LOVE AND LIBERATION 
 
 THE SONGS OF ADSCHED OF MERU 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN HALL WHEELOCK 
 
 Author of "The Beloved Adven- 
 ture," "The Human Fantasy," etc. 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 
 1913
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1913 
 SHERMAN, FRENCH <& COMPANY
 
 "0 beauty on the darkness hurled, 
 
 Be it through me you shame the world" 
 
 JOHN MASEFIELD 
 
 2200526
 
 Acknowledgment is due to Scribner's 
 Magazine, Harper's Magazine, The 
 American Magazine, The Forum, The 
 Smart Set, The International, Po- 
 etry, and The Lyric Year for kind 
 permission to reprint many poems 
 which first appeared in their pages.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 SONGS OP ADSCHED OF MERU PAQB 
 
 THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE 1 
 
 IN THE MIDNIGHT OP THY LOCKS 13 
 
 HYMNS AND ADORATIONS 33 
 
 RADIANT NOON 57 
 
 BIRD-SONGS AND ROSES 73 
 
 THE MYSTERY AND THE MYTH 93 
 
 LIBERATION Ill 
 
 REVELATION AND REST 121 
 
 TALISMANS: SECRETS AND DELIVERANCES . . .135 
 
 LOCKS OF THE WORD-BRIDE 157 
 
 OTHER POEMS 
 
 RETURN TO NEW YORK 171 
 
 DUSK 172 
 
 SONG 173 
 
 TOLSTOI 174 
 
 TO THE VIRGIN 174 
 
 PALINGENESIS 175 
 
 RETURN 176 
 
 TO THE DREAMERS 178 
 
 EARLY APRIL 178 
 
 DEPARTURE 179 
 
 THE SAVIORS 180 
 
 MID-OCEAN 182 
 
 "MOTHER" 182 
 
 SEA-VOYAGE 183 
 
 "ALAS, WHERE THOU ART" 184 
 
 "MUSIC IS HIS ROBE" 184 
 
 THE ANSWER 186 
 
 THE WINDS OP MARCH 187
 
 PAGE 
 
 UNREST 187 
 
 "O MEMORY, THOSE EYES" 188 
 
 THE CLOSE OF MASS 189 
 
 TO A POET IN DESPAIR 191 
 
 BENEDICTION 191 
 
 TO MARY 191 
 
 IN THE NIGHT 192 
 
 THE KEYS 193 
 
 HYMN 195 
 
 TWILIGHT IN MID-OCEAN 195 
 
 THE TRUTH 196 
 
 TWO SAD SONGS 197 
 
 TRIO 199 
 
 REBELLION 204 
 
 WOMAN, THE MYSTICAL 204 
 
 AUTUMN 205 
 
 THE WIND OF TIME 206 
 
 THE BORDERLANDS 206 
 
 BEETHOVEN 207 
 
 TO A DEAD GIRL 207 
 
 BEAUTY TO HER LOVER 208 
 
 DUMBNESS 209 
 
 TO 209 
 
 THE FRIEND 210
 
 SONGS OF ADSCHED OF MERU
 
 THE NIGHTINGALE AND 
 THE ROSE 
 
 "See how the roses burn! 
 
 Bring wine to quench the fire."
 
 MY soul looks toward you, as toward the coming 
 Spring 
 
 Soft folded flowers look up at dawn of day, 
 Through grateful tears toward the liberating love, 
 
 As April looks through starry tears toward May. 
 
 II 
 
 I WOULD that I were a flower 
 
 That encloses forevermore 
 The "You" and the "Me" together, 
 
 One in the deep heart's core. 
 
 The lover and the beloved 
 
 She bears in her breast alone, 
 Inextricably interwoven, 
 
 Deep in her breast made one. 
 
 There in the being beloved 
 
 The lover is rapt away; 
 The lover, drenched through with the loved one, 
 
 Laughs upward to greet the day.
 
 In the chalice and cup of her beauty 
 
 Their mingled beauties unite, 
 Their ecstasies mingled in choir 
 
 Make odor of the dim light. 
 
 Ah there the lover with longing, 
 
 In the self beloved the most 
 Slips into the peace of her being, 
 
 In the depths of her being is lost. 
 
 We strive, and fall backward from beauty, 
 Twain from the war to be one, 
 
 But the pain of their warring is ended, 
 The race of their longing is run; 
 
 In the infinite peace of her bosom 
 Where silently bloom and blend 
 
 The longing for beauty, and beauty , 
 The origin and the end. 
 
 Ill 
 
 O TO be part of all I love the most, 
 
 Touch you, and live you, and breathe of you, and 
 
 die, 
 Sweet, of yourself, part of your blood and breath, 
 
 And pass into your beauty with a cry!
 
 IV 
 
 APRIL all my bosom 
 
 Was breaking and my heart, 
 Sorrowful in the Springtime 
 
 I wandered, and apart. 
 
 I sought among the great, 
 I sought among the wise; 
 
 Scornful from my face 
 
 They turned away their eyes. 
 
 But the beloved knew, 
 
 She took me to her breast, 
 
 With her heart she stilled 
 The heart of my unrest. 
 
 All the life within me 
 
 I was so fain to give 
 She touched with tears of pity, 
 
 She took, and bade it live. 
 
 In the silence of her being, 
 Her coverts dark and deep, 
 
 The secret of her beauty, 
 My sorrow fell asleep. 
 
 Whence my life forever 
 
 Has found a flowering place, 
 In the quiet of her bosom, 
 
 The peace of her embrace.
 
 O FAR beyond the sorrow of myself 
 
 I move to you, as the waning Winter moves 
 
 Toward the dear Spring, leaving himself behind, 
 Lest with one touch he mar the self he loves! 
 
 VI 
 
 LIKE a young flower, 
 
 Lovely and bare, 
 My love spread her beauty 
 On the dim air. 
 
 Like a soft breath 
 
 On the breezes blown, 
 
 Her loveliness lured 
 My life to her own. 
 
 The cup of her beauty 
 
 I entered within. 
 Her beauty closed 
 
 And folded me in. 
 
 Now must I die 
 
 At the core of her heart, 
 Shut from the world 
 
 And sundered apart,
 
 Lost in her life, 
 
 In her loveliness slain; 
 Sweet is the sorrow, 
 
 Sweet is the pain. 
 
 VII 
 
 FROM the sorrow of my being, 
 From the self that I must be, 
 
 For the mystery of your presence, 
 Sweet, I thirst to set me free. 
 
 Would that with your very selfhood 
 You might wipe my own away, 
 
 Lost forever all my sorrow 
 In your joy, as night in day. 
 
 To be one with you forever, 
 Nor profane with any breath 
 
 Of myself the self I love so, 
 Triumphing beyond my death ! 
 
 VIII 
 
 WHERE is the Spring to be found 
 And in what hidden place! 
 
 Where four lips are joined together, 
 Where lover and lover embrace;
 
 In the call of the bird on the bough, 
 By the crocus bursting in bloom, 
 
 In the call of the voice beloved, 
 
 The whispering voice in the gloom, 
 
 The call of a voice through the dark 
 When all the world lies dumb, 
 
 When all the world lies sleeping, 
 "Sweetheart, come come !" 
 
 IX 
 
 WOULD that into your being 
 Myself might slip, in the cup 
 
 Of the flower of your spirit 
 Forever folded up. 
 
 From all the outer terrors 
 And the ugliness, at the core 
 
 Of the chalice of your bosom, 
 Folded f orevermore ! 
 
 LOVE, alas, within your bosom 
 
 Dwells the source of all my pain, 
 
 Everything that I desire 
 
 Most, her silent walls contain.
 
 7 
 Dear, alas, within your bosom 
 
 Heaves the whole Spring's starry breath, 
 The one secret that I long for 
 
 In the wastes of life and death; 
 
 The one secret that I long for, 
 
 The one self for which I long, 
 The hushed choir of my singing 
 
 And the source of all my song. 
 
 Ah, the one soul 'mid a million 
 
 Strewn like stars from east to west, 
 
 The one soul that love has need of, 
 Deep in the beloved breast. 
 
 Deep within your heart it slumbers, 
 
 Under life and loving deep, 
 Like a spirit hid forever 
 
 Under the dim veils of sleep. 
 
 XI 
 
 WOULD that I might become you, 
 Losing myself, my sweet! 
 
 So longs the dust that lies 
 About the rose's feet.
 
 So longs the last, dim star 
 Hung on the verge of night , 
 
 She moves, she melts, she slips, 
 She trembles into the light. 
 
 XII 
 
 O BELOVED, when I heard it 
 From your lips my very name 
 
 First, how like a song it sounded, 
 Still the same, yet not the same ! 
 
 To myself another meaning 
 Then was added, and a j oy 
 
 All tongues after you repeating 
 Never wholly may destroy. 
 
 XIII 
 
 PRESS closer to me, dear, 
 
 Ah, close and closer press 
 
 Crush out with your sweet self 
 All the blind loneliness.
 
 Press in with your sweet self 
 And crowd away my own, 
 
 Till for a space at least 
 I am no more alone. 
 
 O I thirst I run to meet it, 
 As twilight runs to day 
 
 To the dear opposite presence 
 That floods his own away! 
 
 XIV 
 
 "I WILL give you pain," said Thought; 
 "I will give you toil," said Fame; 
 
 Death said, "I will destroy 
 Utterly the fair dreams that you have wrought." 
 
 O Death! 
 
 But the beloved said: 
 "Come, come to my heart, 
 
 Come I will give you Joy !" 
 
 XV 
 
 I THIRST, I thirst! O bare the springs of your spirit! 
 
 Dear, draw the veils of your inmost life aside, 
 And take me to the most secret place of your being, 
 
 Ever there to abide !
 
 10 
 
 XVI 
 
 MY sweet has opened her heart 
 
 And I have entered in ! 
 My sweet has opened her heart 
 
 And I have entered in. 
 
 Her heart lies bared to my own 
 
 As the fields to the trembling night, 
 
 Her heart lies bared to my own, 
 As the sea to the starry light. 
 
 Her heart lies bared to my own 
 As the earth to the April rain; 
 
 My sweet has opened her heart, 
 And I have entered again!
 
 II 
 
 IN THE MIDNIGHT OF THY 
 LOCKS 
 
 "In the midnight of thy locks 
 I renounce the day "
 
 13 
 
 Is it the nightingale's singing 
 
 That wakes my heart like wine? 
 
 Or is it your heart against me 
 That makes her singing divine? 
 
 The starlight through the lattice, 
 That bathes your bosom white, 
 
 Trembles it with her song, 
 
 Or the song with the starry light? 
 
 And is it but a dream? 
 
 Or is the dreaming true? 
 Is this that questions, I , 
 
 And this that answers, You ? 
 
 Hard it is to believe , 
 
 No more can we comprehend 
 
 Love, when it is here, 
 
 Than Death when it comes in the end.
 
 14 
 
 II 
 
 LIFT your arms to the stars 
 And give an immortal shout, 
 
 Not all the veils of darkness 
 Can put your beauty out! 
 
 You are armed with love, with love, 
 Nor all the powers of Fate 
 
 Can touch you with a spear, 
 Nor all the hands of Hate. 
 
 What of good and evil, 
 Hell and Heaven above , 
 
 Trample them with love ! 
 Ride over them with love ! 
 
 Ill 
 
 WHEN side by side in the gloom 
 
 Of the midnight our souls are laid, 
 
 Darkness laps you about, 
 Into a voice you fade. 
 
 Vanished the day's delusions , 
 Appearance that sunders apart, 
 
 Again the darkness discovers 
 Your very self to my heart.
 
 15 
 By the sound of the breath of your words, 
 
 The cry of your soul from the Vast, 
 By the touch of your lips unseen, 
 
 I know you again at last. 
 
 IV 
 
 'WAKE, beloved, awake! 
 
 Lift your head with the day! 
 Morning stamps his feet 
 
 And twilight is scattered away. 
 
 HUSH 'tis the hour 
 
 When God with his world 
 Is in love; dew-impearled 
 
 Lies His love on each flower. 
 
 Now breast to bared breast 
 In the moment of love 
 Below and above 
 
 Thrills wild with unrest, 
 
 Thrills wild with unrest 
 Overflowing, and spills 
 Radiant rapture that fills 
 
 The dark, opposite breast.
 
 16 
 
 Now the heart full thereof 
 Overflows into song, 
 Flowing softly along 
 In the rhythm of love, 
 
 In the night, in the night . 
 
 O listen O hark! 
 
 God's love through the dark 
 Sheds the soft, starry light. 
 
 At the touch of His hand, 
 As on murmuring strings, 
 So tremble all things, 
 
 And all understand. 
 
 O love, let us blend 
 As sweet harmonies do, 
 With each other thrilled through/- 
 Touch, mingle, and end! 
 
 With a whispered "alas" , 
 
 Inarticulate speech , 
 
 Each into each 
 Murmur and pass! 
 
 VI 
 
 WHEN moonlight bathes your breast, 
 When Song at your bosom sighs, 
 
 Beauty, meeting with beauty, 
 
 Turns backward with glad surprise.
 
 17 
 When starlight floods your face, 
 
 When music speaks to you, 
 Beauty, touching with beauty, 
 
 Grows lovelier through and through. 
 
 When Love at your bosom leans, 
 
 When Love at your bosom dies, 
 Beauty mingles with beauty , 
 
 Fulfilled the Creation lies. 
 
 VII 
 
 MY soul in the midnight hour 
 Seeks yours in fear and doubt, 
 
 But the answer in your bosom 
 The twilight has put out. 
 
 Holy is the slumber 
 
 Wherein you are sunken deep, 
 And, after spent desire, 
 
 The majesty of sleep. 
 
 VIII 
 
 THE lightning flashed and lifted 
 The lids of heaven apart. 
 
 The fiery thunder rolled you 
 
 All night long through my heart.
 
 18 
 
 From dreams of you at dawn 
 
 I rose to the window-ledge, 
 The storm had died away 
 
 The lake lapped on the sedge. 
 
 The lyre of heaven trembled 
 Still with the thought of you. 
 
 The twilight on the waters, 
 And all my spirit, too. 
 
 IX 
 
 Now Morning rising from the arms of Twilight, 
 
 Baffled and inconsolable, above 
 The dear, worn breast and sacrificial body 
 
 Widens with aching love. 
 
 WHAT you have given me 
 
 Night, nor day, 
 Nor Death, nor Time 
 
 Can take away. 
 
 The supreme gift, 
 All gifts above , 
 
 Nought can repay, 
 Not all my love.
 
 19 
 
 most adored ! 
 
 my delight ! 
 
 The day shall hear me 
 And the night! 
 
 1 will sound your name 
 Through heaven and hell 
 
 And the starred morning's 
 Hollow shell! 
 
 I will make this joy 
 
 Upon my lips 
 Your trumpet 
 
 To the Doom's eclipse! 
 
 Here with my heart 
 
 1 fall and bow 
 Around your feet, 
 
 And bless you now ! 
 
 XI 
 
 WHERE is the dream that filled me 
 In the midnight with delight? 
 
 And where is the angel that whispered 
 Sweet words to me in the night?
 
 20 
 
 Your face looks out at me laughing, 
 
 (The night is dead and done.) 
 The same, yet not the same, dear: 
 The angel has come and gone. 
 
 XII 
 
 THE pavilion of heaven trembles 
 
 With myriad tapers clear; 
 The light in the swinging censer 
 
 Burns low in your chamber here. 
 
 Now sleeps the heart of the world, 
 
 Her memories put away, 
 Now 'wake the immortal eyelids 
 
 After the rage of day. 
 
 The night wails 'round your window, 
 Heaven's beauty with bounty burns; 
 
 Slow stealing into my spirit 
 
 The grace of your presence returns. 
 
 By some spell, inviolate, holy, 
 I feel it lure me and draw 
 
 To yourself, some force as secret 
 And true as the starry law.
 
 21 
 
 And I cry to you through the dark , 
 Your breathings measure the Deep , 
 
 I cry to you through your dreams, 
 I cry to you through your sleep. 
 
 XIII 
 
 THINK you that your lips 
 
 Were meant for kisses alone, 
 That only Love awakes 
 
 When backward your head is thrown ! 
 
 Wherever you turn your head 
 
 All Beauty turns and sighs, 
 At the opening of your lips 
 
 A hundred poems arise. 
 
 Not children alone of the flesh, 
 But children, too, of dream, 
 
 At the challenge of your beauty 
 Into the daylight stream. 
 
 XIV 
 
 MY own is like a flower 
 
 No influence touches in vain, 
 
 Fairer she grows for the sunlight, 
 And lovelier for the rain.
 
 22 
 
 XV 
 
 I HEARD a voice in the morning 
 Cry, " 'Wake for Love is here !" 
 
 Up through my dreams ascending 
 I turned, and saw you near, 
 
 Close at my bosom sleeping ; 
 
 Still I held your hand 
 Reached to me in compassion 
 
 Out of the silent land. 
 
 Gradual, soundless, slowly, 
 Star on star of the night 
 
 Moved with harmonious motion, 
 Melted into the light. 
 
 The heart of the light dilated, 
 Throbbing tense and clear , 
 
 " 'Wake for the stars are scattered ! 
 'Wake for Love is here!" 
 
 XVI 
 
 O LOVE, at your very breast 
 For the sheer joy to be, 
 
 Sobs the quick throat of Love, 
 The heart breaks suddenly!
 
 23 
 Love laughs through blinded lashes, 
 
 Hardly his eyes may bear, 
 Sweet, at your head to see 
 
 His arms for a halo there! 
 
 XVII 
 
 THE morning-star is twinkling 
 Through rifted clouds withdrawn, 
 
 A single, flaming taper 
 
 In the bridal-chamber of Dawn. 
 
 Faint are the floors with flowers 
 And trodden blooms of day , 
 
 One by one night's candles 
 
 Have dwindled and died away. 
 
 No sound disturbs the quiet , 
 
 Silence forevermore. 
 Drawn are the twilit curtains, 
 
 Barred is the golden door. 
 
 XVIII 
 
 NEVER, never this night 
 
 From my dreams shall pass away, 
 Her fiery memories burn 
 
 My heart out all the day.
 
 24 
 
 Though I left you in the morning 
 
 And walked among the crowd, 
 Her nightingales followed singing 
 
 Still in my heart aloud. 
 
 and the gracious secret 
 Within me, no one guessed! 
 
