My life's joy and incense: recollection of those hours
when I found and captured pleasure as I wanted it.
My life's joy and incense: that I refused
all indulgence in routine love affairs.

I never saw you, never grasped your hand,
Nor wrote nor read lines absence loves to trace,
Ne'er with you sate in your accustomed place,
Nor waited for your coming on sea or land.
But this I know, if along unseen strand,
Or anywhere in God's eternal space,
You heard my voice, or I beheld your face,
That we should greet, and both would understand.
So, till that hour, wherever you abide,
On circling star, or interstellar sea,
Or where, from man's imagination free,
There moves no planet and there sounds no tide,

It lies before me there, and my own breath
Stirs its thin outer threads, as though beside
The living head I stood in honoured pride,
Talking of lovely things that conquer death.
Perhaps he pressed it once, or underneath
Ran his fine fingers when he leant, blank-eyed,
And saw in fancy Adam and his bride
With their heaped locks, or his own Delphic wreath.

There seems a love in hair, though it be dead.
It is the gentlest, yet the strongest thread
Of our frail plant,--a blossom from the tree

Gray pilgrim, you have journeyed far,
I pray you tell to me
Is there a land where Love is not,
By shore of any sea?

For I am weary of the god,
And I would flee from him
Tho' I must take a ship and go
Beyond the ocean's rim.

"I know a port where Love is not,
The ship is in your hand,
Then plunge your sword within your breast
And you will reach the land."

To the heart of youth the world is a highwayside.
Passing for ever, he fares; and on either hand,
Deep in the gardens golden pavilions hide,
Nestle in orchard bloom, and far on the level land
Call him with lighted lamp in the eventide.

Thick as the stars at night when the moon is down,
Pleasures assail him. He to his nobler fate
Fares; and but waves a hand as he passes on,
Cries but a wayside word to her at the garden gate,
Sings but a boyish stave and his face is gone.

What does youth know of love?
Little enough, I trow!
He plucks the myrtle for his brow,
For his forehead the rose.
Nay, but of love
It is not youth who knows.

What hast thou done to this dear friend of mine,
Thou cold, white, silent Stranger? From my hand
Her clasped hand slips to meet the grasp of thine;
Here eyes that flamed with love, at thy command
Stare stone-blank on blank air; her frozen heart
Forgets my presence. Teach me who thou art,
Vague shadow sliding 'twixt my friend and me.
I never saw thee till this sudden hour.
What secret door gave entrance unto thee?
What power in thine, o'ermastering Love's own power?

If love thou hast for me, not hate,
Arise and find a younger mate;
For I no longer will abide
Where youth and age lie side by side.

If I have you then I have everything
In One, and that One nothing of them all
Nor all compounded, and within the wall
Beneath the tower I wait to hear you sing:
Love breathing low above the breast of Spring,
Pressing her heart with baby heart and small
From baby lips love-syllables lets fall
And strokes with gentle hand her quivering wing.

You come rejoicing all the wilderness,
Filling with praise the land to joy unknown,
Fresh from that garden whose perfumes have blown
Down through the valley of the cypresses—

Your orange hair in the void of the world
In the void of these heavy panes of silence
Shade where my bare hands seek your image.

The shape of your heart is chimerical
And your love resembles my lost desire.
O sighs of amber, dreams, glances.

But you were not always here. My memory
Is still obscured by seeing your coming
And going. Time consumes words, like love.