I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age-old pain,
It's ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:

O Love, in every battle victor owned;
Now on a maiden's soft and blooming cheek,
In secret ambush hid;
Now o'er the broad sea wandering at will,
And now in shepherd's folds;
Of all the Undying Ones none 'scape from thee,
Nor yet of mortal men
Whose lives are measured as a fleeting day;
And who has thee is frenzied in his soul.

Unbreakable, O Lord,
Is the love
That binds me to You:
Like a diamond,
It breaks the hammer that strikes it.

My heart goes into You
As the polish goes into the gold.
As the lotus lives in its water,
I live in You.

Like the bird
That gazes all night
At the passing moon,
I have lost myself dwelling in You.

O my Beloved - Return.

809

Unable are the Loved to die
For Love is Immortality,
Nay, it is Deity—

Unable they that love—to die
For Love reforms Vitality
Into Divinity.

Now in these last spent drops, slow, slower shed,
Love dies, Love dies, Love dies--ah, Love is dead!
Sad Love in life, sore Love in agony,
Pale Love in death; while all his offspring songs,
Like children, versed not in death's chilly wrongs,
About him flit, frighted to see him lie
So still, who did not know that Love could die.
One lifts his wing, where dulls the vermeil all
Like clotting blood, and shrinks to find it cold,
And when she sees its lapse and nerveless fall
Clasps her fans, while her sobs ooze through the webb-ed gold.

S. B. f-Shtein
There is such love that’s similar to smoke:
If it is bound – it’s intoxicating,
Receiving freedom – vanished, not awaiting…
Be like the smoke – but in young years locked.

There is such love that’s similar to shade:
If it is day – lay by your feet – a hound,
If it is night – embraced you all around…
Be like the shade – together night and day…

One said; "Lo, I would walk hand-clasped with thee
Adown the ways of joy and sunlit slopes
Of earthly song in happiest vagrancy
To pluck the blossom of a thousand hopes.
Let us together drain the wide world's cup
With gladness brimméd up!"

And one said, "I would pray to go with thee
When sorrow claims thee; I would fence thy heart
With mine against all anguish; I would be
The comforter and healer of thy smart;
And I would count it all the wide world's gain
To spare or share thy pain!"

The woman he loved, while he dreamed of her,
Danced on till the stars grew dim,
But alone with her heart, from the world apart
Sat the woman who loved him.

The woman he worshipped only smiled
When he poured out his passionate love.
But the other somewhere, kissed her treasure most rare,
A book he had touched with his glove.

The woman he loved betrayed his trust,
And he wore the scars for life;
And he cared not, nor knew, that the other was true;
But no man called her his wife.

TWO youths from a village set out together
To seek their fortune the wide world through;
One cried, 'Hurra for the autumn weather!'
The other sighed, 'Winter is almost due!'
One failed, they said, for he never was thrifty,
Returned to the village, and laughed and loved.
The other succeeded, and when he was fifty
Had millions and fame, and the world approved.

But the failure was happy, his smile a blessing,
The dogs and the children romped at his feet,
While from him who succeeded, tho' much possessing,

Were thou and I the white pinions
On some eager, heaven-born dove,
Swift would we mount to the old dominions,
To our rest of old, my love!

Were thou and I trembling strands
In music's enchanted line,
We would wait and wait for magic hands
To untwist the magic twine.

Were we two sky-tints, thou and I,
Thou the golden, I the red;
We would quiver and glow and darken and die,
And love until we were dead!

Nearer than wings of one dove,
Than tones or colours in chord,
We are one-and safe, and for ever, my love,