 But I bore you within my heart, 
 I bore you within my breast, 
 
 1 bore you within my spirit, 
 Though hidden and far away, 
 
 As the stars unseen, but burning 
 Still in the heaven of day! 
 
 XIX 
 
 You have rushed to my arms, 
 You have run to me now 
 
 You cling in my arms 
 As a bird to a bough. 
 
 Dewed as the morning, 
 
 Starry with tears, 
 Up through your tresses 
 
 Your face to me peers.
 
 25 
 O the beauty persuasive ! 
 
 The burden most dear ! 
 Faint as I am 
 
 Again from me here, 
 
 Sweet as the Spring 
 
 From the earth as she slips, 
 Clinging you lure 
 
 The life from my lips ! 
 
 XX 
 
 THE night with her myriad tapers 
 Hung high in the heaven's height 
 
 Is lit for our bridal-chamber, 
 A chamber for our delight. 
 
 Till the last torch flicker and vanish, 
 Come, let us dwell evermore, 
 
 Love-drunken, sleepless, and weary, 
 Till daylight unbar the door ! 
 
 XXI 
 
 You have given me life, 
 You have given me joy, 
 
 You have given me peace 
 No sorrow can destroy.
 
 O sweet, here at your feet, 
 What is there left to give ! 
 
 The very love you have given 
 That lives to help you live. 
 
 XXII 
 
 THE swallow chirps her bridal-song 
 Without your windows here, 
 
 And the bright earth arrays herself 
 For the bridal of the year. 
 
 The Spring lies beautiful and weary 
 
 Beneath her lover the sun, 
 Weary of all the shames and beauties 
 
 That in the dusk were done. 
 
 Listen, almost about the earth 
 You hear the mingled tone , 
 
 The pressing and the pleading lips, 
 The triumph and the moan! 
 
 Your hair is decked with flowers, dear, 
 
 And in your bosom sings 
 The insatiate Beauty, but your eyes 
 
 Are weary, like the Spring's.
 
 27 
 XXIII 
 
 THE world is reckless of beauty, 
 
 Lavish of love as a bride: 
 Is the flower not perfect enough, 
 
 And has her perfume beside! 
 
 When the earth is fulfilled of herself 
 And the heaven starry and clear, 
 
 The nightingale floods the night 
 For excess of exuberance sheer. 
 
 I, that was drunk with the j,oy 
 Of mere earth and heaven above, 
 
 You have come to me, You ; 
 O, the waste and the bounty of love ! 
 
 XXIV 
 
 ALONG the mournful eastern rim 
 Day lifts a flaming crest; 
 
 Ah sweet, the night with all her love 
 Bleeds out along the west , 
 
 I would not rise with day, but die 
 With darkness at your breast!
 
 28 
 
 XXV 
 
 / 
 SLOWLY you sink into slumber, 
 
 And one by one to my breast 
 
 Crowd the white songs insistent, 
 
 The voices that never rest. 
 
 From the land of sleep and of silence 
 They bring me tidings of you , 
 
 I follow them seeking your spirit, 
 I follow the long night through. 
 
 O far from your bosom they bore me 
 And out of the tumult of things ! 
 
 O I followed, I floated above you ! 
 In heaven I closed my wings. 
 
 By the side of your sleep, in the silence, 
 Sleepless the whole night long, 
 
 To the sound of the breath of your slumber 
 I measured the breath of this song. 
 
 XXVI 
 
 THE dawn, scattered with lilies 
 And flowers pale and white, 
 
 Is like your breast beginning 
 The morning with delight.
 
 29 
 XXVII 
 
 Now Heaven and Earth 
 Touch lips with delight; 
 Her breast in the night 
 
 To new flowers gives birth. 
 
 Sweet lightning of laughter 
 Leaps earthward and slips. 
 They mingle their lips , 
 
 The thunder sobs after. 
 
 It is silent again 
 
 O listen, O hark, 
 
 God's love through the dark 
 Sheds the soft, rushing rain! 
 
 Each flower her cup 
 
 Toward the kindness above, 
 The clear, filling love, 
 
 Lifts thirstily up. 
 
 So do thou to mine, 
 
 Till softly it slips, 
 
 Sweet, from my lips, 
 From my bosom to thine.
 
 80 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 DEAR, when I think how I love you, 
 At the mere thought thereof, 
 
 Brim the blind eyes with tears, 
 Sobs the hurt throat for love. 
 
 How shall I ever sing it! 
 
 How shall I ever say! 
 Love, at the very thought, 
 
 Turns trembling lips away. 
 
 XXIX 
 
 WITH nothing of mine 
 My soul was content; 
 
 For a gift to yourself, 
 Yourself I have sent. 
 
 XXX 
 
 I ROAMED in the gray evening over field and hill, 
 
 Above me the pale clouds were restless wanderers, 
 And when the day was gone and all the fields were 
 
 still 
 
 The thought of you, deep in my heart, was like 
 a thousand stars!
 
 Ill 
 
 HYMNS AND ADORATIONS 
 
 "/* Allah's face on thee 
 Bending with love benign! 
 
 And thou not less on Allah's eye 
 fairest, turnest thine "
 
 33 
 
 I SING the immortality of your body, 
 
 A source and a well-head of immortal things, 
 
 The terror of her secret and shadowy places, 
 
 And the sad fount from which all being springs, 
 
 The somber center of her stately beauty, 
 
 Creation's throne, and the central source of all, 
 Bounteous with life of teeming generations , 
 
 The home of love, though ages rise and fall; 
 
 Immortal from generation to generation, 
 
 Rearisen with every form of fleeting breath, 
 
 Beloved and adored, a refuge and a salvation, 
 The source of life amid the wastes of death. 
 
 II 
 
 O SWEET, how the glory of loving, 
 The pure and the fiery flame, 
 
 Burns up away between us 
 
 The clouds of fear and shame!
 
 34, 
 
 O love, like a radiant sunrise, 
 
 That gives itself away 
 Wholly, freely, gladly, 
 
 To perish of the day ! 
 
 Ill 
 
 UNDER the arch of the morning 
 I raise the voice of my song. 
 
 I sing the beloved's beauty, 
 
 Her body stalwart and strong, 
 
 Her bosom, holy and white, 
 Virgin, a promise of things. 
 
 'Mid the manifold choir of all, 
 The morning's murmuring strings, 
 
 To the holy of heaven's holies 
 I press with lips that rejoice, 
 
 Under the temple of heaven 
 I raise the song of my voice. 
 
 I sing the bosom of Love, 
 Bounteous, east and west, 
 
 The sad and the sacred lips 
 And the sacrificial breast, 
 
 The arch of her body's endurance, 
 Doomed to endure and fulfill, 
 
 The patient pulse of her passion, 
 Her splendor stately and still.
 
 35 
 
 At the sound of my spirit's crying 
 O'er the world the antiphonal choir 
 
 Breaks forth, of the mingled delight 
 Of the lips that endure and desire; 
 
 The woven voice of their warring 
 
 Made one with fierce rapture, the moan 
 
 Of the love that triumphs, the triumph 
 Of the love that is overthrown. 
 
 The holy altar of heaven, 
 
 Crowded with tapers dim, 
 Trembles for rapture, and flickers 
 
 At the breath of the sound of my hymn! 
 
 IV 
 
 THERE is no world, 
 
 There is no star 
 But I will find you 
 
 Where you are. 
 
 Not on Eternity's 
 
 Utmost cape 
 May you fly me 
 
 To escape. 
 
 O my delight, 
 
 Your beauty's will 
 Drives me on, 
 
 And lures me still!
 
 36 
 
 Tireless effort 
 
 You raise me to, 
 And years of labor, 
 All for you. 
 
 Though fain to rest 
 In the days to be, 
 
 From the opposite end 
 Of Eternity. 
 
 Heaven's length I'd run 
 With giddy feet, 
 
 To pour my spirit 
 Through you, sweet! 
 
 As a cupbearer to the side 
 
 Of one who is thirsting slips, 
 
 When I cried for Joy 
 You held it to my lips. 
 
 Graciously, nor denied me. 
 
 as one from the desert lands, 
 To the dregs, to the last, sweet dregs, 
 
 1 drained it from your hands.
 
 37 
 I cried for Love, for Love 
 
 To my lips you held it up 
 With brave and generous hands, 
 
 The sacrificial cup. 
 
 VI 
 
 THE musk that the morning wind 
 
 Brings me to greet, 
 Is the breath of you, sweet, 
 
 And the sense of you, sweet. 
 
 The flowers that bow 
 
 At his coming their faces 
 
 Are mirrors of you 
 In a myriad places. 
 
 And the love in me, too, 
 And the song in me, too, 
 
 Is the echo of you, 
 
 And the music of you! 
 
 VII 
 
 THE earth, for the joy of bearing 
 Your weight upon her breast, 
 
 Laughs in a thousand flowers 
 From the east-land to the west.
 
 38 
 
 Against the heart to take it, 
 
 The darling body and bright- 
 To take it and to break it, 
 
 She hungers day and night. 
 
 Hourly toward her bosom 
 
 She draws it downward close, 
 
 Even till at the center 
 In sleep it shall repose. 
 
 VIII 
 
 YOUR body's motion is like music, 
 
 Her stride ecstatical and bright 
 Moves to the rhythm of dumb music, 
 
 The unheard music of delight. 
 
 The silent splendor of the Creation 
 
 Speaks through your body's stately strength, 
 And the lithe harmony of Beauty 
 
 Undulates through its lovely length. 
 
 And rhythmically your bosom's arches, 
 
 Alternately, with every breath 
 Lift lifeward in long lines of beauty, 
 
 And lapse along the slopes of death.
 
 39 
 IX 
 
 IF I catch you up to my heart 
 Here, where the pulses ache, 
 
 Almost the heart cries out, 
 
 Almost the heart would break. 
 
 O love, at my living side, 
 
 Here where the pulses crowd !- 
 
 The holy heart of longing 
 Breaks, and sobs aloud. 
 
 FROM the evening-land of twilight 
 To the morning-land of day 
 
 There is no Love like my Love, 
 So perfect every way. 
 
 O Love, how fair you are, 
 How laughable and sweet, 
 
 How terrible and strange 
 
 From your forehead to your feet ! 
 
 Were not your eyes enough 
 To wound me, O my own! 
 
 All your little beauties 
 
 Are spears to hunt me down.
 
 40 
 
 XI 
 
 FROM the south to the north 
 
 None is happy as I, 
 I sing to the wind 
 
 That goes galloping by. 
 
 My lyre is heard 
 
 In the desert of Time, 
 
 All hearts shall beat 
 
 To the heart of my rhyme. 
 
 I am drunken with love, 
 I am careless of death, 
 
 I draw them in 
 
 And out with my breath. 
 
 O abandon yourself 
 To an ecstasy sheer 
 
 Forget how to doubt 
 Forget how to fear! 
 
 To him who has love 
 Good and Evil are one, 
 
 He has but to love, 
 
 And the beauty is done. 
 
 My Love is my joy 
 
 From the day-spring of light, 
 Through the flame of the noon, 
 
 To the shadow of night;
 
 41 
 From the hour when first 
 
 The immaculate star 
 Of evening arises 
 
 To westward afar, 
 
 Till his wheel in the sea 
 
 White Sirius dips. 
 She has kissed with her own 
 
 This song on my lips ! 
 
 XII 
 
 WOULD you not have me love you 
 Or remember any more, 
 
 Stab my breast to the heart. 
 Stab my heart to the core. 
 
 Give my ghost to drink 
 
 Of the cup Oblivion, 
 "Forget, for the love of me," 
 
 Write these words thereon. 
 
 XIII 
 
 LIKE a temple in the moonlight 
 Shines your body's stately grace, 
 
 Somber, bathed in sumptuous shadow, 
 Filled with many a luminous space.
 
 42 
 
 In the choir of your bosom 
 
 All is hushed and laid at rest, 
 Sleep and sleep alone possesses 
 
 The dim altar of your breast. 
 
 Only through her labyrinthine 
 Arches, like far echoes, roll 
 
 Whispers, memories of hushed music, 
 Hints of the departed soul. 
 
 Now the life that but so lately 
 Clung to mine is laid at rest, 
 
 Now delight and love are silent, 
 And the answer in your breast. 
 
 XIV 
 
 THERE only is one hell 
 Below, one heaven above, 
 
 One for those you hate, 
 One for those you love. 
 
 love, what must I do 
 
 To gain the heavenward way? 
 
 1 will kiss upon your lips 
 A thousand prayers a day ,
 
 Do penance at them daily 
 For kisses left undone, 
 
 And daily in your arms 
 Renounce all gods but one! 
 
 XV 
 
 LOVE has robes of splendor, 
 
 Love has cruel eyes, 
 Love is swift and heartless 
 
 Till the great sacrifice. 
 
 Then fall all veils from off her, 
 All masks of mirth, or moan, 
 
 Radiant, naked, holy 
 Love is Love alone. 
 
 XVI 
 
 O SWEET, are the hours thorny ! 
 
 Do the hours bruise you, sweet! 
 Lay my heart between, 
 
 Lay my heart at your feet. 
 
 Does it beat against them rudely! 
 
 Tread it into the ground. 
 The blood that leaps to kiss them 
 
 Shall wash them of their wound.
 
 44 
 
 XVII 
 
 FEAR not the powers below, 
 Fear not the powers above, 
 
 Nor death, nor fate, nor hate 
 More terrible is Love. 
 
 The panthers and the leopards 
 
 Tug meekly at his car. 
 Love is never weary, 
 
 And cometh from afar. 
 
 Though you fly before the morning 
 Till the east become the west, 
 
 You shall meet him mouth to mouth, 
 You shall meet him breast to breast. 
 
 All heaven's heads bow down 
 And all the throats of hell 
 
 Cry up to him, his face 
 Is holy and terrible. 
 
 XVIII 
 
 HEAVEN rings 'round with the rapture 
 And the radiant reaches above, 
 
 "Death, that from all sets free, 
 Frees us not from Love!"
 
 45 
 XIX 
 
 TELL, me why I love you, 
 Name yourself, my Heart, 
 
 Every inward bounty, 
 Every outward art: 
 
 The hands, the lips, the eyes, 
 The beauty in your breast, 
 
 Your very inmost spirit 
 Separate from the rest. 
 
 When your lips have ceased, 
 When your words have done, 
 
 I will answer you, 
 
 "Not for these alone." 
 
 XX 
 
 WEARY is age 
 
 And the record thereof- 
 O young is my love, 
 
 An unwritten page! 
 
 Her soul is a flower 
 But newly begun, 
 On her petals the sun 
 
 Has shone but an hour.
 
 46 
 
 Wild as the Spring, 
 Ecstatic and sweet 
 Is her body, and meet 
 
 To be sung of and sing. 
 
 Athletic and pure 
 
 As a wave of the sea, 
 To follow and flee, 
 
 Give and endure! 
 
 Splendidly moved 
 
 To swift strides along, 
 Stalwart and strong 
 
 To love, and be loved ! 
 
 O, as clouds from afar 
 That mingle and move, 
 We hasten with love, 
 
 As star unto star! 
 
 O, as swallows that dart 
 Through the heaven of day, 
 We follow as they, 
 
 Touch, and depart! 
 
 With four arms about, 
 Two bosoms laid bare, 
 Age, sorrow, and care 
 
 From our world we shut out!
 
 47 
 XXI 
 
 WHAT shall I dare to give you, 
 Who have but love to give, 
 
 Who have but one forever, 
 To love you and to live ! 
 
 I will give you love that loves, 
 Love with willing hands, 
 
 Love that soars and sings, 
 Love that understands. 
 
 XXII 
 
 WHERE is the land of You 
 
 And how shall I find the way? 
 
 If to that land I come 
 Never again will I stray. 
 
 A land that is yours completely, 
 Where no other name is known; 
 
 Where no other faces greet me, 
 No voice but yours alone. 
 
 There are no arms but your arms, 
 
 No bosom but yours is there, 
 Each flower in all that island 
 
 Is sweet with the breath of your hair.
 
 48 
 
 Leaf to leaf of the trees 
 
 Whispers your name, your name; 
 The roses blush with your beauty, 
 
 The lilies are white for shame. 
 
 To copy the veins in your temples 
 The violets take their hue, 
 
 And the sun that rises in heaven, 
 And the moon that sets is You. 
 
 XXIII 
 
 WHEN no more at my bosom 
 I lift you with each breath 
 
 Breathing has lost its purpose , 
 
 Each breath is a wave toward death. 
 
 XXIV 
 
 MY Love of you will love you 
 When all my love is done; 
 
 My Love of you will love you 
 When I am dead and gone. 
 
 I am mutable and weary, 
 Made of dust and clay, 
 
 7 shall fade and perish, 
 I shall pass away.
 
 49 
 
 He is drunk and filled with joy, 
 
 He is crowned with joy and shod, 
 His eyelids never sleep , 
 
 He has kissed the lips of God. 
 
 He alone is holy, 
 
 He alone is strong ; 
 His lamp is in my heart, 
 
 His sword is in my song. 
 
 XXV 
 
 FAR from your heart I wander. Twilight closes. 
 
 Far from your heart I roam. 
 Dear, in the sweet, pale west your soul arises, 
 
 A star to call me home. 
 
 XXVI 
 
 ALL honey and gold your body is, of fashion 
 Lovely and liberal; in a world of sadness 
 Bearing the old and the barbaric gladness, 
 
 The ruddy joy, the bounteous compassion. 
 
 Her beauty's challenge, like clear trumps of warning 
 Blown from the throne of God with royal splendor, 
 Summons to love, the eloquent and tender 
 
 Lines of her grace unfolded like the morning.
 
 50 
 
 Ever she sounds, with royal reverberation 
 
 Of ringing pulses and rhythm of grace supernal, 
 The call to joy amid the doom eternal, 
 
 The golden words of the great invitation ! 
 
 XXVII 
 
 IF you fly before me 
 
 Into Paradise 
 I will follow upward, 
 
 Lifted by your eyes. 
 
 The ecstasy of heaven 
 You sit, serene and mute, 
 
 Your shining head the angels 
 With my own songs salute. 
 
 Not strange will it seem to enter, 
 Led upward by your eyes; 
 
 So often have you led me 
 Into Paradise. 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 As the twilight, for sheer love 
 And abandoned ecstasy, 
 
 For the sake of the dear dawn 
 Dies, that dawn may come to be;
 
 51 
 
 Dumb with adoration dies 
 
 At the lovely, panting breast, 
 For sheer rapture of sacrifice 
 
 Bows his face along the west, 
 
 O to perish for your sake, 
 
 O, as twilight to the day, 
 To your loveliness athirst 
 
 Give my very self away ! 
 
