Dear Letters, Fond Letters,
Must I with you part?
You are such a source of joy
To my lonely heart.

Sweet Letters, Dear Letters,
What a tale you tell;
O, no power on earth can break
This strange mystic spell!

Dear Letters, Fond Letters,
You my secret know—
Don't you tell it, any one—
Let it live and grow.

Sad-hearted, be at peace: the snowdrop lies
Buried in sepulchre of ghastly snow;
But spring is floating up the southern skies,
And darkling the pale snowdrop waits below.

Let me persuade: in dull December's day
We scarce believe there is a month of June;
But up the stairs of April and of May
The hot sun climbeth to the summer's noon.

Yet hear me: I love God, and half I rest.
O better! God loves thee, so all rest thou.
He is our summer, our dim-visioned Best;—
And in his heart thy prayer is resting now.

Love is an odour from the heavenly bowers
Which stirs our senses tenderly, and brings
Dreams which are shadows of diviner things,
Beyond this grosser atmosphere of ours.
An oasis of verdure and of flowers,
Love smileth on the pilgrim's weary way;
There sweeter airs, there fresher waters play;
There purer solace speeds the tranquil hours.
This glorious passion, unalloyed, endowers
With moral beauty all who feel its fire;
Maid, wife and offspring, sister, mother, sire,
Are names and symbols of its hallowed powers.

We never meet; yet we meet day by day
Upon those hills of life, dim and immense—
The good we love, and sleep, our innocence.
O hills of life, high hills! And, higher than they,
Our guardian spirits meet at prayer and play.
Beyond pain, joy, and hope, and long suspense,
Above the summits of our souls, far hence,
An angel meets an angel on the way.

Beyond all good I ever believed of thee,
Or thou of me, these always love and live.
And though I fail of thy ideal of me,
My angel falls not short. They greet each other.

From babyhood I have known the beauty of earth—
I learnt it, I think, in the strange months before birth,
I learnt it passing and passing by each moon
From the harvest month into my natal June.
My mother, the dear, the lovely I hardly knew,
Bearing me must have walked and wandered through
Stubble of silver or gold, as moon or sun
Lit earth in the days when my body was begun.
And then October with leaves splendid and blown
She watched with my little body a little grown,
And winter fell, and into our being passed
Firm frost and icy rivers and the blast

I had forgotten—
as I
kept on forgetting
to remind
myself
that those who vow to forget
are the ones who can't forget.

There are two angels, messengers of light,
Both born of God, who yet are bitterest foes.
No human breast their dual presence knows.
As violently opposed as wrong and right,
When one draws near, the other takes swift flight.
And when one enters, thence the other goes.
Till mortal life in the immortal flows,
So must these two avoid each other's sight.
Despair and hope may meet within one heart,
The vulture may be comrade to the dove!
Pleasure and Pain swear friendship leal and true:
But till the grave unites them, still apart

When I am old, and think of the old days,
And warm my hands before a little blaze,
Having forgotten love, hope, fear, desire,
I shall see, smiling out of the pale fire,
One face, mysterious and exquisite;
And I shall gaze, and ponder over it,
Wondering, was it Leonardo wrought
That stealthy ardency, where passionate thought
Burns inward, a revealing flame, and glows
To the last ecstasy, which is repose?
Was it Bronzino, those Borghese eyes?
And, musing thus among my memories,
O unforgotten! you will come to seem,

O love, what do they know who only know
Thee as a god of grace and loving-kindness:
Who will adore thee only if thou show
Such gentle light as will not pierce their blindness,
But flee the crucible where thou dost try
Whether of gold or dross our lives are made,
And for the bowers of consolation sigh
When as a man of war thou com'st arrayed?
For light (though love without) within is fire:
Thou art all fire, O Love! and thou in me
Must burn with flames that leap for ever higher
Till there is nothing left in me but thee;

Come to me, maiden fair,
Maiden with golden hair,
Now that the vesper air
Trembles no more with prayer!

Come where the Zingaree,
Under the linden tree,
Spurring his comrades three,
Pipes a wild jubilee!

Come, while their tabor's beat
Urges the dancers fleet;
Come, let thy tiny feet
Mine on the meadow meet!

Bounding we gaily start;
Flashes thy blue eyes dart:
Spare thou my captive heart;
Or—let us never part!

Strains gently sighing in the air, love,
Wake echoes in our hearts so near, love!