There is no power to change
One act, one word.
We move in time: these range
Immortal. I have heard

Egypt and her Antony,
With their love first fulfilled,
Cry out, and again cry—
Nor ever are they stilled.

And Sheba I have seen
Bare for her love her breast.
The silken Lesbian queen
Leaves nothing unconfessed.

Though Helen's lips are dust
The kisses of her lips
Must burn the towers, and must
Still launch the thousand ships.

Unspaced, untimed, held fast
Are all things done or undone.

There are no stars to-night
But those of memory.
Yet how much room for memory there is
In the loose girdle of soft rain.

There is even room enough
For the letters of my mother's mother,
Elizabeth,
That have been pressed so long
Into a corner of the roof
That they are brown and soft,
And liable to melt as snow.

Over the greatness of such space
Steps must be gentle.
It is all hung by an invisible white hair.
It trembles as birch limbs webbing the air.

And I ask myself:

“Are your fingers long enough to play

That Love,—whose power and sovranty we own,
And who before all time was did beget
The sun and moon and splendid stars, and set
All lovely things to speak of Him alone,—
Late looking earthward from his supreme throne
Saw that,—although the beauty lingered yet,—
The froward heart of man did quite forget
That all this beauty from His presence shone;
Wherefore, desiring to reclaim his eyes
To heaven by some unequalled new delight,
He gave the world a treasure from the skies,
My Lady's sacred beauty, pure and bright,

That Love is all there is,
Is all we know of Love;
It is enough, the freight should be
Proportioned to the groove.

Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome
Has many sonnets: so here now shall be
One sonnet more, a loving sonnet, from me
To her whose heart is my heart's quiet home,
To my first Love, my Mother, on whose knee
I learnt love-lore that is not troublesome:
Whose service is my special dignity
And she my lodestar while I go and come.

And so because you love, and because
I love you, Mother, I have woven a wreath
Of rhymes wherewith to crown your honored name:
In you not fourscore years can dim the flame

One day in a lonesome grove,
Lit o'er my head a little dove,
O little dove, you are not alone,
Like you I am constrained to mourn.
There is one thing that cheers my heart,
That my dear Mary's gone to rest,
And while tongue can move,
She prayed, she prayed her
Lord her pardoning love.

Do you see yon turtle-dove lamenting on yonder vine?
She's mourning for her own true love,
Why shouldn't I, too, mourn for mine?
My little dove, you're not alone,
For with you I'm constrained to mourn,
I once like you did have a mate,

On the Occident she shed her light
who kindled in the Orient of beauty;
him to detain who hastened to his doom
the heaven of the West sought out the Sun.

I, in the Occident guitaring light,
in a love-distracted dying burned;
(the consummation of my little day
was Moon, because my life was up betimes).

Thou gainest from the Occident on the Sun;
fatal wounds he fugitive inflicts,
thou motionless inflictest wounds of healing.

In the Orient still he fans his pyres;
and thou, from out the West, a livelier Sun,

O wha wou'd wish the win' to blaw
Or the green leaves fa' therewith;
Or wha wad wish a leeler love
Than Brown Adam the Smith?

His hammer 's o' the beaten gold,
His study 's o' the steel,
His fingers white are my delite,
He blows his bellows we[e]l.

But they ha' banish'd him Brown Adam
Frae father and frae mither,
An' they ha' banish'd him Brown Adam
Frae sister and frae brither;

And they ha' banish'd [him] Brown Adam
Frae the flow'r o' a' his kin;
An' he 's bigget a bow'r i' the good green wood

O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

O Light that flowest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine's blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain
That morn shall tearless be.

My love in her attire doth show her wit,
It doth so well become her:
For every season she hath dressings fit,
For winter, spring, and summer.

No beauty she doth miss,
When all her robes are on;
But Beauty's self she is,
When all her robes are gone.