I LOVE my lover; on the heights above me
He mocks my poor attainment with a frown.
I, looking up as he is looking down,
By his displeasure guess he still doth love me ;
For his ambition's love would ever prove me
More excellent than I as yet am shown,
So, straining for some good ungrasped, unknown,
I vainly would become his image of me.
And, reaching through the dreadful gulfs that sever
Our souls, I strive with darkness nights and days,
Till my perfected work towards him I raise,
Who laughs thereat, and scorns me more than ever;
Yet his upbraiding is beyond all praise.
This lover that I love I call: Endeavour.
I HAVE another lover loving me,
Himself beloved of all men, fair and true. He would not have me change altho' I grew Perfect as Light, because more tenderly He loves myself than loves what I might be.
Low at my feet he sings the winter through, And, never won, I love to hear him woo. For in my heaven both sun and moon is he, To my bare life a fruitful-flooding Nile, His voice like April airs that in our isle Wake sap in trees that slept since autumn went. His words are all caresses, and his smile
The relic of some Eden Ravishment;
And he that loves me so I call: Content.
WHEN she whose love is even my air of life
Enters, delay being past, to bless my home,
And ousts her phantom from its place, being come
Herself to fill it; when the importunate strife
Of absence with desire is stilled, and rife
With heaven is earth; why am I stricken dumb,
Abashed, confounded, awed of heart and numb,
Waking no triumph of song, no welcoming fife?
Be thine own answer, soul, who long ago
Did'st see the awful light of Beauty shine,
Silent; and silently rememberest yet
That glory which no spirit may forget,
Nor utter save in love a thought too fine
For souls to ignore, or mortal sense to know.
THE bubble of the silver-springing waves,
Castalian music, and that flattering sound,
Low rustling of the loved Apollian leaves,
With which my youthful hair was to be crowned,
Grow dimmer in my ears; while Beauty grieves
Over her votary, less frequent found;
And, not untouched by storms, my life-boat heaves
Through the splashed ocean-waters, outward bound.
And as the leaning mariner, his hand
Clasped on his oar, strives trembling to reclaim
Some loved lost echo from the fleeting strand,
So lean I back to the poetic land;
And in my heart a sound, a voice, a name
Hangs, as above the lamp hangs the expiring flame.
OVER the ground white snow, and in the air
Silence. The stars like lamps soon to expire,
Gleam tremblingly; serene and heavenly fair,
The eastern hanging crescent climbeth higher.
See, purple on the azure softly steals,
And Morning, faintly touched with quivering fire,
Leans on the frosty summits of the hills,
Like a young girl over her hoary sire.
Oh, such a dawning over me has come,
The daybreak of thy purity and love ;-
The sadness of the never satiate tomb
Thy countenance hath power to remove,
And from the sepulchre of Hope thy palm
Can roll the stone, and raise her bright and calm.
|