 So I know it is your love 
 
 That demands it, not your hate; 
 Love is kind, but very fain, 
 
 And implacable as Fate. 
 
 XXIX 
 
 AGAINST your cheek, and bosom, 
 
 Radiant, pure, and white, 
 I have heard what the stars of morning 
 
 Sang, singing for delight. 
 
 The words the angels whispered 
 
 My soul before the birth, 
 I have heard their echoes wafted 
 
 Again about the earth.
 
 52 
 
 Lest ever I forget them, 
 
 One, where the stars abide, 
 Lays your arms about, 
 
 Sets your lips beside. 
 
 XXX 
 
 I WOULD give you love for love, 
 I would give you love for pain, 
 
 I would give you love for hate 
 Ten-thousandfold again. 
 
 Love, not I, is master. 
 
 Love is great and kind. 
 Love runs on to love you 
 
 And leaves all self behind. 
 
 XXXI 
 
 THROUGH the labyrinth of your bosom 
 Like an organ's I hear it roll, 
 
 In the thunderous anger of love. 
 The pulse of the wrath of your soul ; 
 
 At your bosom's barbaric splendor, 
 
 Lifting with fierce delight 
 Long lines of exuberant beauty, 
 
 In the hush, in the night, in the night,
 
 53 
 
 Lifting with vast exultation, 
 
 Forever and sleeplessly, 
 In the most reverent rhythm 
 
 Of riotous ecstasy: 
 
 In the radiant rhythm of rapture 
 And the lightnings of fierce delight, 
 
 In the storm of most riotous rapture, 
 In the hush, in the night, in the night ! 
 
 XXXII 
 
 WHEN the earthly joy is ended 
 And the earthly love is done, 
 
 My soul, with memory drunken, 
 To the flaming doors will run. 
 
 Angelic lips shall hail me 
 
 With my own songs in the Vast , 
 The angel that I loved so 
 
 Shall lift me up at last. 
 
 XXXIII 
 
 THE sheer, the infinite gratitude, 
 Never to be expressed, 
 
 Puts out the light, that flickers, 
 Of Song within my breast.
 
 54 
 
 Love to the most beloved, 
 
 The dear and the bounteous soul, 
 
 The giver and the beauty, 
 
 The summons and the goal, 
 
 Empty-handed, defeated, 
 With all his singing shed, 
 
 Returns with love forever 
 Too holy to be said. 
 
 XXXIV 
 
 BURY me east or west, when you come I will rise to 
 
 greet you. 
 I will rise to greet you with love if you come where 
 
 I lie in the south. 
 If you come to my grave in the north with love I will 
 
 rise to greet you, 
 And a song on my mouth.
 
 IV 
 RADIANT NOON 
 
 "Love on thy beauty breaks a shattered wave'
 
 57 
 
 ALMOST against your heart 
 My beating heart has grown, 
 
 Hardly your very lips 
 
 Are separate from my own. 
 
 To suit myself to your breast, 
 To suit myself to your will, 
 
 Is the first thought at dawn, 
 The last at evening still. 
 
 To lay aside myself 
 
 And be yourself instead, 
 Daily I give my life, 
 
 And rise with Song from the dead. 
 
 Yet virgin as the morning, 
 
 Unconquerable and free, 
 And strange as at the first meeting, 
 
 Ever you come to me. 
 
 O the lure of you and the secret, 
 
 Fairer a thousandfold, 
 Like the stars is ever new, 
 
 Like the stars is ever old!
 
 58 
 
 II 
 
 UNDER the flowing robe of our folded love 
 
 In the bright rhythm of riotous ecstasy, 
 Rapt, from ourselves to the stars we reach upward, 
 
 made one 
 
 With the world-rhythm of all things striving to be; 
 Trampling down death with fierce rapture, we triumph 
 
 for one 
 Magnificent moment of rapt immortality. 
 
 Ill 
 
 WHERE the feet beloved tread 
 
 The urgent flowers throng, 
 Light breaks, sound issues, breathless 
 
 Beats the heart of Song. 
 
 A vibrance fills all Beauty 
 
 With motion and excess, 
 The trodden flowers bless her, 
 
 The wounded flowers bless. 
 
 The old and the sacred challenge 
 
 Summons and compels; 
 Up through the breast of being 
 
 The immortal wonder wells.
 
 59 
 
 Song, that was laid at rest, 
 
 Again must learn to live, 
 Love, that has given all, 
 
 Again must die to give. 
 
 IV 
 
 THOUGH you dwelt 
 In the farthest West, 
 
 The sun should lead me 
 To your breast. 
 
 When his light 
 
 Was ebbed and gone 
 The evening-star 
 
 Should lead me on. 
 
 And if that 
 
 Left heaven above 
 I would journey 
 
 Led by love. 
 
 I would seek you 
 
 Till my heart, 
 Wearied out, 
 
 Fell apart.
 
 60 
 
 At your door 
 
 I'd lay me down , 
 
 Not to wake you. 
 O my own ! 
 
 Nor sleep all night, 
 Nor sleep all night, 
 
 To hear your breathing 
 Soft and light. 
 
 O WOULD in the moment of love 
 
 I might bid the stars stand still, 
 And the wheel of the world repose, 
 
 Fixed and immovable! 
 
 On the starry summits of beauty 
 
 Locked in a long embrace, 
 With hair blown backward, together, 
 
 Breathless, and face to face ! 
 
 Ere the vision be shattered, and headlong 
 
 From our dream in the heights we be hurled, 
 
 From the cry of our spirits in choir, 
 Back into the pit of the world.
 
 61 
 VI 
 
 OF all God's living poems 
 Scattered from east to west, 
 
 Sweet, you are the dearest 
 That ever fell from His breast. 
 
 VII 
 
 WHITE morning awakes. 
 
 Dawn breaks her bars. 
 
 God's breath through the stars 
 Flickers and shakes. 
 
 Again to the sky 
 
 Leaps the day with delight, 
 
 Again turns the night 
 To his bosom to die. 
 
 With fierce passion they move, 
 With the rapture of pain, 
 Rearisen again 
 
 From the fountains of love. 
 
 In the old, weary way 
 
 The old beauty is done , 
 Like a lover, the sun 
 
 Leaps to the day.
 
 62 
 
 O and I with the rest, 
 I, tireless, too 
 I, unto you, 
 
 I, to your breast! 
 
 VIII 
 
 WITH the longing of a lover 
 To possess the once possessed, 
 
 The deep need for the familiar, 
 For the most beloved breast, 
 
 For the heart the heart has grown to, 
 The dear lips, well-worn, well-known 
 
 To yourself, as to a refuge, 
 Song turns ever from his own. 
 
 As a boy's heart first surrounded, 
 When shame first is put to rout, 
 
 With the sweet, relentless hunger 
 Of girl-arms first laid about; 
 
 To yourself, still new, still wondrous, 
 The dear, opposite, luring love, 
 
 As at first Song still surrenders 
 All the ecstasy thereof.
 
 63 
 IX 
 
 DAILY from breasts o'erthrown 
 To Beauty's immortal knees 
 
 The sacrifice of love 
 Rises to appease. 
 
 FOR the sheer joy 
 
 Of gratitude 
 I shed my songs 
 
 Like living blood. 
 
 I stab my heart 
 
 With the thought of you, 
 To kiss the blade 
 
 The song pours through; 
 
 To touch and thrill 
 
 And fill you, sweet, 
 With living love 
 
 From head to feet ! 
 
 XI 
 
 WITH the sullen rhythm of rapture, 
 As of thousand viols in throng 
 
 Slow thrilling with resonant rapture, 
 My bosom draws you along,
 
 64 
 
 Slow lapsing with resonant rapture ; 
 
 And buoyant with glad excess 
 Lifts up the long level and follows 
 
 Your own with exuberant stress. 
 
 O love, as a storm from heaven 
 
 With laughter of lightning that leaps, 
 
 As a cloud through the darkness of heaven, 
 As a cloud through the billowing deeps, 
 
 With delight, as of thousand viols 
 
 Drawn across by deep bow-strings in throng, 
 In a holy whirlwind of rapture 
 
 I whirl you and bear you along! 
 
 Till the light break through it of love, 
 
 Break and from sea to sea 
 Spans, in a shining shower, 
 
 The rainbow of ecstasy. 
 
 XII 
 
 NEVER your beauty 
 Can satisfy me, 
 
 'Tis but as a rose 
 Tossed into the sea.
 
 65 
 
 Though I gazed to the doom, 
 Till mine eyes had grown old, 
 
 In the morning again 
 I had eyes to behold. 
 
 Though I died in your arms 
 
 At dawn of delight, 
 At your chamber again 
 
 Should find me the night. 
 
 O, as clouds to the earth 
 
 In a shower of rain, 
 I return, I return 
 
 To perish again ! 
 
 XIII 
 
 WHEN you spread your arms to take me, 
 When your breath comes hard and fast, 
 
 Song and love of Song forsake me 
 At the source of Song at last. 
 
 Hushed and folded at your bosom 
 
 Starry longing fades away, 
 In yourself all memories of you 
 
 Melt, as morning into day;
 
 66 
 
 Till I rise, refreshed and quickened, 
 
 To resume the singing race, 
 From the oblivion of your bosom, 
 
 From the death of your embrace. 
 
 XIV 
 
 O INSATIABLE and sweet, 
 
 Loved more than I can say! 
 
 Take my whole of love 
 And cast it all away. 
 
 Ask more of me and more, 
 More than I can give 
 
 Waste it at your lips 
 It is not fit to live. 
 
 Waste it in a breath, 
 
 All that I have spent; 
 Ask more of me and more, 
 
 And still be discontent. 
 
 Ask more of me and more, 
 
 Till Love have nothing more. 
 
 O insatiable and sweet, 
 
 Ask more of me and more !
 
 67 
 XV 
 
 NEVER can I escape you 
 
 Though I roam the whole world through , 
 If I leave you, journeying westward, 
 
 From the east I come to you. 
 
 XVI 
 
 WITH weariness abandoned 
 
 And the ecstasy of pain 
 Love returns to love you 
 
 Again and yet again. 
 
 Insatiate as the sunrise, 
 
 Sleepless, flushed, and bright, 
 
 Returning and returning 
 To perish of the light; 
 
 Seraphically weary, 
 
 As toward the twilight, day, 
 Love to what is lovely 
 
 Gives himself away. 
 
 XVII 
 
 O MY own, my delight, 
 
 I am here at your call, 
 
 Soul, body and all, 
 In the day, in the night!
 
 68 
 
 Not grudgingly, never 
 Yours by decree, 
 By rights that must be, 
 
 But wholly and ever. 
 
 The poets above 
 
 Sing sadly of Beauty, 
 Of Love and of Duty 
 
 I give you my love. 
 
 O, as waves of the sea 
 
 The waves flowing after, 
 I draw you with laughter, 
 
 I follow and flee ! 
 
 O, as storms in a crowd 
 To the meadows laid bare, 
 I rush to you there, 
 
 I fade as a cloud ! 
 
 Lest loving should grieve you, 
 As joy grieves the heart, 
 I touch you, and part, 
 
 I love you, and leave you. 
 
 Yet still, like a star 
 
 That the daylight obscures, 
 I return, I am yours, 
 
 I return from afar.
 
 69 
 XVIII 
 
 To his grave within your bosom 
 
 Song returns with weary wings, 
 To the source whence first his ardors 
 
 Broke with love that soars and sings, 
 
 To his sunset in your bosom, 
 
 Vast, seraphical, and bright, 
 Where, as at heaven's widening wonder 
 
 Dies the wild and wayward light; 
 
 To his grave where in your bosom, 
 
 As the twilight in the west, 
 He must perish, he must perish , 
 
 To the silence of your breast. 
 
 XIX 
 
 DAILY would I give 
 
 All the love I have 
 To break against your beauty 
 
 Like a wasted wave.
 
 V 
 BIRD-SONGS AND ROSES 
 
 'Would I might hide me in my song 
 To kiss the lips from which it flows "
 
 ONCE on a starry night, 
 
 Once on a starry night, 
 Dear, I was full of you 
 
 As the dawn of the young, sweet light. 
 
 The rare, wild pulse of your presence 
 Flooded me through and through; 
 
 Fresh from your arms I rose, 
 Quickened and filled with you ! 
 
 Since when my heart and my body, 
 
 My song and my spirit, too, 
 Are quickened and filled with you, 
 
 Quickened and filled with you! 
 
 II 
 
 THE air is full of dawn and Spring, 
 Outside the room I see 
 
 A swallow, like a shaft of light, 
 Shift sideways suddenly.
 
 74 
 
 There is no room for death at all 
 
 In earth or heaven above; 
 
 He never yet believed in death 
 
 Who ever learned to love. 
 
 Build me a tomb when I am dead, 
 
 But leave a window free 
 That I may watch the swallow's flight, 
 
 And Spring come back to me. 
 
 Build me a tomb of steel and stone, 
 But leave one window free, 
 
 That I may feel the Spring come back 
 And You come back to me ! 
 
 Ill 
 
 WHO mixes with radiant Beauty 
 Himself to beauty grows, 
 
 Fresh with the roseleaf slips 
 The raindrop from the rose. 
 
 The cloud, that to the sunrise 
 
 Stoops as to a bride, 
 Bright from her breast returns, 
 
 Quickened and glorified.
 
 75 
 Touching at its source 
 
 And sunrise again, the soul 
 Back from the breast of love 
 
 Quickened returns, and whole. 
 
 So lovelier from your lips 
 Each day I rise again, 
 And stain against your breast
 
 76 
 
 When the wild heart grows wayward 
 
 Straightway within it stirs, 
 In the blood's beat to subdue it 
 
 And lead it back to hers, 
 
 The pulse of the beloved 
 
 That thrills it through and through. 
 O heart-beat of my heart, 
 
 How may I fly from you!
 
 77 
 VI 
 
 BEAUTY is contagious, 
 
 It springs from age to age, 
 
 From poet unto poet, 
 Page to shining page. 
 
 A little from your lips 
 
 And from your eyes, my dove, 
 Mine catch fire with 
 
 Forever, Song and Love. 
 
 VII 
 
 THE twilight is starred, 
 The dawn has arisen , 
 
 Light breaks from the east 
 And Song from her prison. 
 
 Faint odors and sounds 
 The west-wind discloses 
 
 Of flowers and birds, 
 Of laughter and roses. 
 
 It is time to be gone, 
 
 Day scatters the gloom 
 
 But still at my side, 
 But here in the room,
 
 78 
 
 Like the angel of Life, 
 
 Too kind to depart, 
 You hang at my lips ! 
 You hang at my heart! 
 
 VIII 
 
 THERE, wherever you come, 
 
 A Springtime breath and bloom 
 
 You bring with you of love, 
 That floods the very room. 
 
 When you are fled away 
 
 Still trembles through the gloom 
 A breath, a sense of love, 
 
 That floods the very room. 
 
 IX 
 
 MY love has chained and humbled me 
 
 That was once so heaven-free; 
 
 To Beauty and the lure thereof 
 
 She chained me with the chain of love. 
 
 She came to me with silent feet, 
 My heart trembled, the blood beat , 
 Up through my life the longing welled 
 That her loveliness compelled.
 
 79 
 
 Life, and love, and song, and all 
 She steals from me who am her thrall, 
 Till my very self has grown, 
 Through long love, into her own; 
 
 Till at her breast in starry pain 
 Surrendering, radiantly self-slain, 
 I die to be re-born again ! 
 
 To the lordship of her being 
 And the dear heart above 
 
 The loveliness beloved 
 
 Bows down the heart of love. 
 
 How sweet the yoke of beauty 
 And the soft arms that chain 
 
 Love's flight, from the beloved 
 How sweet the touch of pain ! 
 
 She bids all hearts be humbled, 
 That wait for love's reward, 
 
 To the laughable, lovely beauty- 
 O love, it is not hard !
 
 80 
 
 XI 
 
 MORE beautiful unto myself 
 
 Myself through the love of you grows 
 If the sweetness be hers, or the rose's, 
 
 Hardly the west-wind knows. 
 
 XII 
 
 As a wind from over the flowers, 
 Sweet from the flowers grown, 
 
 Yourself I bear unto all men 
 And think that it is my own. 
 
 XIII 
 
 ALTHOUGH your arms around me 
 At morning fade away, 
 
 Around me in my spirit 
 I feel them all the day. 
 
 Not all at once you leave me, 
 But, gradually with pain 
 
 Withdrawing, leave behind you 
 A print in nerve and vein:
 
 81 
 
 Possessive, sweet, and poignant, 
 
 A May-time pang and scent, 
 The perfume of your presence 
 
 Through all my pulses sent. 
 
 Within my blood a memory 
 
 And sense of you, like Spring, 
 
 Lingers fading, fading , 
 And in the songs I sing. 
 
 XIV 
 
 'Tis not my foes 
 
 That have brought me low, 
 Nor conquered me 
 
 The arm of a foe. 
 
 Two eyebrows arched, 
 My head in the drouth 
 
 Of the dust have rolled , 
 And a laughing mouth. 
 
 XV 
 
 O LIPS that mine have wearied 
 So many and many a time , 
 
 O heart that mine has beat to 
 
 Through all the ways of rhyme!
 
 82 
 
 Almost into yourself 
 
 My very self has grown 
 Hardly your lips, my sweet, 
 Are separate from my own! 
 
 But again and again to have you, 
 To be mingled more and more 
 
 With the loveliness I love so, 
 Insatiate as before 
 
 With the inmost pulse of your presence 
 To be flooded through and through, 
 
 O irrevocably to be mixed 
 With the very self of you ! 
 
 My life turns back forever, 
 How many and many a time, 
 
 With ecstasy abandoned 
 And weariness sublime! 
 
 XVI 
 
 MY Own is proud and cruel 
 
 All other hearts above, 
 She has chained me to her chariot 
 
 With the chain of love.
 
 83 
 
 imperious and lovely ! 
 
 laughable, my Own! 
 
 1 acknowledge you and greet you, 
 
 1 bow before your throne. 
 
 XVII 
 
 I AM filled, I am filled, 
 I am filled full of you, 
 
 As the meadows with light, 
 As the morning with dew ! 
 
 Mine alone, of all born, 
 
 Is elected the breast 
 To be bearer of you 
 
 To the East and the West. 
 
