Let now my soul
Ascend with the song of glorious love to the skies of the morning,
Let now my lark-soul, sun of the darkness, dawn toward the sun of the day,
Earth is too narrow: give me a sky to sing in:
Give me a sky for a golden love-song ...

I arose from the bed of night and from the arms of my beloved in the darkness:
I arose: I tasted resurrection:
The god, struggling in my breast, became a lark ...
" This is what the Earth means," I cried,
" Why our planet goes with singing down the sky-road of the stars."

This is love's proof:
That it is more wonderful to be together, than to be parted:
That distance does not touch each other with a glamour
Half so beautiful as the witchery of nearness:
That the hours together go all too soon, too soon:
That morning trips on the heels of evening, and the dark is juggled with the light:
That we never have time enough to say all the things that we must say:
That parting makes us aware of hunger and desire:
That the thousandth touch of lips has the fine intoxication of the first:

Are you in my arms, my bird,
Are you here? are you here, in the hollow beside my cheek?
Slender Pocahontas was your great-great-grandmother,
The pines and the waters soothed her into slumber,
Soothed her, caressed her, and murmured her asleep ...

Let me be the pines and the waters,
And the dark, the summer Earth,
Let me be caressing South-Wind
Starry and melodious ...
Let me gather you, let me be your enfolding into a nest,
Let me be the waters where you slip to the dark and cease,
Cease from care and trouble, darling, and come to rest,

My love is a winged heart ...
O dark depths of my ghost whence, throbbing, she flies
Out and up to the heavens on the golden thread of my love ...

My love is a winged heart ...
And I draw in the golden thread, I draw it in quickly,
Lest she be flown, lest she be quite vanished ...

My love is a winged heart ...
Singing, she drops in my hands, and I put her warm in my breast ...
Surely I should die if she never returned.

I will fight for my land,
I will work for my land,
Will it foster with love, in my faith, in my child.
I will eke every gain,
I will seek boot for bane,
From its easternmost bound to the western sea wild.


Here is sunshine enough,
Here is seed-earth enough,
If by us, if by us all love's duty were done.
Here is will to create;
Though our burdens be great,
We can lift up our land, if we all lift as one.


In the past we went wide
O'er the sea's surging tide,
And the Norman's high walls stand on many a shore.

Blanche is Boldini minus Southern fire;
But one will flicker and the other tire:
Neither is great, for each has won a place
With more of reclame than abiding grace.
And yet, perhaps, they meet the Ruskin test,
And " try, with loving care, to do their best."

O Red Rag of the Legion! cheap but fair,
How Merit flings thee to the startled air!
Thy function in this world is manifold,
The soldier loves thee, and the bourgeois bold;
But there is none that loves thee quite so much
As brushman putting Fortune to the touch.

As it was written in the Book of Fate,
The ranting rabble loves the second-rate;
For the one touch that makes the whole world kin —
Vulgarity — is commonplace as sin.

My cruel Dear, having captived my heart,
And bound it fast in chains of restless love,
Requires it out of bondage to depart;
Yet is she sure from her it cannot move.
" Draw back, " said she, " your hopeless love from me;
Your worth requires a far more worthy place;
Unto your suit though I cannot agree,
Full many will it lovingly embrace. "
" It may be so, my dear, but, as the Sun,
When it appears, doth make the stars to vanish;
So when yourself into my thoughts do run,
All others quite out of my heart you banish.

If you would know the love which I you bear,
Compare it to the ring which your fair hand
Shall make more precious, when you shall it wear:
So my love's nature you shall understand.
Is it of metal pure? so you shall prove
My love, which ne'er disloyal thought did stain,
Hath it no end? so endless is my love,
Unless you it destroy with your disdain.
Doth it the purer wax, the more 'tis tried?
So doth my love: yet herein they dissent,
That whereas gold, the more 'tis purified,
By waxing less, doth show some part is spent;