'Trees,' so he said and laid him lovingly
At a great beech-tree's root, 'are my best friends.
Upon their love it seems my life depends.
No dog or woman for me! Give me a tree!
In winter saying, ' Courage! hold to me!'
In spring, ' Look up! hope's here, and winter ends!'
In summer, 'Come! here's peace that naught transcends
In autumn, ' See! the dreams I bring to thee!'
Why, I have loved a tree until for me
It had a soul. And as the Greeks believed
So I believe: that in each dwells a life,
Lovely, ecstatic, that some man may see

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love

Too young for love?
Ah, say not so!
Tell reddening rose-buds not to blow
Wait not for spring to pass away,--
Love's summer months begin with May!
Too young for love?
Ah, say not so!
Too young? Too young?
Ah, no! no! no!

Too young for love?
Ah, say not so,
To practise all love learned in May.
June soon will come with lengthened day
While daisies bloom and tulips glow!

Too young for love?
Ah, say not so!
Too young? Too young?
Ah, no! no! no!

The baby is dead, but its mother's
Sweet eyes with a radiance shine

As she says in a whisper, ' No fingers
Shall touch it or dress it but mine.

' Oh, let me do this for my baby,
To me 'tis a labor of love ;

The Lanis you loved, Markos, isn't here
in this tomb you come to weep by, lingering hours on end.
The Lanis you loved is closer to you
when you're in your room at home and you look at his portrait—
the portrait that still keeps something of what was valuable in him,
something of what it was you used to love.

Remember, Markos, that time you brought in
the famous Kyrenian painter from the Proconsul's palace?
What artistic subtlety he used trying to persuade you both,
the minute he saw your friend,
that he absolutely must do him as Hyacinth.

I love you as a sheriff searches for a walnut
That will solve a murder case unsolved for years
Because the murderer left it in the snow beside a window
Through which he saw her head, connecting with
Her shoulders by a neck, and laid a red
Roof in her heart. For this we live a thousand years;
For this we love, and we live because we love, we are not
Inside a bottle, thank goodness! I love you as a
Kid searches for a goat; I am crazier than shirttails
In the wind, when you’re near, a wind that blows from

The Years have not dared to
Touch your Beauty
Which sings in the music of eternal spheres;
In you, all is harmony, radiance, wholeness;
In you, Being knows its end, its first and final cause:
There are no edges, no shadows, no burden of excess,
Your stillness moves and your motion stills.

Who am I who could love you?
Who could outform space and time,
Outsense intuition,
Outreach the infinities of Reason?

The vast cycles will move without my words;
The ancient mysteries still sing,

Thy little footsteps on the sands
Of a remote and lonely shore;
The twinkling of thine infant hands,
Where now the worm will feed no more;
Thy mingled look of love and glee
When we returned to gaze on thee--

Li Po takes a boat and is about to depart
When suddenly he hears the sound of footsteps
and singing on the shore.

The water in the Peach Blossom pool is
a thousand feet deep
But not as deep as Wang Lun's parting love for me

(translated by Liu Wu-Chi)

781

To wait an Hour—is long—
If Love be just beyond—
To wait Eternity—is short—
If Love reward the end—