 For joy all the day, 
 
 For joy all the night, 
 My love cries aloud. 
 
 I laugh for delight! 
 
 The beautiful burden 
 
 At heart, I go forth, 
 Drunken with song, 
 
 To the South and the North.
 
 84 
 
 O all men and women 
 
 And angels, draw near 
 
 Look in my heart! 
 Look what is here ! 
 
 XVIII 
 
 ALL my love for my sweet 
 I bared one day to her . 
 
 Carelessly she took it 
 And like a conqueror. 
 
 She bowed the neck of my soul 
 
 To fit it to her yoke, 
 She bridled the lips of Song ; 
 
 Fear within me awoke. 
 
 But Love cried, "Swiftly, swiftly 
 
 Bear her along the road, 
 Beautiful is the goal 
 
 And Beauty is the goad." 
 
 XIX 
 
 YOUR beauty fades into my circling strength, 
 
 As the pale starlight into the wide day. 
 
 Ah love, but when the noon of joy is passed, 
 
 Fulfilled of you, filled full of you at last, 
 
 Backward into your beauty ebbs my strength, 
 
 As into the worn twilight the wild day !
 
 85 
 XX 
 
 ONE molten star, 
 
 Afar withdrawn, 
 Winks liquid lids 
 
 In the web of dawn. 
 
 The web of the dew 
 O'er the world lies spun. 
 
 The choir of the birds 
 Salutes the sun. 
 
 Bird-songs and roses' 
 
 Faint perfume 
 Flood through the window 
 
 Of the dim room. 
 
 But you lie laughing 
 
 For sweet excess 
 In the wild hour 
 
 Of loveliness, 
 
 In the dear rage 
 
 Of reckless love. 
 The worn star pales 
 
 In heaven above. 
 
 The morning widens 
 On the clear rim , 
 
 Ah the last star 
 
 Grows pale and dim!
 
 86 
 
 O fuller and fuller 
 Through the vast 
 And hollow vault, 
 At last, at last, 
 
 Floods the quick flame 
 
 Of influent fire! 
 With all the tongues 
 
 Of her core in choir, 
 
 Bathed round in light 
 
 And trembling dew, 
 With the life beloved 
 
 Thrilled through and through, 
 
 The heart of the world 
 For love that aches, 
 
 Filled full, too full, 
 Leaps up and breaks. 
 
 At the bright breast 
 
 Of burning day 
 Breaks, and gives 
 
 Herself away! 
 
 Breaks, and at 
 
 The mere touch thereof 
 Overflows in a rapture 
 
 Of welling love!
 
 87 
 One with a cry, 
 
 In the morning's white 
 Serene expanse 
 
 Of vast delight, 
 
 One with a moan, 
 
 In the holy and thrilled 
 Dread hush at last 
 
 Of all fulfilled, 
 
 Through laughter and tears 
 
 Re-mingling, we 
 Crown the world-chord 
 
 With ecstasy. 
 
 XXI 
 
 EVER from your embrace 
 
 Refreshed I arise and strong, 
 
 With a new song from your lips, 
 And from your heart with a song. 
 
 XXII 
 
 THROUGH all my body, nerve and vein, 
 Sweet traces linger of your own; 
 
 As Winter, that at Spring's heart has lain, 
 Almost into the Spring has grown.
 
 I am drenched with you and saturate, 
 
 As the morning with the young, bright dew- 
 As the sea-wind with the fresh, far sea 
 I am drunken and saturate with you. 
 
 Through all my spirit, dream and deed, 
 Sweet traces linger of your own 
 
 Through love of you, through love of you, 
 Almost yourself, sweet, am I grown ! 
 
 XXIII 
 
 As a star that from light's prison 
 Freed, returns to prisoning light; 
 
 From your breast, dear, to your breast, dear, 
 Measures all my freedom's flight. 
 
 XXIV 
 
 LIFE went forth in the strength 
 Of the morning from his lair 
 
 The first young Joy he found, 
 He seized it by the hair. 
 
 So ruthlessly your heart 
 Against my own I pressed, 
 
 And whirled against my own 
 The radiance of your breast.
 
 89 
 
 But clinging about my neck 
 
 Your arms to a taming yoke 
 Grew, that stilled my heart; 
 
 Love within me awoke. 
 
 Then at first was I sad , 
 
 But the old, the rebellious strength 
 
 Tore my lips apart, 
 
 Turned to a song at length ! 
 
 XXV 
 
 SONG at the source of Song 
 Sweet it is to confess, 
 
 And loveliness to humble 
 At the feet of Loveliness.
 
 VI 
 
 THE MYSTERY AND THE 
 MYTH 
 
 "The touch, the clasp, the old, sweet earthly fashion 
 Of love is but a lovely allegory "
 
 93 
 
 Now in the east 
 
 The old mystery of love is done again, 
 
 Along the east 
 
 Burns the huge rapture of her ecstatic pain: 
 
 Sweet foes forever 
 
 Twilight, with whom Day's fiery outlines blend 
 
 Till she be lost 
 
 And Light at war with Darkness till the end. 
 
 In the old way 
 
 Is done again the most reverent sacrifice, 
 
 Twilight and Day 
 
 Mingle, the breast that lives and the breast that dies. 
 
 The breast that lures, 
 
 And the most patient and sacrificial breast; 
 
 The breast that endures 
 
 And the breast that fulfills quicken with one unrest. 
 
 Dear foes forever 
 
 And lovers, in the old war of love and life, 
 
 Opposites ever 
 
 And loving opponents in the eternal strife!
 
 94 
 
 Along the east 
 
 Their bright limbs burn through the clouds that they 
 
 divide, 
 
 Along the east 
 Their luminous love, like a bridegroom and a bride. 
 
 Radiant they mix 4 
 
 The splendor of the bright love that longs to live, 
 
 The patient shadow 
 
 Of the dark love that gives, and dies to give. 
 
 A sudden hush, 
 
 As of bowed heads and reverence forevermore 
 
 Morning arises. 
 
 Radiant o'er the wide world his waters pour ! 
 
 Morning arises, 
 
 Hailed with a myriad songs to the living sun, 
 
 Beauty completed, 
 
 And the old sacrifice and mystery done. 
 
 II 
 THE WIND AND THE SEA 
 
 SWEET, you tremble, 
 
 Sweet, you move 
 Like a woman 
 
 In the anger of love.
 
 95 
 
 For love of you, 
 
 For love of you, 
 My body trembles 
 
 Through and through. 
 
 Dear, my heart 
 
 Beats laughingly 
 To feel your beauty 
 
 Under me. 
 
 My body's joy, 
 
 The heart you press 
 Sobs, beneath 
 
 Your loveliness. 
 
 Let me have you 
 All my own, 
 
 Bared to me 
 
 And overthrown! 
 
 Let us mingle, 
 
 You and I, 
 Each of each 
 
 Drink, and die ! 
 
 Let me fill you 
 
 With my strength! 
 Pour my love 
 
 Through all your length!
 
 96 
 
 the glad love 
 That bids me live! 
 
 1 lift my lips. 
 Give give ! 
 
 Ill 
 
 NIGHT looked forth from the tower of morning 
 
 Over the flowery lands, 
 She took the young and the sickle moon 
 
 For a scimitar in her hands, 
 
 And drove the stars along the sky 
 
 Like little wanton foes 
 She saw not 'twas her lover the sun 
 
 Who slew them as he rose. 
 
 He rushed to meet her, she let fall 
 
 Her flowers and hid her face; 
 He drowned her in his arms all day 
 
 In the light of his embrace. 
 
 And died for love of her. At dusk 
 
 She left him where he lay, 
 And rose with silent laughter up 
 
 Along the starry way.
 
 97 
 IV 
 
 O THE challenge that burns 
 
 In a laughing girl's eyes ! 
 The boy's heart that turns, 
 
 The heart that replies ! 
 
 The joy that fulfills, 
 
 And the love that endures , 
 The heart that follows, 
 
 The heart that lures ! 
 
 In the old, fierce war 
 
 Of woman and man, 
 Their secret battle 
 
 Since life began, 
 
 Dear foes forever 
 
 And opposites still; 
 Fulfillers forever 
 
 Of one deep will ! 
 
 V 
 
 WITH the foam-white arms of virgins 
 
 In choral flocks afar 
 The thronging billows rustle 
 
 And race across the bar.
 
 98 
 
 They follow the god with longing 
 
 Along the sunlit way, 
 With silver footsteps thronging, 
 And laughter up the bay, 
 
 With little, delicate bodies 
 
 Poised dancing; the sun's flame 
 
 Pierces them all the water 
 Quivers for love and shame. 
 
 VI 
 
 You are the bright, curved shore. 
 And I the waves that destroy 
 
 On her beauty their strength 
 
 With joy, with joy. 
 
 The meadow you, I, the storm 
 That dies to shed from above 
 
 On her flowers his life, 
 
 With love, with love. 
 
 I am the bird that follows, 
 And you the hills of the south. 
 The loving mouth, 
 And the laughing mouth.
 
 99 
 
 O love, I, the arrow that speeds 
 Hungrily to its mark, 
 
 And you, the breast 
 
 That sinks in the dark! 
 
 The hurrying heart that follows, 
 The hushed, sweet heart that flies, 
 
 The heart that exults, 
 
 The heart that sighs ! 
 
 Ever, forever, the spirit 
 
 That seeks, and the spirit that lures, 
 
 The love that fulfills, 
 
 The love that endures! 
 
 VII 
 
 TOWARD the girl the boy's face turning 
 Flashes with keen love's delight, 
 
 For her beauty ever draws him 
 Nearer with ecstatic might. 
 
 And she reads the wordless challenge, 
 And most swiftly she replies, 
 
 Darting scorn in ardent challenge 
 From the heaven of her eyes.
 
 100 
 
 Each in each through veils of terror 
 
 Recognizes, dimly known 
 Through dim beauty, the dear beauty 
 
 That makes war upon his own. 
 
 Yet she has the woman's pity 
 For her lover, she arrays 
 
 For his joy her body's beauty 
 Secretly in many ways. 
 
 And to bathe amid the aura 
 
 Of her being, draw more near 
 
 To her maidhood (is his longing), 
 Dewy-fresh and morning-clear; 
 
 To be spilt across her beauty 
 All his ardor, to destroy 
 
 On her love the clear and crystal 
 Radiance of his running joy. 
 
 Till they rush and flow together, 
 Interpenetrate and blend, 
 
 Weaving into one another 
 
 With white rapture at the end. 
 
 Till the soft yoke of her beauty 
 Tame, and all subdue the stress 
 
 Of his wild and veering ardor, 
 Humbled in her loveliness !
 
 101 
 VIII 
 
 THE sea-wind seizes the sea-wave 
 
 And breaks her beauty in two ; 
 She sobs, she sinks, she flutters, 
 
 She trembles all through and through, 
 "Sweet, I die, I die, 
 
 Of you, at least of you !" 
 
 IX 
 
 THE lover's radiant longing in the calm 
 
 Reality of the self beloved dies, 
 The mother in her children, the brave Spring 
 
 Of the insatiate Summer's young, sweet eyes. 
 
 The soft, unselfish darknesses but roll 
 
 Around the stars to make them be more bright. 
 
 Death suffers to be unlovely that more clear 
 Shine out the lovely face of Life's delight. 
 
 Honor the young and the rejoicing Dawn 
 
 For whose dear sake the Twilight dies away, 
 
 Nor quite forget the sacrificial part 
 
 The tender and self-renouncing shadows play.
 
 102 
 
 X 
 
 RECKLESS and free, 
 
 In his arms with delight, 
 Like a bride bare and bright, 
 
 The Wind seizes the Sea. 
 
 The Wind seizes the Sea 
 That his longing denies 
 And opposes, and sighs, 
 
 And strains to be free. 
 
 They wrestle and close 
 
 In the long, foaming fields, 
 Till her loveliness yields 
 
 And lies down in repose. 
 
 She lies down like a bride 
 To accept of his will, 
 And the waters are still, 
 
 The wave-ways subside. 
 
 He bows her waves over, 
 Her strength overthrown 
 Lies bared to his own, 
 
 As lover to lover. 
 
 O with rhythmical stress 
 She sobs softly under 
 The weight of that wonder, 
 
 That wild loveliness!
 
 103 
 She flutters and moves, 
 
 O to feel, overthrown, 
 
 Triumph over her own 
 The life that she loves! 
 
 Her body that sighs 
 
 Leans upward to crave 
 
 O wave on sweet wave 
 Foams upward, and dies ! 
 
 At the touch of his strength ; 
 
 Till all of her love 
 
 To the lover above 
 Lies subject at length. 
 
 Ere his life draw away, 
 
 And bride-like she lies, 
 
 Panting soft with closed eyes, 
 In disheveled array, 
 
 With quick heaving breast 
 
 Where his beauty was borne, 
 
 Seraphic and worn, 
 And weary, and blessed. 
 
 XI 
 
 ON the breast of the Morning 
 
 The Twilight again 
 Love-drunken leans, 
 
 Ere she be slain.
 
 104 
 
 The heart of the Morning 
 
 Is kind, but his eyes 
 Are sleepless with love 
 
 Drinking she dies. 
 
 On the beautiful bosom, 
 Bright with disdain, 
 
 Breaks the dear heart 
 
 Of the Twilight in twain. 
 
 XII 
 
 MY longing, like the rain-wind. 
 
 Whose sorrow bends above 
 The young and folded flower, 
 
 Came swinging to my love. 
 
 I told her all my secret, 
 I told her all my pain. 
 
 She opened all her beauty 
 
 To the sad and sighing rain. 
 
 She opened all her beauty, 
 Like a young, virgin rose, 
 
 Tenderly, whose petals 
 
 First toward the rain unclose.
 
 105 
 Her eyes were full of pity 
 
 For my sorrow's sake, 
 She lifted up her lips. 
 
 Her beauty whispered, "Take " 
 
 And all her joy she gave me, 
 
 And bounteously she gave 
 The young joy of her beauty 
 
 With wondering lips and brave. 
 
 The sad and the silent secret 
 
 Of her being she laid bare 
 O eagerly I hurried, 
 
 I rushed to meet it there ! 
 
 And all her beauty's flower 
 
 Fell wasted leaf by leaf, 
 The young and the virgin wonder 
 
 And left me to my grief. 
 
 XIII 
 DAY TO SUNRISE 
 
 'You must perish as I kindle, 
 You must darken that mine eyes 
 
 May be brightened as yours dwindle, 
 You must wane that I may rise.
 
 106 
 
 "You must die to feed my living, 
 From your death my beauty lives/' 
 
 Life said to the joy of living, 
 Love that takes to love that gives, 
 
 The Girl-morning to the Sunrise, 
 The beloved to her own, 
 
 "You and you alone must perish 
 At my heart and mine alone. 
 
 "All your ardor to my longing 
 You must render up, and waste 
 
 On my beauty all your being 
 O beloved, let us haste!" 
 
 SUNRISE TO DAY 
 
 Cried the Sunrise to the Morning, 
 "Let me render up and spend 
 
 On your beauty all my ardor, 
 Love and longing to the end. 
 
 "O most radiantly lovely, 
 Life for love is light to give, 
 
 Better in the self beloved 
 Than ourselves it is to live !
 
 107 
 "O dear self to follow after, 
 
 All the life within me throngs 
 From my breast to the beloved's, 
 To the breast where life belongs! 
 
 "To your bosom I confide it, 
 
 All the longing, the delight 
 That must die to love you wholly." 
 Eastward all the day grew bright.
 
 VII 
 LIBERATION 
 
 "Thy love sets free my spirit 
 To the fields of Love afar, 
 
 As the dawn sets free the morning, 
 The dusk, the evening-star/'
 
 Ill 
 
 As the morning-star ecstatic, 
 Lost, into the morning moves ; 
 
 So my spirit fades forever 
 Into the dear self she loves. 
 
 As wild rivers pour and perish, 
 Fall and flow into the sea; 
 
 So my self runs on with longing 
 Toward the self I long to be. 
 
 There at last I know my spirit 
 Radiantly self-slain, self -lost, 
 
 One with the great self of Beauty, 
 Part of all I love the most. 
 
 II 
 
 WHEN in your arms I hear it, 
 The laboring of your heart, 
 
 All little thoughts desert me, 
 All little dreams depart.
 
 112 
 
 On the dear, baffled bosom 
 
 Love leans with bated breath, 
 To hear the life beloved 
 
 Pouring on toward death. 
 
 All that all life would utter 
 Out of the lonely Vast, 
 
 Fugitive, fierce, and holy, 
 Speaks to me there at last. 
 
 Ill 
 
 O BUT to have you entire, 
 
 To rush, to run to your face, 
 All thoughts of myself to extinguish 
 
 Forever in your embrace! 
 
 To abandon myself completely ! 
 
 At last of myself to be free! 
 Drenched with you, filled with you, full of you; 
 
 Till drunken and giddily, 
 
 Dreaming into your beauty, 
 
 Through vein and spirit I feel 
 Thrill upward, completely possessive, 
 
 Your spirit steadily steal!
 
 113 
 IV 
 
 WHEN the lightning of desire 
 From our limbs has taken flight 
 
 Faint they tremble, as their longing 
 Ebbs and mingles in the night. 
 
 As the radiant storms of Beauty 
 
 Ever far and farther roll, 
 Worn they leave them, the ebbed wonder 
 
 Worn and weary leaves the soul; 
 
 Yet seraphic and exalted, 
 
 As drenched fields the evening-star 
 Shines upon when heaven's lyre 
 
 Moans with memories afar. 
 
 LET me open to the beauty 
 Of your being all my breast, 
 
 Life and longing, soul and body, 
 Arms, lips, eyes, and all the rest ! 
 
 Drink deep draughts in all around me 
 Of your beauty, drink and drain 
 
 Deep draughts of yourself around me, 
 Love and loveliness and pain!
 
 114 
 
 Give myself to you completely, 
 Wholly and beyond recall < 
 Joy and sorrow, soul and body, 
 
 Life, and love, and song, and all ! 
 
 VI 
 
 WHEN our two hearts 
 Rhyme in the dawn, 
 
 Beyond all Life 
 I am withdrawn. 
 
 Beyond all Evil 
 
 And all Good 
 With you, in a 
 
 White solitude. 
 
 Urging beyond them 
 Breath on breath, 
 
 Faint follow the feet 
 Of Life and Death. 
 
