As rich and purposeless as is the rose:
Thy simple doom is to be beautiful.

Thee God created but to grow, not strive,
And not to suffer, merely to be sweet,
The favorite of his rains; and thou indeed
Lately upon the summer wast disclosed.

Child, wilt thou taste of grief? On thee the hours
Shall feed, and bring thy soul into the dusk:
Even now thy face is hasting to the dark!
For slowly shalt thou cool to all things great,
And wisely smile at love; and thou shalt see
Beautiful Faith surrendering to Time,

The fierce ingratitude of children loved,
Ah, sting of stings! A mourner shalt thou stand
At Passion's funeral in decent garb.
The greenly silent and cool-growing night
Shall be the time when most thou art awake,
With dreary eyes of all illusion cured,
Beside that stranger that thy husband is.
But if thou'lt live with me, then shalt thou bide

In mere felicity above the world,

In peace alive and moving, where to stir

Is ecstasy, and thrilling is repose.

What is the love of men that women seek it?

In its beginning pale with cruelty,

But having sipped of beauty, negligent,
And full of languor and distaste: for they,
Seeking that perfect face beyond the world,
Approach in vision earthly semblances,
And touch, and at the shadows flee away.

Then wilt thou die? Part with eternal thoughts,
Lie without any hope beneath the grass,

All thy imaginations in the dust?

And all that tint and melody and breath,

Which in their lovely unison are thou,
To be dispersed upon the whirling sands!
Thy soul blown seaward on nocturnal blast!
O brief and breathing creature, wilt thou cease,
Once having been? Thy doom doth make thee rich,
And the low grave doth make thee exquisite,
But if thou'lt live with me, then will I kiss
Warm immortality into thy lips;

And I will carry thee above the world,
To share my ecstasy of flinging beams,
And scattering without intermission joy.
And thou shalt know the first leap of the sea
Toward me; the grateful upward look of earth,
Emerging roseate from her bath of dew,—
We two in heaven dancing,-Babylon
Shall flash and murmur, and cry from under us,
And Nineveh catch fire, and at our feet
Be hurled with her inhabitants, and all
Adoring Asia kindle and hugely bloom;-
We two in heaven running,-continents
Shall lighten, ocean unto ocean flash,
And rapidly laugh till all this world is warm.
Or since thou art a woman, thou shalt have
More tender tasks; to steal upon the sea,
A long expected bliss to tossing men.
Or build upon the evening sky some wished
And glorious metropolis of cloud.

Thou shalt persuade the harvest and bring on
The deeper green; or silently attend

The fiery funeral of foliage old,

Connive with Time serene and the good hours.
Or, for I know thy heart,--a dearer toil,-
To lure into the air a face long sick,

To gild the brow that from its dead locks up,

To shine on the unforgiven of this world;
With slow sweet surgery restore the brain,
And to dispel shadows and shadowy fear."
When he had spoken, humbly Idas said:
"After such argument what can I plead?
Or what pale promise make? Yet since it is
In women to pity rather than to aspire,
A little I will speak. I love thee then
Not only for thy body packed with sweet
Of all this world, that cup of brimming June,
That jar of violet wine set in the air,
That palest rose sweet in the night of life;
Nor for that stirring bosom all besieged
By drowsing lovers, or thy perilous hair;
Nor for that face that might indeed provoke
Invasion of old cities; no, nor all

Thy freshness stealing on me like strange sleep.
Not for this only do I love thee, but
Because Infinity upon thee broods;

And thou art full of whispers and of shadows.
Thou meanest what the sea has striven to say
So long, and yearnèd up the cliffs to tell;
Thou art what all the winds have uttered not,
What the still night suggesteth to the heart.
Thy voice is like to music heard ere birth,
Some spirit lute touched on a spirit sea;
Thy face remembered is from other worlds,
It has been died for, though I know not when,
It has been sung of, though I know not where.
It has the strangeness of the luring West,
And of sad sea-horizons; beside thee
I am aware of other times and lands,
Of birth far back, of lives in many stars.
O beauty lone and like a candle clear

In this dark country of the world! Thou art
My woe, my early light, my music dying."
As he was speaking, she with lips apart

Breathed, and with dimmer eyes leaned through the air
As one in dream, and now his human hand
Took in her own; and to Apollo spoke:
"O gradual rose of the dim universe!

Whose warmth steals through the grave unto the dead,
Soul of the early sky, the priest of bloom!
Who beautifully goest in the West,
Attracting as to an eternal home

The yearning soul. Male of the female earth!
O eager bridegroom springing in this world.
As in thy bed prepared! Fain would I know
Yon heavenly wafting through the heaven wide,
And the large view of the subjected seas,
And famous cities, and the various toil
Of men: all Asia at my feet spread out
In indolent magnificence of bloom!
Africa in her matted hair obscured,
And India in meditation plunged!
Then the delight of flinging the sunbeams,
Diffusing silent bliss; and yet more sweet,―
To cherish fruit on the warm wall; to raise
Out of the tomb to glory the pale wheat,
Serene ascension by the rain prepared;
To work with the benignly falling hours,
And beautiful slow Time. But dearest this,-
To gild the face that from its dead looks up,
To shine on the rejected, and arrive
To women that remember in the night;
Or mend with sweetest surgery the mind.
And yet, forgive me if I can but speak
Most human words. Of immortality

Thou singest: thou wouldst hold me from the ground,
And this just opening beauty from the grave.
As yet I have known no sorrow; all my days

Like perfect lilies under water stir,

And God has sheltered me from his own wind;
The darling of his breezes have I been.
Yet as to one inland, that dreameth lone,
Seafaring men with their sea-weary eyes,
Round the inn fire tell of some foreign land;
So agèd men, much tossed about in life,
Have told me of that country, Sorrow far.
How many goodly ships at anchor lie
Within her ports; even to me indeed

Hath a sea-rumor through the night been borne.
And I myself remember, and have heard,
Of men that did believe, women that loved,
That were unhappy long and now are dead,
With wounds that no eternity can close,
Life had so marked them: or of others who
Panted toward their end, and fell on death
Even as sobbing runners breast the tape.
And most I remember of all human things
My mother; often as a child I pressed
My face against her cheek, and felt her tears;
Even as she smiled on me, her eyes would fill,
Until my own grew ignorantly wet;

And I in silence wonderèd at sorrow.

When I remember this, how shall I know
That I myself may not, by sorrow taught,
Accept the perfect stillness of the ground?
Where, though I lie still, and stir not at all,
Yet shall I irresistibly be kind,

Helplessly sweet, a wandering garden bliss.
My ashes shall console and make for peace;