I watch the full moon
slide down
a dome of dark glass.

His silvered body,
disturbs my peace of mind.

Sleep averted, I wait.
The moon sets.

At dawn the speargrass flowers
while we make love.

Was there love once? I have forgotten her.
Was there grief once? Grief yet is mine.
Other loves I have, men rough, but men who stir
More grief, more joy, than love of thee and thine.

Faces cheerful, full of whimsical mirth,
Lined by the wind, burned by the sun;
Bodies enraptured by the abounding earth,
As whose children we are brethern: one.

And any moment may descend hot death
To shatter limbs! Pulp, tear, blast
Belovèd soldiers who love rough life and breath
Not less for dying faithful to the last.

Enough of love! Let break its every hold!
Ended my youthful folly! for I know
That, like the dazzling, glister-shedding snow,
Celia, thou art beautiful, but cold.
I do not find in thee that warmth which glows,
Which, all these dreary days, my heart has sought,
That warmth without which love is lifeless, naught
More than a painted fruit, a waxen rose.

Such love as thine, scarce can it bear love's name,
Deaf to the pleading notes of his sweet lyre,
A frank, impulsive heart I wish to claim,
A heart that blindly follows its desire.

In moments to delight devoted,
'My life!' with tenderest tone you cry;
Dear words! on which my heart had doted,
If youth could neither fade nor die.

To death even hours like these must roll,
Ah! then repeat those accents never;
Or change 'my life!' into 'my soul!'
Which, like my love, exists for ever.
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AN OTHER VERSION

You call me still your life.--Oh! change the word--
Life is as transient as the inconstant sigh:
Say rather I'm your soul; more just that name,

If I, dearest Lily, did not love thee,

How this prospect would enchant my sight!
And yet if I, Lily, did not love thee,

Could I find, or here, or there, delight?

ERE yet the dawn
Pushed rosy fingers up the arch of day
And smiled its promise to the voiceless prime,
Love sat and patterns wove at life's great loom.

He flung the suns into the soundless arch,
Appointed them their courses in the deep,
To keep His great time-harmonies, and blaze
As beacons in the ebon fields of night.
Love balanced them and held them firm and true,
Poised 'twixt attractive and repulsive drift
Amid the throngs of heaven. What though this power
Was ever known to us as gravity,
Its first and last celestial name is Love.

Pan loved his neighbour Echo--but that child
Of Earth and Air pined for the Satyr leaping;
The Satyr loved with wasting madness wild
The bright nymph Lyda,--and so three went weeping.
As Pan loved Echo, Echo loved the Satyr,
The Satyr, Lyda; and so love consumed them.--
And thus to each--which was a woful matter--
To bear what they inflicted Justice doomed them;
For, inasmuch as each might hate the lover,
Each, loving, so was hated.--Ye that love not
Be warned-in thought turn this example over,

ONCE for thy brow a wreath I wished to wind,
And, seeking long, I could no flowers find.
Now golden flowers are blooming far and near,
But, ah! dear love, thou art no longer here.

MY faint spirit was sitting in the light
   Of thy looks, my love;
   It panted for thee like the hind at noon
   For the brooks, my love.
Thy barb, whose hoofs outspeed the tempest's flight,
   Bore thee far from me;
   My heart, for my weak feet were weary soon,
   Did companion thee.

Ah! fleeter far than fleetest storm or steed,
   Or the death they bear,
   The heart which tender thought clothes like a dove

In the glad springtime when leaves were green,
O merrily the throstle sings!
I sought, amid the tangled sheen,
Love whom mine eyes had never seen,
O the glad dove has golden wings!

Between the blossoms red and white,
O merrily the throstle sings!
My love first came into my sight,
O perfect vision of delight,
O the glad dove has golden wings!

The yellow apples glowed like fire,
O merrily the throstle sings!
O Love too great for lip or lyre,
Blown rose of love and of desire,
O the glad dove has golden wings!