 VII 
 
 FAINT and weary, as from Lethe, 
 Drowned my memories and my pain, 
 
 From the oblivion of your bosom, 
 From your arms I rise again.
 
 115 
 
 Strange and cool breathes on my forehead 
 The first twilight's starry breath; 
 
 Beauty lies fulfilled and perfect, 
 And fulfilled are life and death. 
 
 From the opiate arms of darkness, 
 
 From the beautiful embrace, 
 Lovely, faint, and satiated, 
 
 Morning lifts a dreamless face. 
 
 VIII 
 
 As rivers rush in tumult 
 And crumble in the sea, 
 
 I am lost, I am slain in you, 
 I am drowned eternally. 
 
 Yet back in a cloud of joy, 
 In a shower of living rain, 
 
 To his heights among the hills 
 You pour love back again. 
 
 O to the being beloved, 
 
 To perish and be reborn, 
 
 The strange and luring presence 
 Refreshing as the morn,
 
 116 
 
 Love runs on forever 
 
 As rivers to the sea; 
 From myself you set me free ! 
 From myself you set me free! 
 
 IX 
 
 NIGHT and day my youth is longing 
 
 For your loveliness 
 That must tame the fiery ardors 
 
 Of his wild excess; 
 
 For your beauty to subdue his 
 
 Radiant rage, that dies, 
 Drunken down the grave and solemn 
 
 Thirsting of your eyes. 
 
 Ah, all pain and longing ended, 
 
 Wearied out, to rest 
 Once again at the oblivious 
 
 Lethe of your breast. 
 
 See, my youth is all in flower 
 (The dread shape draws near) 
 
 That no love but yours may gather- 
 And you are not here.
 
 117 
 
 Ah the kindness, once to feel them 
 
 The dear lips, that crave 
 Through our pain, of the great bounty, 
 
 Well, and wild to save. 
 
 O once more to meet together, 
 
 Ere the Fates destroy, 
 For the rhythmical abandon, 
 
 The barbaric joy! 
 
 IF to me you prove faithless, 
 And to this heart that sings, 
 
 I will stoop and seek your image 
 In the universe of things. 
 
 Think you within you only 
 
 You have your dwelling place ! 
 
 From field and hill and flower 
 Looks out at me your face ; 
 
 From flowers and from music, 
 And from my living song 
 
 There will I love you still, 
 There will I love you long.
 
 118 
 
 XI 
 
 WHEN have I lost myself wholly! 
 
 When at last am I free 
 From the barriers of division 
 
 That separate you and me ! 
 
 When radiant, fierce, and holy, 
 With heartbeats running in song, 
 
 To the core of the burning beauty 
 
 From the ends of the world we throng. 
 
 In the hush, in the holiness of love, 
 
 In the moment when the mystery is done, 
 
 From the agony of division 
 We rise to the j oy of one ! 
 
 XII 
 
 MY harbor is gained and the goal of my Song at last, 
 
 The toil and the tumult cease; 
 
 Song steers with sea-dripping wings into silence at 
 last 
 
 And the haven of peace.
 
 VIII 
 REVELATION AND REST 
 
 'To bring you the secret of beauty 
 The beloved comes from afar "
 
 121 
 
 DAY scatters, but the night brings home, 
 
 She gathers in the west 
 The everlasting stars, and me 
 
 To the beloved breast. 
 
 II 
 
 DEAR, you are peace , 
 
 All my wild longings and my sorrows vain 
 
 Faint at your heart, 
 
 All of desire's dim and starry train; 
 
 Self-sacrificed at last, 
 
 Love at your breast sinks radiantly self-slain. 
 
 You are the beauty 
 
 Into which longing slowly climbs toward peace 
 
 Through starry pain, the beauty 
 
 Wherein all longing finds supreme release, 
 
 The still and steady beauty 
 
 Within whose calm all love and longing cease.
 
 122 
 
 The grave of pain 
 
 And all desire's never-wearying length, 
 
 The shore where love 
 
 Breaks like a wasted wave his radiant strength, 
 
 The grave of Song 
 
 And of all singing and all life at length ! 
 
 My thoughts of you 
 
 Rise with the stars at dusk of every day, 
 
 Till, like the dawn, 
 
 Coming you drown all thoughts of you away; 
 
 Lost in the light of love 
 
 At last, all starry longings fade away. 
 
 Ill 
 
 AT the breast beloved 
 All things in the end 
 
 Speak to us a language 
 We can comprehend. 
 
 At last the pain and terror 
 Of life and longing cease, 
 
 The evil and the error 
 Dwindle into peace.
 
 123 
 All the joy of living, 
 
 The mystery of breath, 
 Stoop to us like angels 
 
 And the face of Death. 
 
 IV 
 
 WHEN flushed and disheveled in your arms I lie 
 In the hush of death, as once in the hush of love, 
 
 No pity my lips would crave of yours as they die 
 Give me the old, sweet, wanton touch of their love! 
 
 ALL your life's adventure 
 Joy and hate and love, 
 
 Are but moving shadows, 
 Hints of the Above. 
 
 But as signs to guide you 
 Onward toward the goal, 
 
 All the outer actions 
 Whirled before the soul. 
 
 All that you have suffered, 
 All that you have gained, 
 
 Are as symbols sent you 
 From the Unattained.
 
 124 
 
 Friend, and foe, and lover 
 
 Lying at your heart, 
 Speak to you the message, 
 
 Greet you, and depart. 
 
 Still the Never-changing, 
 Still the most Supreme 
 
 Sends you them as prophets, 
 Voices in a dream. 
 
 VI 
 
 I HAVE found peace at last, 
 Not in the desert wide, 
 
 Nor on the hills of dream 
 With Ecstasy to bride. 
 
 But peace within your arms, 
 When all is said and done, 
 
 When Beauty's hands are folded 
 And the race of Joy is run. 
 
 VII 
 
 FROM the most beloved 
 
 All things take their worth, 
 Sun and moon, and flowers 
 
 In the fields of earth,
 
 125 
 
 The morning and the evening, 
 
 And the starry way; 
 That they both may have her 
 
 Night gives place to day. 
 
 She is all the freshness 
 
 That makes the morning young, 
 She, herself, the poem is 
 
 That back to her is sung, 
 
 She, herself, the bounty 
 
 That dies for her and lives: 
 She is the beloved, 
 
 She, the love that gives ! 
 
 VIII 
 
 As a fallen angel, banished 
 
 From some paradise, might yearn 
 
 For return, ah, most beloved, 
 To yourself I seek return ! 
 
 To the woman's heart forever, 
 Where we all at first had rest, 
 
 Love leads back the soul forever 
 Through the most beloved breast.
 
 UN 
 
 IX 
 
 LIKS a forest is your being, 
 Virginal, and vast within, 
 
 Through the secrets of her shadow 
 Difficult it is to win. 
 
 To the inmost core of silence, 
 
 Beautiful and undented. 
 Inarticulate with mystery, 
 
 Most elusire, shy, and wild. 
 
 To the stranger on her borders 
 The deep hush by night and day 
 
 Is a terror to repel him; 
 
 But who once has found the way, 
 
 Wholly of all else forgetful 
 In the arches of her knre, 
 
 Only hears the great winds moaning 
 Erer through the houghs above. 
 
 As natural as breathing 
 It is to love you, sweet, 
 
 Familiar as tike morning, 
 Or tike flowers at our feet
 
 127 
 
 a* the air, forever 
 Drawn in and oat with pain, 
 
 1 let you go forever 
 
 To take you back again! 
 
 XI 
 
 WHEK for the last time at jour breast 
 
 My heart has lain, 
 When the days of the great delight are orer, 
 
 The days of pain, 
 
 When the old rapture, like the Spring, 
 
 For the last time 
 Has left as, the wild will and wanton joy 
 
 Of hearts that rhyme; 
 
 Ah though no more, as in nights before 
 
 With the stars above, 
 Our hearts may meet with the old beat 
 
 Of life and love, 
 
 I will torn to yon, as the long light that 
 
 From the sunset with a sigh! 
 O most beloved, as the long light that tarns 
 
 Homeward, before he die!
 
 128 
 
 XII 
 
 THE lips you lean to in loving, 
 And the heart you bend above, 
 
 Are but as symbols sent you 
 Of the eternal Love. 
 
 XIII 
 
 O WHEN at last in the silence, 
 Breathless, and face to face, 
 
 When our two pulses kindle 
 Along the fiery race 
 
 Fear, ignorance, and sorrow 
 Fall like a veil away; 
 
 Again life's infinite kindness 
 Dawns on me like the day ! 
 
 Glorious, actual, holy, 
 
 Of all mean fears bereaved, 
 
 And simple as the sunlight 
 But hard to be believed ! 
 
 XIV 
 
 STILL the most beloved 
 
 Comes from the Unknown 
 
 With a higher message 
 Than herself alone.
 
 129 
 From Beyond they sent her 
 
 To your heart, to tell 
 Something of the secret, 
 
 She, a parable. 
 
 In the midnight silence 
 
 Of the summer night 
 When the world is sleeping 
 
 And the stars are bright, 
 
 For a little hour 
 
 At your heart alone 
 She repeats the message 
 
 Greets you, and is gone. 
 
 XV 
 
 EVER again we turn, 
 
 Like banished men and banned, 
 Back to the land of love 
 
 Back to the mother land. 
 
 XVI 
 
 To live, to breathe, to love, 
 Is a miracle strange and good, 
 
 Familiar as the sunlight, 
 But not to be understood.
 
 130 
 
 I cannot understand it, 
 
 Though I touch your hand, 
 Though at your heart I lie 
 I cannot understand. 
 
 XVII 
 
 IN the moment of death, as in a dream, 
 Bow down your heart upon me from above, 
 
 Your lips as you used to do ; 
 That the moment of death may seem 
 
 To come, even as once the moment of love, 
 From you, dear, at least from you ! 
 
 XVIII 
 
 To bring you the secret of beauty 
 The beloved comes from afar, 
 
 Her love falls into your heart 
 Like the light of the evening-star. 
 
 More than herself she brings you, 
 A symbol, a breath from beyond, 
 
 A message heard of the secret 
 
 That broods in the most Profound.
 
 131 
 
 O in the night, in the night, 
 
 Lying without a word 
 Heart against silent heart, 
 
 How many a time is it heard ! 
 
 XIX 
 
 MANIFOLD is my love 
 Beyond all other souls, 
 
 The immortal flame she wakes, 
 The weariness controls; 
 
 Like Music she arouses, 
 Like Silence she consoles. 
 
 XX 
 
 IN the self beloved 
 
 Song and speech at last 
 
 Close with tired longing, 
 All their sorrows passed. 
 
 Weariness seraphic 
 Of supreme release 
 
 Folds them into silence 
 And eternal peace.
 
 132 
 
 Gained the utmost harbor 
 
 And the farthest goal, 
 Life and death and duty 
 
 Dawn upon the soul, 
 
 As on seas at sunset, 
 
 Stormed from shore to shore, 
 
 The effortless, high Beauties 
 Rise forevermore.
 
 IX 
 
 TALISMANS: SECRETS AND 
 DELIVERANCES 
 
 "/ am a kind of parrot what the Eternal says, I, 
 stammering, say again."
 
 135 
 
 LIFE burns us up like fire 
 And Song goes up in flame. 
 
 The body returns in ashes 
 To the ashes whence it came. 
 
 Out of things it rises, 
 
 And laughs, and loves, and sings; 
 Backward it subsides 
 
 Into the char of things. 
 
 Yet soars a voice above it 
 Love is holy and strong 
 
 The best of us forever 
 
 Escapes in Love and Song! 
 
 II 
 
 DAY with stormy love assails the heart of the Night, 
 So the loving heart storms the beloved heart; 
 
 But at dusk he surrenders patiently all his pain, 
 So to the loved one at last love gives his longing 
 away.
 
 136 
 
 III 
 
 WHY do I lift my voice 
 
 Drunken as though with wine? 
 
 Because I have discovered 
 That everything is divine. 
 
 What we seek, we find 
 Seem it or near, or far: 
 
 Because I have discovered 
 That what we seek, we are. 
 
 Joy and Beauty and Love 
 Never the heart may fly, 
 
 Whether it would, or no, 
 Whether it live, or die. 
 
 Though Beauty I follow all day, 
 Vainly, in fugitive gleams ; 
 
 Relaxed at night and at rest, 
 I sink to Beauty in dreams. 
 
 Though seeking Love we lose it 
 And inwardly wound the breast ; 
 
 Defeated at last and dumb 
 
 On the bosom of Love we rest. 
 
 The high, the effortless Beauties 
 Are over us and beneath, 
 
 We rise to them through life, 
 Or sink to them through death.
 
 137 
 IV 
 
 Now the immortal peacock 
 
 Above our dreaming heads 
 The star-eyed, veering train 
 
 Of sumptuous darkness spreads. 
 
 Now a foamed wake in heaven 
 
 The sun's keel leaves behind 
 Of stars, and phosphorous splendors, 
 
 And memories in the mind. 
 
 WHAT birth with slow labor 
 Makes way in the breast 
 
 Of the ominous sunset, 
 The wrath of the west! 
 
 On the borders of twilight, 
 The cloud-wrack afar, 
 
 Black hangs the storm; 
 Breathless, a star 
 
 Released slips aloft: 
 
 O a soul through the veil 
 Newly passed, a new soul 
 
 Hail! Hail!
 
 138 
 
 VI 
 
 THE insolent lips of the East, 
 Luxuriant and proud, 
 
 Leaned over the shroud of Song 
 Song arose from his shroud, 
 
 Lured by the lithe and laughing 
 Sweet mouth that o'er him bent, 
 
 The insolent and seductive 
 Lips of the Orient. 
 
 VII 
 
 SUNRISE cries out to Day and Morning murmurs to 
 
 Noon, 
 
 "O to be wearied out at the beloved lips !" 
 "Blessed from her is the pain, and the weariness from 
 
 her 
 
 Dearer than all glad things," Twilight whispers 
 to Night. 
 
 VIII 
 
 THE beloved about herself 
 Creates new loveliness, 
 
 Her being overflows 
 
 Into beauty for sheer excess.
 
 139 
 As a flower her delicate perfume, 
 
 Her loveliness sets free 
 All loveliness around her 
 
 Through the gates of ecstasy. 
 
 Song and life and courage, 
 
 And all glad things that are, 
 Kindle about her beauty, 
 
 As the light about a star. 
 
 IX 
 
 ALL your love is a prophet 
 Of what you yet shall be, 
 
 A hint to your spirit, a summons 
 Out of Eternity. 
 
 "WHERE is the heart of hell? 
 
 What is heaven, and where?' 
 He who loves in hell 
 
 Already heaven is there. 
 
 "Yet God I cannot love ! 
 
 Weak are the eyes and dim- 
 Love whatever you will 
 
 And you are loving Him.
 
 140 
 
 XI 
 
 As a pool repeats in shadow 
 
 The bright shapes upon the shore 
 
 For sheer love, as rhyme forever 
 
 The sweet rhyme that went before; 
 
 As a mother in her children 
 Memories of her lover's face 
 
 Echoes, for sheer love, the beauty, 
 Mingled, of their first embrace; 
 
 Look, and in my song reflected 
 
 See yourself forevermore, 
 In my soul's first child the traces 
 
 Of the life your beauty bore ! 
 
 XII 
 
 WHEREVER the spirit moves, 
 
 Or sorrowful, or strong, 
 Through the cycles of life and death, 
 
 The myriad years along, 
 A foaming wake she leaves 
 
 Behind her of bright Song.
 
 141 
 XIII 
 
 LONGING is beauty unattained, 
 
 Beauty that strains and strives to be, 
 
 Slowly she climbs through starry pain 
 To Beauty's calm serenity. 
 
 The lover through the beloved self, 
 
 The flower that bursts toward the light above, 
 Toward Beauty through dim sorrow grope, 
 
 Through loving, and the ways of love. 
 
 Carven in stone, or veiled in sound, 
 
 The one deep longing of the soul, 
 Or flowering slowly into speech, 
 
 Moves ever upward toward one goal. 
 
 There where all love is laid at rest, 
 
 There where all songs and ardors cease, 
 
 Longing is lost in the beloved, 
 
 And beauty's thirst in Beauty's peace. 
 
 XIV 
 
 LIFE banishes me from Beauty 
 A little here beneath, 
 
 A little, but not long: 
 I return through Love,
 
 142 
 
 I return through Death, 
 Backward with each breath 
 I return through Song. 
 
 XV 
 
 Two splendors are there the meanest soul 
 May never escape, or love, or loth 
 
 Love that is holy and Death that is holy: 
 Thank God on your knees for both. 
 
 The beauties supreme are inevitable; 
 
 Not Death may you fly on the farthest star, 
 Nor Love, though you wander the universe, 
 
 World by dim world, afar. 
 
 XVI 
 
 DARKNESS that dies that Day may live, and Daylight 
 that slowly, 
 
 Tenderly, dies away at the dear touch of Dusk, 
 Lovers insatiable, each at the breast of the other 
 
 Ever again is slain, ever again reborn.
 
 143 
 XVII 
 
 As far as heaven from earth, 
 
 As far as the east from the west, 
 
 So far is the breast that loves 
 From the beloved breast. 
 
 For to be loved is well, 
 
 But blessed it is to love; 
 Earth it is that receives, 
 
 Heaven showers it from above. 
 
 XVIII 
 
 IN the universe about us, 
 
 Around us on each side, 
 Into Beauty we step, 
 
 Whichever way we stride. 
 
 At the extreme of sorrow 
 
 Brood her ecstasies, 
 And at the heart of rapture 
 
 The thrilling sorrow lies. 
 
 Whatever direction you follow, 
 
 Pursued to the end, at last 
 To the marge you come of the boundless 
 
 Encircling Beauty and vast.
 
 144 
 
 Through love, or wine, or music, 
 
 Flung wide for a flash the door, 
 By the ecstasy you are blinded 
 That is 'round you evermore. 
 
 It is in you and about you, 
 Dig downwards, or ascend, 
 
 Before you at the beginning, 
 And after you at the end. 
 
 XIX 
 
 LOVE, like an aura, clings about the beloved, 
 Love, like a cloud, arises from the beloved, 
 
 And sheds herself back on her source in song, 
 
 Back on her source in a shower of singing rain. 
 
 XX 
 
 DEATH cleanses us from life 
 And bathes the single soul 
 
 White of her separate self, 
 
 Drenched in the quickening Whole. 
 
