They did the deed of darkness
In their own mid-light.


He plucked a gray field mouse
Suddenly in the wind.


The small dead fly alive
Helplessly in his beak,


His cold pride, helpless.
All she receives is life.


They are terrified. They touch.
Life is too much.


She flies away sorrowing.
Sorrowing, she goes alone.


Then her small falcon, gone.
Will not rise here again.


Smaller than she, he goes
Claw beneath claw beneath

MY SOUL is raying like a star,
My heart is happier than a bird,
And all to hear through fortune’s jar
One promissory word.

A sound as simple as the low
Quick sliding gurgle of a rill,
And yet with power to overflow
A world with blissful will!

I feel as though the very air
Was breathen from the heart of Love,
As Pleasure in the sun’s bright lair
Sat brooding like a dove!

A billow of the sunny sea,
A cloudlet of the summer sky,
How wide is their felicity—
So widely blest am I!

YEAR after year the cowslips fill the meadow,
Year after year the skylarks thrill the air,
Year after year, in sunshine or in shadow,
Rolls the world round, love, and finds us as we were.

Year after year, as sure as birds' returning,
Or field-flowers' blossoming above the wintry mould,
Year after year, in work, or mirth, or mourning,
Love we with love's own youth, that never can grow old.

Sweetheart and ladye-love, queen of boyish passion,
Strong hope of manhood, content of age began;

Ye restless thoughts, that harbour discontent,
Cease your assaults and let my heart lament,
And let my tongue have leave to tell my grief,
That she may pity, though not grant relief.
Pity would help, alas, what love hath almost slain,
And salve the wound that fester'd this disdain.

1.
I walk to the south I walk to the north
where are you my Warrior?

I sit with the desert I sit with the ocean
where are you my Warrior?

I sing to the trees I sing to the rocks
where are you my Warrior?

I dance with the birds I dance with the animals
where are you my Warrior?

Heaven is everywhere
where are You?

2.
I will show you a field of zebra finch Dreaming in the shadow of the stony hill ochre
when the soft blanket of language hums and kinship campfires flavour windswept hair

Love feeds, like Intellect, his lamp with truth;
In the clear truths he finds its flame is measured.
And is not flesh, there, verity? In sooth!
So Love not by this fantasy is pleasured
That slurs the fact in flesh. Its atmosphere,
Too rare and nebulous, no fusing shows;
Its manna too ambrosial is and sheer:
Love craves that union, earthly hunger knows.
O sage is Love—he seeks the living line,
The miracles in breathing flesh explores,
The riches in the depth of sense, divine,
The veiled things only eternal longing pours

Is it indeed so ? If I lay here dead,
Wouldst thou miss any life in losing mine ?
And would the sun for thee more coldly shine
Because of grave-damps falling round my head ?
I marvelled, my Beloved, when I read
Thy thought so in the letter. I am thine--
But . . . so much to thee ? Can I pour thy wine
While my hands tremble ? Then my soul, instead
Of dreams of death, resumes life's lower range.
Then, love me, Love ! look on me--breathe on me !
As brighter ladies do not count it strange,
For love, to give up acres and degree,

And wilt thou have me fashion into speech
The love I bear thee, finding words enough,
And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough,
Between our faces, to cast light on each ?--
I drop it at thy feet. I cannot teach
My hand to hold my spirit so far off
From myself--me--that I should bring thee proof
In words, of love hid in me out of reach.
Nay, let the silence of my womanhood
Commend my woman-love to thy belief,--
Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed,
And rend the garment of my life, in brief,

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

Accuse me not, beseech thee, that I wear
Too calm and sad a face in front of thine;
For we two look two ways, and cannot shine
With the same sunlight on our brow and hair.
On me thou lookest with no doubting care,
As on a bee shut in a crystalline;
Since sorrow hath shut me safe in love's divine,
And to spread wing and fly in the outer air
Were most impossible failure, if I strove
To fail so. But I look on thee--on thee--
Beholding, besides love, the end of love,
Hearing oblivion beyond memory;
As one who sits and gazes from above,