“See'st thou o'er my shoulders falling,
Snake-like ringlets waving free?
Have no fear, for they are twisted
To allure thee unto me.”

Thus she spake, the gentle dove,
Listen to thy plighted love:—
“Ah, how long I wait, until
Sweetheart cometh back (she said)
Laying his caressing hand
Underneath my burning head.”

We've lived for forty years, dear wife,
And walked together side by side,
And you to-day are just as dear
As when you were my bride.
I've tried to make life glad for you,
One long, sweet honeymoon of joy,
A dream of marital content,
Without the least alloy.
I've smoothed all boulders from our path,
That we in peace might toil along,
By always hastening to admit
That I was right and you were wrong.

No mad diversity of creed
Has ever sundered me from thee;
For I permit you evermore
To borrow your ideas of me.

To love and seek return,
To ask but only this,
To feel where we have poured our heart
The spirit's answering kiss;
To dream that now our eyes
The brightening eyes shall meet
And that the word we've listened for
Our hungering ears shall greet,—
How human and how sweet!

To love nor find return,—
Our hearts poured out in vain;
No brightening look, no answering tone,
Left lonely with our pain;
The opened heavens closed,
Night when we looked for morn,
The unfolding blossom harshly chilled,
Hope slain as soon as born,—

The man who feels not, more or less, somewhat
Of love in all the years his life goes round
Should be denied a grave in holy ground
Except with usurers who will bate no groat;
Nor he himself should count himself a jot
Less wretched than the meanest beggar found.
Also the man who in Love's robe is gown'd
May say that Fortune smiles upon his lot.
Seeing how love has such nobility
That if it entered in the lord of Hell
'Twould rule him more than his fire's ancient sting;
He should be glorified to eternity,
And all his life be always glad and well

This is the fashion of the nectar of my Lord's love: it is as the power of each one's inward vision.
The worldly-wise, the Bhagat, the adorer: to all comes revelation, but to each his own.

Even as when on the plantain stem, on the Papiha, on the sea shell, the mystic rain-drop falls.
God's ways are no wise unequal: but as the soil is, so the fruit will be.

True! Man loves what he has, and hopes for all that he has not;
None but rich minds love, only the indigent ask.

O SWEETEST maid, in other days
The troubadours had sung your praise,
And knights had died and joyed to die
To win a smile as you passed by,
While lord and lackey stood at gaze.

What wonder that the task dismays
To wreathe your brow with modern bays,
Or rhyming tricks for you to try,
O sweetest maid!

For you should be those loftier lays
Of which from far the echo strays,
In matchless, murmurous melody
That dies in Love's divinest sigh—
Still Love's strong will my rhyme obeys,
O sweetest maid!

As in a porch of stars we stand; the night
Throbs through us, O Love, with its worlds of light,
And mingles us in glory of one breath,
One infinite ignorance of Time and Death
Behold, I am dyed in you, and you in me;
We are the colours of infinity,
We are two flames that are one flame,
We are but Love, and have no name
But did we part, O Love, if we could part,
The very blood were taken from my heart,
Time and Death would ride the night
Then, and ended were all light,
The stream of stars would fall like stone
And heaven's utmost height be darkened,

Love eternal, when He planned
Fronded fern and forest tree,
Laid His meadows on the land,
Floated cloud-reefs o'er the sea,
Dreamed the wonder of your eyes
In the arches of the skies.

All the purport of your powers,
Love, the great Adventurer knew,
When He reared His granite towers,
Leaning stairs up to the blue,
Spreading o'er each lonely crest
Snowy coverlets of rest.

When of old the singing spheres
Waked the young earth with their strain,
Long ere yet the tidal years
Soothed it with the gentle rain,

There is a garden, which I think He loves
Who loveth all things fair;
And once the Master of the flowers came
To teach love-lessons there.

He touched my eyes, and in the open sun.
They walked, the Holy Dead,
Trailing their washen robes across the turf,
An aureole round each head.

One said, with wisdom in his infant eyes,—
‘The world I never knew;
‘But, love the Holy Child of Bethlehem,
‘And He will love you too.’

One said—‘The victory is hard to win,
‘But love shall conquer death.
‘The world is sweet, but He is sweeter far,