 Then, generous at last, 
 
 We lose ourselves for the sake 
 
 Of lending life to all , 
 In others we awake.
 
 145 
 
 And yet as here, so there 
 
 In the realms beyond the eye, 
 In what we have wholly loved 
 
 We live, and cannot die. 
 
 Though yourself be destroyed, 
 
 As much as you loved so much 
 Your self shall be again: 
 
 Beauty has need of such. 
 
 XXI 
 
 THE world would prison us in : only the heart beloved, 
 Liberal, glad, and well, opens the arms of joy. 
 
 XXII 
 
 BEAUTY, so old and familiar, 
 Comes still with a vast surprise; 
 
 Strange seem ever the roses 
 
 And you to the sight of mine eyes. 
 
 XXIII 
 
 IT is ever Spring among the stars 
 That flower always in soft heaven, 
 
 Nor winter folds up with the flowers 
 The wide eyes of the starry Seven.
 
 146 
 
 Yet even them the quiet hand 
 
 Of day folds up in heaven above; 
 But death, nor winter, night, nor day, 
 
 The strange and starry eyes of Love. 
 
 XXIV 
 
 LIVE your life to the full, 
 The cup of existence drain 
 
 Deep to the very dregs, 
 Joy and sorrow and pain ! 
 
 And shed your spirit freely 
 
 Through love and song and deeds,- 
 So, bounteous, gladly giving, 
 
 Deathward the spirit bleeds. 
 
 XXV 
 
 WHEN the primitive bounty 
 
 And kindness enfold it, 
 When the lips of Love touch, 
 
 And the arms of Love hold it, 
 The soul knows at last 
 
 What the ages have told it.
 
 147 
 XXVI 
 
 MAN'S desire for Beauty, 
 
 The beautiful body and face, 
 
 Is the longing of Life to be born 
 Again from some beautiful place. 
 
 Beauty is vital and holy, 
 By secret and steady laws 
 
 Unto herself the future 
 
 Life of the world she draws. 
 
 The eternal and uncreated 
 Progressive Vigors to-be 
 
 Cluster about her being 
 
 To quicken and set them free. 
 
 And therefore the challenge of Love 
 
 Is incontrovertible still, 
 Who bears in her rhythmical body 
 
 The forward and vigorous will. 
 
 XXVII 
 
 "THE light is so beautiful let her go naked," said God. 
 
 But the earth in terror bound her, 
 And, afraid of her naked loveliness, the robe 
 
 Of colors laid around her.
 
 148 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 LOVE and Beauty encompass you 
 
 'Round about forevermore, 
 Life is but their dwelling-place, 
 
 And death to them is but the door. 
 
 Nor can you escape them though you would, 
 Yea be your spirit ever so fleet, 
 
 Though through the darkest door she run, 
 More swiftly after follow the feet. 
 
 Though from Love you turn away, 
 
 To the ends of the earth will follow Love, 
 
 Though from Beauty you hide your eyes, 
 She bends to lift you from above. 
 
 Just, or unjust, to them you sink 
 At night in dreams upon your bed, 
 
 Over you with the stars they rise, 
 
 And reach beneath you where you tread. 
 
 XXIX 
 
 THINK you that any Fire 
 
 Is lost with the ebbing flame ! 
 
 To the choral, clustering Radiance 
 It ebbs, from whence it came.
 
 149 
 Part you are of the Beauty 
 
 No single death may smother, 
 Put out in one place, 
 
 You leap up in another. 
 
 XXX 
 
 A CHILD is a living love-song, 
 The poem, ecstatic and bright, 
 
 Of the rapture of man and woman, 
 The memory of their delight: 
 
 The voice of their blended longing, 
 In his loveliness laid at rest, 
 
 Made one at last in his bosom, 
 
 And slain in the peace of his breast. 
 
 XXXI 
 
 WHENEVER two lovers meet 
 A new star in heaven is lit 
 
 Heaven is the banner of love, 
 And night the memory of it. 
 
 The joyous embrace of love 
 
 Calls a new soul from its sphere; 
 At the music of two hearts beating 
 
 God leans down to hear.
 
 150 
 
 XXXII 
 
 You must find an angel 
 To enter Paradise: 
 
 Heaven is only seen 
 Through another's eyes. 
 
 'Tis another bosom 
 
 Holds the key thereof. 
 
 Through the hearts that love us 
 Alone we enter Love. 
 
 XXXIII 
 
 THOUGH the source of life and the secret 
 Be found at last at her lips, 
 
 Not wholly the star of longing 
 The beloved brows eclipse. 
 
 Even against her bosom, 
 
 Even at the heart most dear, 
 
 There cries a voice in the midnight, 
 "Beyond , it is not here !" 
 
 O the veil that sunders spirits, 
 The secret not to be known ! 
 
 Lonely at her breast, 
 Even in the end alone,
 
 151 
 
 Breast to breast to the stars, 
 
 Breast to breast in the dawn, 
 Baffled returns the soul 
 
 Into herself withdrawn. 
 
 XXXIV 
 
 LIQUID is the west, 
 
 Cold, crossed with cloudy veins, 
 Widened, lucid with light , 
 
 Where the clear sunset wanes. 
 
 So, too, the spirit widens 
 
 When the long day makes end 
 
 Of love; a myriad stars 
 And memories reascend. 
 
 XXXV 
 
 "SWEET, I love you," the Dawn cries to the heart of 
 
 Dusk. 
 Noon with, "I love you, I love you," kisses Morning 
 
 away. 
 
 Wearily Dusk to Darkness whispers, "I love, I love," 
 Till with a cry, "O, I love you!" Twilight flows 
 into Night.
 
 152 
 
 XXXVI 
 
 PRESS through joy and pain, 
 Press with every breath 
 
 To new forms beyond. 
 
 Press through life and death ! 
 
 Onward, ever on, 
 
 New life, new love to find 
 Perish, and become, 
 
 And leave the corpse behind ! 
 
 XXXVII 
 
 BEAUTY alone of all 
 
 Is effortless, free from toil, 
 
 If starry she rise in heaven, 
 Or flowering from the soil. 
 
 No labor of yours may attain her, 
 
 Be it so dutiful; 
 Trusting to the Spring, 
 
 The roses are beautiful. 
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 ALL things make way for the soul 
 To clear her flight through the Vast, 
 
 And fall from her naked joy, 
 Even the body at last.
 
 153 
 XXXIX 
 
 PAST wood and waste and valley, 
 
 Over mountain and wave, 
 Song returns to your breast, 
 
 His cradle and his grave. 
 
 Run the completed circuit, 
 
 The orbit of Beauty run, 
 Fulfilled the perfect circle 
 
 Through the many back to one, 
 
 To his sunset in your bosom 
 
 Backward his voices throng, 
 To the wellhead of all Beauty, 
 
 The sunrise of all Song. 
 
 XL 
 
 EVEN as Day to Sunrise, even as Dusk to Darkness 
 Runs to kiss it with love and jubilation of joy, 
 
 Sweet, at the touch of your lips, vehemently affirming 
 So my love to your love runs, answering "Yes !" 
 
 XLI 
 
 IN the west of the heaven's rim 
 The sunset flowers bright , 
 
 The reflection of all men's love 
 Makes there a glowing light.
 
 154 
 
 O Life and Death are joyous! 
 
 Life and Death are high ! 
 Let me love and live , 
 
 Let me love and die: 
 
 But to new service of you, 
 New love in the worlds afar, 
 
 Death sets free the soul, 
 As dusk the evening-star.
 
 X 
 
 LOCKS OF THE WORD-BRIDE 
 
 "No one has unveiled thoughts like Hafiz, since the 
 locks of the Word-bride were first curled." 
 
 HAFIZ.
 
 157 
 
 MY soul released from my body 
 And the panic of things that are, 
 
 In my song, my very spirit, 
 Mounts heavenward like a star. 
 
 II 
 
 BECAUSE in the hour of the morning-star 
 
 I needs must lie awake, 
 I take the hour of the morning-star 
 
 To sing in, for her sake. 
 
 Then, when the brows of the dawn are pale 
 And the mouth of the morning meek, 
 
 The young day-star hangs sweetly there, 
 Like the mole upon her cheek. 
 
 In the half-light, 'twixt night and light, 
 These dreams of her I make, 
 
 Ere all the heaven of all the light 
 Kiss all my love awake.
 
 158 
 
 III 
 
 OF one attire about the Bride, 
 The white, veiled Bride of Song, 
 
 Sweet rhymes come clustering side by side, 
 Like virgins in a throng. 
 
 IV 
 
 SONG but catches in glimpses 
 
 What fain she would understand 
 A wink of the eyelids of Beauty, 
 
 A flash of the wave of her hand. 
 
 V 
 
 YOUR soul was like a big and heavy cloud, 
 Radiant with lightnings of extreme delight, 
 
 That died to shed itself on us in song, 
 
 Falling like healing rain from heaven's height. 
 
 Your soul was like a big and brimming cloud, 
 
 Radiant with lightnings, dark with unshed showers, 
 
 That died to shed itself in healing song, 
 
 Soft as soft rain, upon love's fading flowers.
 
 159 
 
 Out of the cloud of your strength you shed your song 
 With lifted lightnings of extreme delight, 
 
 Like healing rain upon us, that at dusk 
 
 Falls soft and silently from heaven's height. 
 
 VI 
 
 LOVE is a fallen angel 
 
 That seeks to atone for his wrong, 
 And storm his original heaven, 
 
 Your heart , in a shower of song. 
 
 VII 
 
 IN my song my love is prisoned 
 
 As a bird within a cage. 
 Your lips only may unlock him 
 
 From the prison of the page. 
 
 If you hear within his singing, 
 With your lips you may unbar 
 
 The gold gate that shines between you, 
 As the twilight frees her star 
 
 That the day but reimprisons: 
 He will seek another cage, 
 
 In your heart, dear, in your breast, dear, 
 Fluttering upward from the page.
 
 160 
 
 VIII 
 
 LIKE a bridal-chamber darkened 
 In the noon-tide blaze of day, 
 
 My mind, where the white dreams mingle, 
 Shuts the whole world away. 
 
 IX 
 
 NOT with my body shall I die, 
 But to new fields withdrawn 
 
 Of love and singing, lost I move 
 Beyond the fields of dawn, 
 
 Beyond the borderland of twilight, 
 Beyond the sunset's breath 
 
 The violet reach from heaven to heaven, 
 In the sweet sea of death. 
 
 Look >from the evening's lucid forehead, 
 The wide, clear wastes afar, 
 
 I rise, I shine, I beam upon you, 
 Seraphical, a star ! 
 
 X 
 
 IN the cold, white sleep of Beauty 
 Frozen, your thought must stand 
 
 Would it escape Corruption 
 And the dim Hunger's hand.
 
 161 
 XI 
 
 LOOK in my songs and you shall find her, 
 Though from my lips a name so dear 
 
 Be uttered never, lost forever , 
 
 Lean with your heart, and listen here. 
 
 For words too sweet, for speech too holy 
 
 Lean to my song and listen well; 
 Here as the heart's blood in the heart-beat, 
 
 Here as the sea's self in the shell, 
 
 Though from my loving vanished, vanished, 
 Deep in my song it slumbers, deep, 
 
 Like the one thought, all day close-guarded, 
 Betrayed by passionate lips in sleep. 
 
 XII 
 
 My love to me is a parable 
 
 On earth, of heavenly things 
 
 And unto her in parables 
 
 My mouth in the morning sings. 
 
 XIII 
 
 As a chemist, by the inward 
 
 Motion of some thought's endeavor, 
 
 Frees the outer force that carries 
 All men on with it forever;
 
 162 
 
 In your song set free some secret 
 
 Of the soul, whose liberation 
 Shoots wide rays of love around it, 
 
 Vibrant through the whole Creation. 
 
 In a single word dynamic 
 
 Lurks more strength than all earth's horses 
 Lashed, to bear all men together 
 
 On to the eternal Sources. 
 
 XIV 
 
 To the source of all singing 
 My memories throng, 
 
 My lips to your lips 
 To fetch a new song. 
 
 XV 
 
 IF too freely of Love 
 
 Free songs I have sung you say- 
 Will you contemn it a fault 
 
 And turn your face away? 
 
 Will you contemn it a fault 
 And hold the singing a sin? 
 
 Not as I would I sang, 
 But as the Angel within.
 
 163 
 Holy is he, but words 
 
 Are weak for his loveliness: 
 Then the singer you may reprove, 
 
 But the singing you cannot repress. 
 
 But if the Angel himself 
 
 You darken and despise, 
 He will stab you dead with love 
 
 And the sweetness of his eyes ! 
 
 XVI 
 
 LEAN with your spirit, and listen 
 To my spirit here moving along , 
 
 The forward step of her rapture 
 In the stride of ecstatical Song! 
 
 XVII 
 
 AH beloved, the songs that flourished 
 
 Flowerlike, when plucked and pressed 
 
 Close against your breathing bosom, 
 Faint, and perish like the rest. 
 
 Though your tears of tender pity 
 
 Fall upon them like the dew, 
 At the source of love Love trembles, 
 
 Fainting like the flowers, too.
 
 164 
 
 XVIII 
 
 ON the dim border-lands of speech 
 And silence melting each in each 
 
 Life sinks with shuddering breath 
 
 O 
 
 Already about the heart there steals 
 The inarticulacy that seals 
 The hush of love and death. 
 
 In the rapture of Beauty beyond reach, 
 The immortal silence beyond speech, 
 
 Song, at the burning core 
 Of the heart of Love where love is dumb, 
 At the source of Song where no songs come, 
 
 Closes forevermore. 
 
 XIX 
 
 ON the last marge of Love's advance 
 In this song I dance a dance ! 
 
 Fulfilled of the last ecstasy, 
 Love at last has set me free. 
 
 Love lures me on along the wind, 
 Life and death I leave behind. 
 
 I press into the core of things 
 Beyond the sunset's folded wings.
 
 165 
 
 I whirl my hair in the sunset cloud. 
 I clap my hands ! I shout aloud ! 
 
 the last rapture baffles speech, 
 It bears me on beyond your reach ! 
 
 1 love you, and I greet you here. 
 I whirl! I fade! I disappear! 
 
 XX 
 
 O ALL sweet women the whole world over, 
 Listen and lean to the songs I sing 
 
 Of the woman I love ! Let every lover 
 The whole world over answer and sing ! 
 
 XXI 
 
 LET me press into the utmost 
 
 Marge of mysteries that bound me 
 
 Make wide spaces clear for breathing 
 In the universe around me. 
 
 More as knowledge is made way for, 
 Wide the way for light and clearer 
 
 Love and courage wake forever 
 As the Actual draws nearer.
 
 166 
 
 As a horseman in the midnight 
 
 Phantoms 'tis we fear behind us ; 
 Truth reveals forever beauty , 
 And the Actual shall unbind us. 
 
 Till I slip the robe of matter, 
 Naked, buoyant, up the ocean 
 
 Of clear beauty I am lifted, 
 
 Without magic, without motion; 
 
 Till I float amid the regions 
 
 Of the Endless, till I follow 
 Upward with harmonious motion 
 
 Through the heights and heavens hollow. 
 
 O the ecstasy, the rapture 
 
 Baffles speech! I float above you 
 
 Lost; I whirl, I fade, I flicker, 
 
 Showering back a last, "I love you !" 
 
 XXII 
 
 I SHAKE my hair in the wind of morning 
 
 For the joy within me that knows no bounds, 
 
 I echo backward the vibrant beauty 
 
 Wherewith heaven's hollow lute resounds.
 
 167 
 
 I shed my song on the feet of all men, 
 On the feet of all shed out like wine, 
 
 On the whole and the hurt I shed my bounty, 
 The beauty within me that is not mine. 
 
 Turn not away from my song, nor scorn me, 
 Who bear the secret that holds the sky 
 
 And the stars together, but know within me 
 There speaks another more wise than I. 
 
 Nor spurn me here from your heart, to hate me ! 
 
 Yet hate me here if you will not so 
 Myself you hate, but the Love within me 
 
 That loves you, whether you would or no. 
 
 Here love returns with love to the lover, 
 
 And beauty unto the heart thereof, 
 And hatred unto the heart of the hater, 
 
 Whether he would or no, with love !
 
 OTHER POEMS
 
 171 
 
 RETURN TO NEW YORK 
 
 FAR and free o'er the lifting sea, the lapsing wastes 
 and the waves that roam, 
 
 Hour by hour with sleepless power the keel has fur- 
 rowed the soft, sad foam ; 
 
 Slowly now, with steadier prow, she steals through the 
 dim gray fog-banks home. 
 
 Faint and far from across the bar the first lines burn 
 of the cloudy day, 
 
 From whistle and horn in the twilit morn low mur- 
 murs are wafted across the bay. 
 
 The fleet, sweet swing of the sea-bird's wing beats 
 down the darkness and dies away. 
 
 Dawn, and lo, as the drifted snow that melts from 
 the sun on a mountain height, 
 
 As the veils from a bride that fall and divide, the fog- 
 veils sunder and leave in sight, 
 
 Like Venice, dim on the water's rim, the city, my 
 mother, bared and bright.
 
 172 
 
 In the first hours her stately towers and clustered 
 
 summits show faint and fair: 
 Mother, mother, to thee and none other the heart cries 
 
 out in the morning there! 
 Solemnly, slowly, the white mists wholly fade, and the 
 
 whole, sweet form lies bare. 
 
 Hail, all hail, with the dawn for veil, the sea for 
 
 throne, and the stars for crown ! 
 Mother, thy son, his journeying done, triumphantly 
 
 here at thine heart bows down; 
 Love that sings, on the sea-wind's wings runs on to 
 
 greet thee his very own. 
 
 DUSK 
 
 Now from the sea-deep, cloudless rifts of blue, 
 Like big, reproachful eyes brimming with tears, 
 
 The liquid stars of heaven peering through 
 Blink drowsily into the gulf of years. 
 
 Under the shimmering reaches waste and wide 
 The dizzy soul reels dreamingly along, 
 
 A somber breath blows through the heavy Void 
 Twilight and stars and drunkenness of song. 
 
 Above the peacock-colored twilight's green, 
 
 Cloud beyond cloud, the immortal Beauty broods 
 
 Amid the radiant rapture and serene 
 Of the ethereal, starry solitudes.
 
 173 
 Child; lift thy voice to Her, and let thine heart 
 
 Pour its desire before Her shining throne, 
 Where in the holy heaven She sits apart 
 
 Above the dust and din of worlds unknown. 
 
