My silver birch, white-velvet, far too strong
Your loveliness, that hides away from me
The dryad that I otherwise might see,
Bird of the dawn, too near, your liquid song
That does not to the unseen choir belong
Has drowned some seraph's morning melody!

Your autumn beaker, earth, your sparkling sea
Have done an older wine of heaven wrong.

O golden cup of earth, too brightly filled,
Can any drink you deeply, and still know
How constellations in their courses sing,
How our immediate dead about us go? —

I ask not the love of a heart that is burning
With all the wild fancies of youthful unrest,
That like the gay butterfly ever is turning
From blossom to blossom and never is blest.

I ask not the love of a soul that hereafter
May sigh to recall the delights that are flown,
For the life that is gleeful with song and with laughter
Would wither and die in the shade of my own.

The moon when surrounded by somber cloud billows
Doth shed a more tender and soul-soothing beam,
And the tide of affection is sweeter when willows

Oh, but she was bonny, and she loved the wave-water!
Often yet I picture her, running to the sea,
Slim against the sky-edge, like a lad; my own daughter...
Once, while I watched her so, a vision came to me.

I saw her there, under her beloved sea-water's keeping,
Not any more harmed than if under glass.
Not troubled by the waves, but lying quiet, sleeping,
Like a pearl in emerald case; my own child, my lass.

So it was they found her, in a crystal leisure,
Floating in a little space, sheltered by the wave,

Still in thy love I trust,
Supreme o'er death, since deathless is thy essence;
For, putting off the dust,
Thou hast but blest me with a nearer presence.

And so, for this, for all,
I breathe no selfish plaint, no faithless chiding,
On me the snowflakes fall,
But thou hast gained a summer all-abiding.

Striking a plaintive string,
Like some poor harper at a palace portal,
I wait without and sing,
While those I love glide in and dwell immortal.

I would that I could quite forget
One love of days gone by,
Would that, without the least regret,
Without the lightest sigh,
One form, one voice, one name might be
Forever nothing more to me.

I would that I might never hear
A voice again like hers,
For O, that tone, so strangely dear,
All sad remembrance stirs —
Remembrance that in anguish saith
There is a sadder thing than death.

I would that I might never see
Such eyes as hers again,
For eyes like hers awake in me
A madding, nameless pain —

When I had thought to make an home with sorrow,
A gentle, melancholy dwelling;
And there to linger life with telling
Over old fancies of some fair to-morrow:
Sudden, there broke about my way
Laughter, and flowers, and break of day.

Sing, Guardian Angel! One is come, who takes me
Home to the land of loving voices:
And there my risen heart rejoices
To tell each sorrow over, that forsakes me;
And all the unimagined songs,
That a child's carolling voice prolongs.

To H. M.

Omar, who ranged the hills, a message sent
To one in ward, with fruitless love forspent:

“Say not, O Friend, that Allah smote thee sore,
Nor wail that Joy will visit thee no more.

Not less our feet are galled with gyves, who tire
When we have climbed the peak of our desire.

Not less his bread is bitter who has found
Love's one cure, love; for yet he hath a wound.

Or sick with hope, or spurred with dull despair,
We weary Heaven with the self-same prayer.

O PLUCK the blossom in its crimson prime,
Ere yet one tender hue has passed away!
So shall it never know the winter time,
Sere blight of frost, or livid, slow decay.
While now thou fold'st me to thy fluttering breast,
In the sweet tremor of thy love and shame,
And like a stock-dove cooing on its nest,
Thou murmurest low the accents of my name;
While now the sense of laboring time is gone —
Swooned in the sea, lost, buried anywhere —
While all I heed of heaven or world alone,
Lies in thine arms, pavilioned by thy hair,

Who wrongeth love doth himself grievous wrong;
For he hath shut away the light of heaven
And doomed his darkened soul to wander long
In nether exile, desolate, unforgiven;
Till at God's feet, imploring his release,
Wronged love, all pardoning, shall win his peace.

Thus in her low voice like the silver chime
Of bells heard over distant hills by night,
She read aloud her chosen poet's rhyme —
How two of old found favor in love's sight;
And one was false and one with cureless wound,
Closed his sad eyes in consecrated ground.

When all is said and sung, what is the sum?
Love, only love.
What brightest dream hath youth of years to come?
What retrospect turn dim eyes latest from?
Love, only love.

What word sounds sweetest in the poet's rhyme?
Love, only love.
What tales first told in some forgotten clime,
From heart to heart, throb through the lapse of time?
Love, only love.

The guide-star of the soul's divine endeavor,
Love, only love.
The bond of lives which death cannot dissever,
The litany the seraphs sing forever —
Love, only love.