sweeter than the old song-flowers

For thee I have achieved hard things and dread.—I know it.
But what were heart of man, and, least of all, of poet,
If this he could not do?
The impossible to love is possible, and easy.
The God who first began his flower-work by the daisy
Conceived at last his rose of fieriest hue.

So I who first began my love-work by soft singing
Of love that passed away, now send a strong song ringing
Along the fields of air.
I who have sung of charm of meadow-sweet and daisy
And stooped to gather buds in morning's uplands hazy

I crave thine highest love.—No mere swift temporal passion,
That gives, then passes on in boyish girlish fashion;
No momentary thing;
But love that ever grows to higher tenderer beauty:
The love whose heart is one with the strong soul of duty:
The love whereat the stars rejoice and sing.

The love of thy deep soul. The love that, daily growing,
Sees ever, as the path, along the mountains going,
Winds upward day by day,
New heights of sacred joy before its footstep gleaming:
The love whose heart is one with woman's softest dreaming:

The lonely weary stars that never loved before
And who were wont across the loveless dark to pour
Sad solitary rays
Woke up for thee, and brought their gleaming crowns of gold
And gave thee all their dreams,—strange love-dreams that of old
Lighted old nights and days.

The flowers that never loved brought all their bloom and wonder,
And tender buds for thee broke green soft sheaths in sunder
Eager thine eyes to meet.—
And I thy poet bring the dreams that once forsook me,
Now caught and clasped again,—the old love-dream that shook me

Of old God rested 'mid the heavenly flowers,
Far from all sounds and sights of man's despair:
The blue sky filled with light the deathless bowers
And perfect peace was there.

All pure delights were present to his hand:
The stars at night were ministers sublime:
Joy flooded like a stream the painless land
That took no heed of time.

Far-off man toiled amid the nether gloom,
And woman wept, and death ruled bitterly.
Ruin and dread destruction were man's doom;
To love, and then to die.

But Love arose and said, “While one man sighs

As through the winter's gates the joyous spring-tide passes,
Her bright brow wreathed with flowers and buds and clinging grasses,—
And then the summer shines,
With songs of many birds and sound of many rivers
And laughter of the leaves that rustles down and shivers
Through the concordant leafage of the pines:

As still there is a sense of agony just over
That even pales the rose and troubles the sweet clover
At times, and thrills the grove,
So, in our human lives, an agony of weeping,
Though summer's silent peace upon the hills be sleeping,

What right have I to thee! What claim in words to fashion!
Merely the right and claim of fiery love and passion
And tenderness outpoured:
Merely the right of Love the large-eyed world-redeemer;
Merely the desperate right of one wild-hearted dreamer,
And, if man doubt it, my most wakeful sword.

Merely the final right of love that knows no limit:
That gazes in death's eyes, but finds no power to dim it
Or dwarf it set therein:
Merely the right supreme by which when all the bowers
Besought the brow of God to wear their choicest flowers