 Sing fill thy bosom with the starry wine, 
 Forget thyself in the huge self of Night; 
 
 So shall Her voice descending into thine 
 Make thee afraid of thine own vast delight. 
 
 Till thou art drunk with the divine and deathless 
 And swallowed up amid the radiant throng 
 
 And all the choirs of heaven within thee breathless 
 Shall drown thee in the depths of thine own song ! 
 
 SONG 
 
 OUT of my sorrow I have made this song, 
 
 To comfort whom it will : 
 She whom I love answered my love with hate, 
 
 But love she could not kill. 
 
 And now I know, I sing it ten times over; 
 
 Though to be loved be well, 
 More gladness than looks down with Hate from heaven 
 
 Looks up with Love from hell !
 
 174 
 
 TOLSTOI 
 
 As water unto water calls and cries 
 
 Over the wide wastes and the fields of sea, 
 As the long lapsing floors that tremulously 
 
 From land-line unto land-line fall and rise, 
 
 So the dark ocean of thought's eternities 
 Rolls round the soul, that ever longs to see 
 Beyond the circle of flat Immensity, 
 
 From star to opposite star of the dumb skies. 
 
 No sound of horn, or gong, or whistle crying 
 On the untrodden spaces sounds afar, 
 
 Around all men the immeasurate waters roll; 
 Yet there be some who wind and wave defying, 
 
 Battling the brine, toward the new worlds that are 
 Jut forth like crags, the headlands of the soul. 
 
 TO THE VIRGIN 
 
 O THOU fairest of women, thou loveliest among earth's 
 
 daughters ! 
 
 Thy hair lies simple and low 
 Over thy sad brows and lowly, 
 Thy mouth is pallid for pride, yea, and thine eyes 
 
 are holy: 
 
 Over their shadows move 
 The wings of the spirit of Love,
 
 175 
 As the spirit of God first brooded over the face of the 
 
 waters, 
 
 Solemnly, long ago. 
 
 O thou fairest of women, thou loveliest among earth's 
 daughters ! 
 
 PALINGENESIS 
 
 WHEN the galley of my soul went out on the unknown 
 
 seas 
 
 I revisited in a dream all the old things I had known, 
 Moving on the moving waters that moved about me 
 
 alone 
 With a motion other than about the Orkneys or the 
 
 Hebrides, 
 With a sound of the silence of the moving seas. 
 
 And out of the tangle of old loves, old dreams, and 
 
 old faces, 
 And old pangs, out of the earthly days that had 
 
 been, 
 
 Some faint memories stirred me calling from within, 
 And the sound of the rustling sea beating upon the 
 
 old places, 
 With a softly shifting sound over the deep spaces. 
 
 And the sound of the moving of the waters was un- 
 broken by any tears, 
 Neither was there any laughter within the Void,
 
 176 
 
 But the cold heavens lay above me, starry and wide; 
 And I remembered the passionate eyes and arms of the 
 
 old years, 
 And the fierce subtlety of their pains and their fears. 
 
 And I revisited the sunset islands that I had lost at 
 
 birth 
 And the strange face that had lured me beyond the 
 
 seas; 
 And when I had seen I set sail with a favoring 
 
 breeze. 
 I turned. Body and spirit kissed. I shouted with 
 
 mirth, 
 "I am part of thee, I am part of thee, O earth!" 
 
 RETURN 
 
 'TWAS May; a cock from the warm hill-side crowing 
 Shattered the morning like a crystal glass, 
 A soft, wet wind bowed down the meadow-grass, 
 
 Bearing faint sounds of toil and distant lowing, 
 
 When I, beside the river's swollen flowing, 
 With feet for two long weary years alas 
 Through these dear, homely haunts unwont to pass, 
 
 Over the lonely meadow-lands was going.
 
 177 
 O mother-land ! When once again I trod 
 
 Thy fields and felt thy warm winds over me, 
 First strode I forward buoyant as a god, 
 
 Drunken with thee and passionate love of thee; 
 Then sank I down humiliate to the sod, 
 
 Remembering all I had been and failed to be. 
 
 II 
 
 Much had I wasted many fated hours, 
 
 Homesick and heavy homeward I returned, 
 About me all the regardless beauty burned 
 
 Of May-time in the blossoms and the bowers; 
 
 The mother-land with all her towns and towers 
 Recked not of me, nor greeted me, nor spurned, 
 Not the compassionate heart of Spring-time yearned 
 
 Downward to me with all her roots and flowers. 
 
 While silent in a fierce and hopeless mood 
 I hid my warm face in the fallow earth, 
 
 Regardless Nature all about me stood, 
 
 Tremendous with her passion and her birth; 
 
 And from the meadow and the windy wood 
 
 Came sounds of mating and of singing mirth.
 
 178 
 
 TO THE DREAMERS 
 
 WHO from the noon-tide flame of living flies 
 To music and to poetry, which are 
 Moonlight reflected from the sun of life 
 The beautiful, pale moonlight that makes fair 
 All the sad ugliness and blaze of day ; 
 Let him take heed, lest in the sweet illusion 
 His will grow weak, and the cold loveliness, 
 Sleeping upon his forehead, make him mad. 
 
 EARLY APRIL 
 
 WITH memories and odors 
 The wind is warm and mild. 
 
 The earth is like a mother 
 
 Where leaps the unborn child. 
 
 The grackles flock returning 
 
 Like rain-clouds from the south, 
 
 And all the world lies yearning 
 Toward summer, mouth to mouth. 
 
 How soft the hills and hazy 
 Look through the open door. 
 
 The crocus shines, a virgin, 
 White from the grassy floor.
 
 179 
 
 The children whirl around in a ring 
 And laugh and sing, and dance and sing; 
 But the blackbird whistles clear, 
 
 O clear, 
 "The spring, the spring!" 
 
 DEPARTURE 
 
 Now your eyes are closed, your lips 
 Parted as in an indrawn breath, 
 
 The rapture of love upon your face 
 
 Has set the triumphant peace of death. 
 
 So shall you lie at last before 
 
 Ever again we two embrace; 
 I shall not look on you again, 
 
 Not even in death upon your face. 
 
 So shall you lie at last, at last, 
 When I am far away and fled 
 
 One moment, and forever we part , 
 Already I seem to see you dead. 
 
 Your bosom is like a moonlit sea, 
 
 So calm the heaving of your breath; 
 
 The rapture of love upon your face 
 
 Has set the triumphant peace of death.
 
 180 
 
 THE SAVIORS 
 
 WHEN from long wanderings in sensual joys, 
 
 Satiate, weary, we return, and fain, 
 
 How beam the high beauties of eternal Thought 
 
 To take us back again ! 
 
 Music and Song, with sweet disdain, 
 
 To the faithless and undeserving, 
 
 Equally to the good and the evil soul 
 
 Their regardless bounties roll: 
 
 Nor from the most obscene 
 
 Beethoven and Shelley hold back their splendors, 
 
 unswerving 
 From the high goal 
 
 Which ever they move upwards toward serene, 
 From the pinnacles beyond lust 
 Showering their glad indifference on the dust. 
 
 O the saviors ! 
 
 That from the pang of the flesh 
 
 Set free the soul, from the mesh 
 
 Of the ugly and the mean, 
 
 From the littleness of things and low behaviors; 
 
 How beautiful they are, 
 
 Irresistible to be loved ! 
 
 And the vast heart of the Sensual how obscene, 
 
 Cruel, not to be moved, 
 
 Wounding the soul with many a galling scar!
 
 181 
 
 Back to the sacred rest 
 
 Of the Beautiful we fly; O why did we leave her! 
 Till lifted upward slowly, 
 The beloved voices call: 
 Pierced with her faithlessness, like a sword to cleave 
 
 her, 
 
 With a shower of blinding tears the soul awakes, 
 And virgin after all 
 Sobs the soiled heart, and breaks 
 With passionate sorrow on the terrific breast. 
 
 Ah, though a thousand times we should betray them, 
 
 No sin of ours may stay them, 
 
 Our saviors, from their love; 
 
 Forward following their feet we move: 
 
 The blinding light of Beauty 
 
 Breaks dazzling on the soul but newly risen 
 
 Out of the sensual prison, 
 
 Weak, faint, and worn. 
 
 Love and the infinite sea of Joy and Duty 
 
 Opens before our eyes, 
 
 An ocean flooding to the eternities, 
 
 Inviolable and soundless, 
 
 Fresh as the Springtime, vigorous as the morn 
 
 And boundless: 
 
 Never satiating, never cloying, never 
 
 Weakening the soul, but still to new endeavor 
 
 Luring her onward out toward the Unknown forever.
 
 182 
 
 MID-OCEAN 
 
 HEAVEN'S ardent scope over the midnight sea 
 Bowed down with reverent stars from rim to rim, 
 Bowed slowly down with weight of solemn stars 
 From the crowded core to where the last, low wave 
 Washes her flames ! The while my soul within 
 Sits like a star, the central flame of All. 
 
 "MOTHER" 
 
 WHEN at your side a little child looks up, 
 
 Remembering whence it came, 
 Half-baffled and not knowing what it seeks, 
 
 It whispers the old name. 
 
 Not yet it guesses the more radiant joy 
 
 Whither its forces roll, 
 The later rapture and more breathless bliss 
 
 Of the united soul. 
 
 Yet homesick, banished from the sacred Source, 
 
 Some little memory 
 Moves on its spirit some ecstatic hint 
 
 Of the return to be. 
 
 The man shall seek it at another breast; 
 
 Still is the voice the same, 
 Love, Love O with what hearts we turn, 
 
 Remembering whence we came !
 
 183 
 SEA-VOYAGE 
 
 IN the embrace of Dawn, exuberant, fierce, and free, 
 The vast and virgin Deep sobs out for sheer delight. 
 
 Noon treads with ponderous strides on the Immensity. 
 Darkness from her throne leans down the lips of 
 night 
 
 To glut the sullen sadness of the immortal sea. 
 
 And like a mournful queen, with homage of the throng 
 All unappeased, engirdled with jewels row on row, 
 
 She sways, sceptered and robed, saluted with dim song, 
 Upon her rhythmic throne sullenly to and fro, 
 
 Cruel and discontent, disconsolate and strong. 
 
 Deep between the vistas of evening's twilit Deep 
 The forehead of dim heaven with many stars is 
 
 crowned, 
 The headland of the morning with cloud on cloud hangs 
 
 steep ; 
 
 The stately, somber waters flow silently around, 
 From morning into morning moving, from sleep to 
 sleep. 
 
 From morning into morning, far as the eye may scan, 
 The hungry, herded waves crowd the unending rim. 
 
 Under the huge arch of the infinite heaven's span 
 The sea-bird's weary flight beats down the darkness 
 dim. 
 
 Somberly on the Waste cries out the spirit of Man.
 
 184 
 
 Till the harbor entered and the long peace begun, 
 
 Quiet falls from heaven with the old calm at last. 
 The silence flows away in pulses one by one, 
 
 And the unmoving mainland looms shadowy and vast, 
 The ceaseless clamor ended and the long journey 
 done. 
 
 "ALAS, WHERE THOU ART" 
 
 ALAS, where thou art only there is love, 
 
 And where thou goest love with longing goes, 
 
 As moonlight with the moon in heaven above, 
 The perfume with the rose. 
 
 As murmuring boughs unto the wind that blows, 
 And moonlight to the moon that moves above, 
 
 As the sweet odor to the blowing rose, 
 So unto thee is love. 
 
 Come with thine eyes like stars in heaven above, 
 Come with thy face cool as the wind that blows, 
 
 Come to me with the perfume of sweet love, 
 O love, my moon, my rose! 
 
 "MUSIC IS HIS ROBE" 
 
 THE rhythm of the eternal silence, the voices 
 Intangibly interwoven together of all things 
 Lapsing and lifting, the oceanic Beauty 
 Whose silent waters fold forever flowing
 
 185 
 
 Our world of tumult, the voice of encircling Silence, 
 Music, for a fleet space, with ardor follows, 
 With friction of resonant strife sonorous forcing 
 From the deep bosom and heart with holy fingers 
 (That grasp into the sullen core of Silence) 
 Her rolling voice; with ardor of vibrant friction, 
 Till almost before the soul it shine and sparkle 
 Glistening hues. But the heart fails, the hand wearies, 
 Backward ebbs the stream to the boundless ocean, 
 And the continuous ecstasy to hold longer 
 Baffles the soul; radiance melts into darkness 
 Unto our eyes, and harmony into silence 
 Unto our ears : but underneath is radiance 
 Interminably proceeding, underneath Music, 
 Ere the first note it was, and forever after 
 Proceeds, when the last note has ceased to speak it , 
 Eternal Music, whereof each audible portion 
 Is but as the crest of a wave that foams for a moment 
 Upon the bosom of the unbounded ocean, 
 Or a remembered dream in a sleep enduring. 
 
 'Tis but a visible spot on the robe invisible 
 Of intervolvular harmonies, choral colors 
 Blended and multi-woven, dyed deep in purple, 
 Stained with the night and sumptuous with profusion 
 Of shadow and light , the very cloth and tissue 
 Which was, and is, and shall be 'round about us, 
 Within us and above us and beneath us 
 The breathing robe of Beauty worn by Creation.
 
 186 
 
 It is the magnificent garment of the Eternal, 
 
 Which, somberly and with undulous motion trailing, 
 
 Billows gigantically behind his footstep 
 
 Heard as of thunder, with ponderous stride and stately 
 
 Following as He draws it sadly sweeping 
 
 Ever around the dumb, waste capes of being, 
 
 With a vast sough and whisper oceanic, 
 
 Withdrawing, and withdrawing, and withdrawing. 
 
 The gorgeous hollow thereof is drenched with darkness, 
 
 Tragic with twilight, peacock-colored, spattered, 
 
 Solemn with vast excesses of waste shadow 
 
 And mournful grandeur of irridescent progressions, 
 
 Starriest tints, and cloudy courts of color, 
 
 Intricately coordinate. So veering 
 
 After the footfall of the high Eternal, 
 
 Slow pacing with pomp of terrifical rhythm forward, 
 
 Moves the starred train and canopy with a motion 
 
 Disconsolate, inconsolable with beauty, 
 
 Vastly disdainful through the Voids forever. 
 
 THE ANSWER 
 
 To all the questions of the sages, 
 
 "What must we do to live?" that cry, 
 With groan and travail of the ages 
 Creation makes but one reply: 
 
 "He that is brave alone may live." 
 This answer all the ages give.
 
 187 
 THE WINDS OF MARCH 
 
 MARCH is come with the firstling of joyous days 
 All in the strength of his heart, and the snows are 
 
 sad. 
 
 The slow, wet winds come warm from the meadow- 
 ways 
 Here, where the Spring is glad. 
 
 There was an hour for murmurs and for replies, 
 A little hour for sweet love to have his will, 
 
 A little hour there was for songs and sighs; 
 But here it is so still. 
 
 Ah that she would but come to me now for a space, 
 Ah that she would but come to me, now I am sad, 
 
 With the old, careless smile of her pale, pale face, 
 Here, where the Spring is glad ! 
 
 UNREST 
 
 I BEAR within me all the pain of earth, 
 And all the melancholy of her plains, 
 And all the longing of her lonely hills, 
 Sad songs and dreams that drift about the world 
 
 All these I bear, and ever my own mind 
 And the wide waste of uncreated thought 
 Spreads out before me like the universe, 
 Dark and chaotic, strewn with many stars.
 
 188 
 
 "O MEMORY, THOSE EYES" 
 
 O MEMORY, those eyes 
 That shine so gravely sad, 
 Across the irrevocable sea of things 
 Luring me home, 
 
 Little they may avail 
 Heart-breaking and austere 
 To lure my bark into the sunset waste 
 Of the dead Past! 
 
 That childhood-music blown 
 
 Along the horizon's rim, 
 
 Cloud beyond cloud and wave on wave afar, 
 
 Little avails. 
 
 Gone, gone, forever gone ! 
 
 O in the blind, immense 
 
 Universe, loud with warring worlds, thy 
 
 voice 
 O Love, how frail! 
 
 So poignant and so dear, 
 
 Lovable above all, 
 
 Breaking the heart for utter helplessness, 
 
 Breaking the heart!
 
 189 
 
 Yet even here I feel 
 
 A cry fierce and divine 
 
 Wrung from the heart of man, a bitter cry 
 
 Shaking the stars. 
 
 THE CLOSE OF MASS 
 
 THE holy candles fade and flare, 
 
 Where the slow priest with swaying tread 
 
 Moves, and the organ shudders there 
 And the dumb people bow the head: 
 The body of Christ is dead. 
 
 Through the long aisles and vaulted gloom 
 Groans the mute common heart of men, 
 
 Sullen and holy with its doom: 
 On every cross and wall again 
 A Christ is crowned of men. 
 
 The jewels and the tiara's rim 
 
 His carven forehead clasp and span, 
 But they have cramped and humbled Him 
 
 Into a God, who was a man , 
 
 The first since Time began. 
 
 His hands hang bleeding on the wall; 
 
 O the white loin-cloth streaked with red ! 
 O the pale body stripped and tall ! 
 
 Yet though you wail these words you said, 
 
 The body of Christ is dead.
 
 190 
 
 Weep and moan, weep and moan, 
 
 Body and soul are both of God. 
 Can you keep the soul when the flesh is gone? 
 
 Shall not the body through flower and clod 
 
 Strive sunward through the sod! 
 
 O common world, O world of men, 
 Have you no answer, are you dumb! 
 
 Who bore us Christ, and shall again 
 
 Bear us a Christ when the time is come, 
 Where is your voice, are you dumb ! 
 
 They crucified Him when He cried 
 
 And mocked Him standing underneath; 
 
 Shall they tear the son from the mother's side! 
 Shall they call Him God with profane breath ! 
 Shall they rob a man of death ! 
 
 They have crowned Him with a fire of light, 
 
 With all the heavens for His seat, 
 They have made Him awful with might of might: 
 
 Where are the man's eyes still and sweet? 
 
 Where are the tired feet? 
 
 The silence aches, but through the reeds 
 
 Of the organ, through choir and arches dim, 
 
 The echoing world grows loud, and pleads 
 With rough, hard hands and thorny diadem, 
 "Where is my Christ, what have you done to 
 Him?"
 
 191 
 
 SING first, and after break the heavy chain- 
 What once we sing we afterwards attain, 
 
 Nor seek without you for the inner light 
 Within you lies the fire and the might; 
 
 Rebuild it in yourself with fierce endeavor, 
 Build up a refuge in yourself forever ! 
 
