Of old God rested 'mid the heavenly flowers,
Far from all sounds and sights of man's despair:
The blue sky filled with light the deathless bowers
And perfect peace was there.

All pure delights were present to his hand:
The stars at night were ministers sublime:
Joy flooded like a stream the painless land
That took no heed of time.

Far-off man toiled amid the nether gloom,
And woman wept, and death ruled bitterly.
Ruin and dread destruction were man's doom;
To love, and then to die.

But Love arose and said, “While one man sighs

As through the winter's gates the joyous spring-tide passes,
Her bright brow wreathed with flowers and buds and clinging grasses,—
And then the summer shines,
With songs of many birds and sound of many rivers
And laughter of the leaves that rustles down and shivers
Through the concordant leafage of the pines:

As still there is a sense of agony just over
That even pales the rose and troubles the sweet clover
At times, and thrills the grove,
So, in our human lives, an agony of weeping,
Though summer's silent peace upon the hills be sleeping,

What right have I to thee! What claim in words to fashion!
Merely the right and claim of fiery love and passion
And tenderness outpoured:
Merely the right of Love the large-eyed world-redeemer;
Merely the desperate right of one wild-hearted dreamer,
And, if man doubt it, my most wakeful sword.

Merely the final right of love that knows no limit:
That gazes in death's eyes, but finds no power to dim it
Or dwarf it set therein:
Merely the right supreme by which when all the bowers
Besought the brow of God to wear their choicest flowers

“Since thou hast loved with love so wild and sweet
That life and time have faded quite away
And thou hast learned to count the hours of day
By love's heart's inner and triumphant beat
At the dear coming of thy lady's feet;
Since, when she is not with thee, dark and grey
Is all the world—thy service to repay
And thy soul's strong forlorn desire to meet,
I send a dream:” even so the Love-god said.
Then I was 'ware that round about my bed
Crowded dim forms of angels and of men,
And the next world shone clear as in a glass.

And art thou never tired of poems, and of singing?—
“Nay! not more tired than Spring of merry bright birds winging
Along the woods their way.
A woman never tires of love, so it be endless:
The summer, full of flowers, would feel forlorn and friendless
With one flower less on one acacia spray.

“A woman never tires of love, so it be tireless:
A woman never tires till passion's soul be fireless
And song's heart void of flame.
What, do my eyes not speak? Then must my lips make plainer
That Song is ever sweet, a gentle-eyed retainer

Yes: love me with thine eyes.—If thy soft lips are dreaming
Far other dreams than ours, yet through thine eyes are gleaming
The dreams my love-songs bring.
If summer's lips are sweet, yet summer's eyes are sweeter.
If summer's hands are swift, yet summer's eyes are fleeter.
In spring's sweet eyes resides the charm of spring.

If only in thine eyes I see thy sweet soul waking,
I am content; content though all my heart be breaking
For very love of thee.
It only content,—for then I know thy soul is listening.
Let thine eyes love me through eternity.

Yet when I strive to cease, yea when I think of ending,
It is but as a man whose eyes stoop downward, bending
Towards river-banks made sweet
With peppermint and thyme and tall reeds bright and gracious;
Who says, “I am content: I need no more the spacious
High hills and mountains for my wandering feet.”—

It is but as a man who merely loving rivers
And willow green that waves and alder dark that quivers
O'er blue tides tenderly,
Thinking to sing of these in some fair inland prison,
Lifts sudden eyes of awe when lo! before his vision

Never will any man be stricken deep
By thy sweet arrow of beauty quite as I
When after weary passionless long sleep
I looked up suddenly,—and thou wast nigh!
No man will ever love thy wondrous face
Quite as I love it. Though a thousand may
Admire thy beauty and thy girlish grace.
Still true it is that I am not as they.
They gaze and they pass on. But I adore.
They think they love. I love till time doth grow
Weary of rose-hung hill and wave-white shore:
Yea, till the Alps wax weary of their snow.
I stand alone in this—that no man brings

When fair love's fragrant world first opens out before us,
When first its sweet winds sing and golden stars shine o'er us,
Its flowers are so divine
We never never think of what shall follow after:
We only hear the wind's caressing lovely laughter;
We see no white crests on the far sea-line.

Then when the dark days come, and all the flowers are faded,
And the green thickets, dense with leafage once, invaded
By the bleak keen wind's breath,
We have the golden thought of summer days to cling to,
And love's old image deep within the heart to sing to,

The sea is very strong.—What is the power exceeding
In strength of deathless voice the storm-wind's passionate pleading
And mightier than the waves
As o'er the rocks they leap in thundering white-lipped millions
Or surge far out at sea by trillions and quadrillions
And chant death-choruses o'er countless graves?

What is the power that o'er the measureless sea-laughter
Triumphs, and scorns the scorn that shouts and follows after
Its fair triumphal feet?
Love: raising nigher to God the love-song of the willows