 By the outer terrors baffled, but still glorious, 
 Into herself the soul returns victorious. 
 
 Baffled and wounded on the road she trod, 
 Up through herself the soul returns to God. 
 
 BENEDICTION 
 
 THE wave of morning rolling o'er the world, 
 Dawn, touching the lids of men awake, 
 
 Purge you, and pierce you daily with the will 
 To live and love and labor for their sake. 
 
 TO MARY 
 
 WITH a multitudinous sound of strings 
 
 And a flame of light, 
 
 With a clashing of spears and fierce unbearable things 
 
 He should have come in His might,
 
 192 
 
 With the uncrowning of many kings : 
 O watcher beside a manger, bow down thy face, cover 
 thy face in the night ! 
 
 There was none with Him, there was none like Him, 
 
 there was none before Him 
 That was so sweet; 
 They shall mock Him, they shall crucify Him, they 
 
 shall abhor Him, 
 They shall wound His feet. 
 They shall tear Him down, they shall call Him God, 
 
 they shall adore Him: 
 
 O mother beside a dead son, bow down thy face, cover 
 thy face in His winding-sheet ! 
 
 IN THE NIGHT 
 
 NEW loves and new faces 
 Have taken your place. 
 
 The years have veiled 
 The look of your face. 
 
 They lure me and draw me 
 Along the new way, 
 
 Glad faces and lovelier, 
 Laughing and gay.
 
 193 
 
 Till twilight descends 
 
 And the faces depart: 
 I lie alone 
 
 With the ghost at my heart. 
 
 In the night, in the night, 
 
 On my bosom I bear 
 The dear weary beauty, 
 
 The sleepless despair; 
 
 Here on my heart, 
 
 Here on my breast . 
 O my sorrow, my own, 
 
 I love you the best! 
 
 THE KEYS 
 
 IN the wide hollows of the east the light 
 And darkness are embracing. Sound is dead. 
 No leaf is stirred. Vast quietness is here, 
 The silence of the bridal-chamber, the peace, 
 When all the world is banished and forgot, 
 After long sorrow, after long disdain, 
 In the still mingling of two silent souls. 
 
 Around us lies the world of love and death, 
 Of bridal joy in the dim-lighted room 
 Weary of love, of white and breathless sleep
 
 194 
 
 In other chambers sickened with the air 
 
 Of flowers and one ever-patient form 
 
 Triumphing in repose , chambers of birth 
 
 And mingling cries and groanings . Even now 
 
 Strange men are weaving dreams of love or woe, 
 
 (On sea- washed islands and strange lands afar, 
 
 On distant capes and headlands of the world), 
 
 Music, or song, or colored memories, 
 
 Reflected moonlight from the sun of life; 
 
 And all mankind reechoes but one chord 
 
 Of love and birth and death: while spirits grave 
 
 In lonely meditation brood thereon, 
 
 And answering heads arise in every land, 
 
 Christs and Mohammeds, Buddhas "names that shine. 
 
 But at the core of All lurks one old pain, 
 
 The world-old hungering of woman and man, 
 
 The inevitable attraction old as Time 
 
 And stronger than all ages, even now, 
 
 Amid the horror of huge cities set, 
 
 They meet and sink, dragging each other down, 
 
 'Mid reeling sorrows to the dark abyss. 
 
 O look at me, we hold the ancient keys 
 Of love and life and death, we are the source 
 Of all of these; since first Creation dawned, 
 Since the first morning of the world, we two 
 Have longed to rush together and crush out 
 The pain of all within each other's arms !
 
 195 
 HYMN 
 
 O GLORIOUS Splendor and seraphic Might ! 
 
 How shall I praise Thee, or how worship Thee! 
 High God of dreadful holiness, Thy light 
 
 And breath are on the waters of the sea. 
 
 The brain of heaven with her nights and days 
 And thunders is for motions of Thy thought, 
 
 Wheeling along the everlasting ways 
 I cry to Thee, but Thou repliest not. 
 
 Oft have I covered Thee with bitter hate 
 And felt Thy lash upon me from above; 
 
 But anger fades before the face of Fate, 
 And holier than to hate it is to love. 
 
 And I shall love Thee with my very soul, 
 
 Forever, always, even to the tomb, 
 Yea, even though across my body roll 
 
 The whirl-wind of the chariot-wheels of Doom. 
 
 TWILIGHT IN MID-OCEAN 
 
 I HEARD the sailors sing at twilight on the Deep, 
 Far forward in the dusk. Through the dark, 
 
 clouded dome 
 Westward, a few, faint stars awoke like eyes from 
 
 sleep,
 
 196 
 
 And a dim phosphorescence of fire lined the foam, 
 Driven along the Waste like flocks of herded sheep. 
 
 And ground-swell upon ground-swell echoed with tread 
 on tread 
 
 The sob all 'round the world of the despondent sea. 
 In the half-light I almost awaited, as in dread, 
 
 The monster of the Vast, old as eternity, 
 Along the implacable rim should lift a snaky head. 
 
 I thought of all the ships that with white sail un- 
 furled 
 Across the somber Waste had sought the immortal 
 
 dream, 
 
 And the adventurous breast prophetic of a world, 
 Islands of promised peace beyond the morning- 
 stream, 
 
 Visions, before whose breath the barks of old were 
 whirled. 
 
 The sailors' voices sounded far-off as if in sleep; 
 
 Along the vast and scornful surface of the sea 
 A multitudinous breath of laughter seemed to creep, 
 
 And like a long-drawn sigh died fitfully away. 
 An oceanic odor arose upon the Deep. 
 
 THE TRUTH 
 
 THOUGH the prophets accept their doom and the mar- 
 tyrs sigh for it, 
 It is better to live for the Truth than it is to die for it.
 
 197 
 TWO SAD SONGS 
 
 As the still lamplight of the street 
 At noon of night I crossed, 
 
 Afar I saw it wandering 
 And like a little ghost 
 
 A little, lonely will-o'-the-wisp, 
 
 Mechanically gay, 
 That mimicked some immortal thing 
 
 Along the somber way. 
 
 The ghost of some sad love it seemed 
 
 In a forgotten Spring, 
 That ever the old gestures made 
 
 As it went wandering. 
 
 The secret of the old, lost joy 
 Still haunted it and stirred, 
 
 Repeating yet to every face 
 The old, familiar word; 
 
 And the kind loveliness, that once 
 Had bowed to grant such grace, 
 
 Now the immortal bounty begged 
 From every passing face.
 
 198 
 
 Nearer it hurried, as in quest 
 
 Of some obsessive goal 
 Beyond it ever, or as if 
 
 In search of its own soul, 
 
 And nearer drew until the eyes 
 Begged up to mine, and moved 
 
 By me and O it once had been 
 Somebody's best beloved! 
 
 ii 
 
 Where is he, the cheated one, 
 
 That the world has robbed of you, 
 
 His beloved ere he came, 
 
 And the love he never knew! 
 
 The dear secret of your breast 
 Meant for him and him alone, 
 
 All that tender loveliness 
 Plundered now of everyone! 
 
 In the desert of the world 
 
 His sweet spring of life is sealed, 
 
 And the bosom meant for his, 
 
 And the breast that might have healed.
 
 199 
 
 Glimpses of your girlhood's self, 
 
 Beautiful and fugitive, 
 Show us what consoling grace 
 
 Once your beauty had to give. 
 
 Dear, each gesture, each caress, 
 
 Ways of loving, every whim 
 Of wild pity, every kiss, 
 
 Meant for him and only him ! 
 
 Still about your presence clings, 
 
 Wistful, sorrowful, and wise, 
 Ever that reproachful ghost 
 
 And the haunting of his eyes. 
 
 TRIO 
 
 DEATH. Now ebbs the twilight from the melting land, 
 
 The tremulous light runs low 
 Along the rim of the world. Give me your hand. 
 
 Come, for it must be so. 
 
 LIFE. Weary I am, 
 
 Yet let me still abide 
 A little while 
 
 Here, in the eventide. 
 
 LOVE [wnseen] O sweet, on my breast 
 Come once again
 
 200 
 
 Here, as of old ! 
 Sweet is the pain. 
 
 O come as of old ! 
 Sweet is the rest 
 
 DEATH. No more. 
 
 Eternal darkness covers up the west. 
 Come to me as before, 
 Ere into tumult and distraction's pit 
 Your wandering feet were sent 
 Out of the quiet door; 
 Ere you were sent out of the mother-breast. 
 
 LOVE, [nearer] I give you my lips, t 
 
 Here at my side 
 Abide, abide, 
 Here at my lips ! 
 
 At the breast that bore you, 
 
 Though born unto pain! 
 Love and forgive ! 
 
 Love leans above you 
 Give life and live 
 
 Once, once again ! 
 O I love you, I love you! 
 
 LIFE. I am fain 
 
 But mine eyes darken 
 Whither?
 
 201 
 
 DEATH. Nay, turn to me who am the rest, 
 Nor heed the siren voice that singing lures, 
 Give heed, nor hearken. 
 Only in me the immortal peace endures. 
 
 LOVE [still nearer] I am the sunrise, 
 I am the light. 
 Death is the night. 
 Drink of mine eyes! 
 Turn to the light! 
 Though you be weary, 
 Wearier yet 
 
 You shall grow, nor regret; 
 Here on my bosom 
 
 Reborn, rearise 
 To new life and new living. 
 Sweet is the pain, 
 Sweet to be slain 
 In the old way again, 
 Living and giving 
 Can you forget ! 
 
 LIFE. O Love 
 
 LOVE [very near] Warm are my lips 
 
 And fresh for your tasting, 
 Cold is your body 
 
 And shadow-wards hasting. 
 Why will you turn thus
 
 202 
 
 From all you desired ! 
 Can you not love me! 
 Sweet, are you tired? 
 
 Then though to come to me 
 
 You be too weary, 
 You will I draw to me 
 
 Though you be weary ! 
 Here at the heart-side 
 
 Clasp and en-arm you, 
 With my own body 
 
 Kindle and warm you, 
 O my own banished one 
 
 Here, till again 
 Clean from my clasping, 
 Vigorous, nourished, 
 
 Strong, you may drink again 
 
 Ecstasy's pain ! 
 
 You shall, you shall ! 
 Though you had perished, 
 
 Fresh from my lips you should drink it 
 
 again 
 
 LIFE [turning fiercely about]. O the pain 
 Lying against your breast! 
 O let me catch you to my side again 
 Here, nor have ever rest! 
 Here at the heart-side wear you, 
 Love you and bear you,
 
 203 
 
 Weariless spending 
 Joy never-ending 
 
 At the dear bosom 
 
 DEATH [advancing] Nay, 'tis passed forever. 
 Come, for the twilight covers up the west. 
 
 LIFE [hesitates and goes to Death Darkness] 
 
 Forever ? 
 
 What silence seems to darken o'er the land ! 
 How may I bear it ! 
 
 Let me upon your bosom lean a little, 
 Give me your hand. 
 
 LOVE [the voice recedes] Sweet, are you weary? 
 
 CHORUS OF DESTINIES. Faint on the irrevocable 
 
 breast 
 
 Lean, on the somber bosom that cannot understand. 
 Sleep, and have rest. 
 
 LOVE [from afar] I am the sunrise, 
 I am the light, 
 Death is the night 
 Till the new dawn rise. 
 Though you have left me, 
 Love will not leave you; 
 Love will receive you,
 
 204 
 
 Love will retrieve you 
 In the new sunrise ! 
 
 Sleep, and have rest. 
 
 REBELLION 
 
 BEYOND the sea lies another, and yet beyond, 
 I know the sea is not bound by a measured space, 
 
 I will reach out my arms over the sea, 
 
 I will run, I will run, till I come to the perfect place. 
 
 When I hear a dancing on the dim sands beyond the 
 
 moon, 
 And the fawning waves cry out, I grow fierce and 
 
 wild 
 
 I remember something I have lost shining and strange, 
 And beat against the patient gods like a little child. 
 
 WOMAN, THE MYSTICAL 
 
 WHERE is She and who is She 
 
 Whom across the wavering world 
 Like a beacon-light I see? 
 
 In the words that shine and move 
 
 Down some poet's woven page 
 I have felt Her hate and love.
 
 205 
 When the vampire in the night 
 
 Wets her lips with sleepy blood, 
 On Her lips the blood is bright. 
 
 The cold angel at God's throne, 
 
 Blowing trumps of molten gold, 
 Speaks of Her and Her alone. 
 
 The poor harlot in the street 
 
 When the gaudy arc-lights flare 
 There Her pulses burn and beat. 
 
 Turning vile things to the Human, 
 
 To the Human, the Divine 
 Angel, anti-Christ, and Woman ! 
 
 AUTUMN 
 
 LET the tired sea go down with a hurt sound, 
 
 It cannot reach us here where the gray dunes are 
 
 still; 
 The cold wind sweeps the bushes on the hill, 
 
 The white sand whirls across the barren ground, 
 And the sea moans as in my childhood. 
 
 When the wind is on the dunes where the long dunes 
 
 roll 
 
 Seaward, the old summers come back to me in song, 
 I have seen these reaches and sandy ways so long
 
 206 
 
 They are almost grown a part of the breathing of my 
 
 soul: 
 And the sea moans as in my childhood. 
 
 I love to sit and watch you when the sea is sad, 
 And when you look and smile the mother smiles 
 
 in you, 
 But when you turn with love it is something strange 
 
 and new, 
 
 Tired and wonderful, that almost makes me glad ; 
 And the sea moans as in my childhood. 
 
 THE WIND OF TIME 
 
 THE winds blow out of the stars and trample and 
 
 pass, 
 
 The night grows black and silent deep in my heart, 
 Here where I roam between the stars and the grass. 
 
 O piteous love, the years have conquered, alas ! 
 
 The winds rise up and blow you out of my heart. 
 The winds blow out of the stars and trample and pass. 
 
 THE BORDERLANDS 
 
 IN extreme sorrow, on the border-lands of death 
 (As extreme joy, on the border-lands of death), 
 On the utter marge of being and end of all, 
 At the last pang there lurks an ecstasy.
 
 207 
 
 An abandoned beauty so thrilling, fierce, and sheer, 
 So regal is her splendor and gorgeous grief 
 And all the rhythm of reverent agony; 
 That toward the face, ineffable and austere, 
 Disdainful, august, and perfect beyond all Time, 
 Swiftly we turn, and scornful of all else, 
 Rapturous, shuddering, on the magnificent breast 
 Lean as forever, never to depart! 
 
 Then draws the spirit nearer to her Source, 
 At the one extreme as at the other extreme 
 Ecstasy agony for both are one 
 And lead us back into the home of things 
 Forever holy and forever new. 
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 BEAUTY here is seen at rest in the peace thereof, 
 Love that bending down looks back on the pain of 
 
 Love, 
 Sorrow smiling on herself from the heights above. 
 
 TO A DEAD GIRL 
 
 ALTHOUGH your feet gone deeply in the dust 
 Wounded the breasts of Beauty with dull pain, 
 Although your spirit bore the outer stain 
 
 Of things unlovely, and the inner rust;
 
 208 
 
 Beyond all anger, and beyond all lust, 
 The eternal Beauty harbors no disdain, 
 Sorrowful to her bosom's peace again 
 She takes them back, the just and the unjust. 
 
 Nay, even as a star that from the red 
 Ruin of sunset rises pure and bright 
 
 Into the holy host of heaven's dome, 
 So, too, your soul, arising from the dead, 
 
 Pants upward with her own immaculate light, 
 Virgin returns to the eternal home. 
 
 BEAUTY TO HER LOVER 
 
 ART thou hungry, O my child, O my child, art thou fain 
 
 for beauty, 
 
 For sad beauty that passes like a gleam ! 
 Is thy life barred about with duty and barren duty, 
 Art thou as one crying out of the maze of things 
 
 that seem 
 In a half-dream, between a dream and a dream! 
 
 Have a care, have a care to thy voice, have a care to 
 
 thy crying, 
 
 Lest I draw thee back into the web of things ; 
 Lest I smite thy mouth with sleep, that it should be 
 
 sighing, 
 Lest I fold thee against my heart where the blood 
 
 sings, 
 After thy wanderings, after thy long wanderings !
 
 209 
 DUMBNESS 
 
 WITHIN my heart, half little child, half angel, 
 A spirit sat and sang for sheer delight, 
 
 When darkness lapped my spirit 'round his rapture 
 Rose in me radiant, like a star at night. 
 
 Angel of Song my master and mine only, 
 
 The little child long loved and followed long, 
 
 How have I strangled with this alien sadness 
 The virgin voice within me of your song ! 
 
 TO 
 
 IN the somber night of hope, under the trees 
 
 Of the fruitless years where yet no flowers have 
 
 been born, 
 
 All in the first twilight of hope when the dawn 
 Is a promised thing, quietly a prophetic breeze 
 Has stirred murmurously the intertwined branches of 
 
 these, 
 
 Under the boughs of Time where I sit, nor mourn, 
 Save always a little, for the many stars shall be 
 
 withdrawn 
 When the first breath of morning comes over the seas. 
 
 O solemn first breath of Life blown out upon the air ! 
 With a faint crying of my heart I strive to give 
 breath
 
 210 
 
 To the innumerable dreams it awakens lying under- 
 neath ; 
 But you by the tree of your life more green and more 
 
 fair, 
 
 Shall I not sing them to you, listening to them there, 
 The dreams that shall blow in my heart until the 
 twilight of death. 
 
 THE FRIEND 
 
 AFAR the fresh sea shimmers, 
 The sea-birds wheel and pass. 
 
 I lie alone in the twilight 
 Here, by the thin sea-grass. 
 
 A molten radiance slowly 
 
 Wells through the sunset dim, 
 The thought of you that tenderly 
 
 Trembles along the rim, 
 
 A golden, a luminous rapture; 
 
 Heaven glows on either hand. 
 What liberal thought and lovely 
 
 Widens on sea and land? 
 
 Makes spacious the Void around me 
 For breathing-spaces? See, 
 
 My soul, too, widens exultant: 
 Large-hearted, fresh, and free,
 
 211 
 Drinks in deep draughts around her, 
 
 To the deep core shot through ! 
 Your great and gracious presence, 
 
 The generous thought of you, 
 
 Of those great days together, 
 
 Your golden and royal ways, 
 Lifts me like golden music 
 
 Out of the little days.
 
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