Part 9 (2/2)

”And in the fallow leisure of my life.”

”Her voice fled always through the summer land; I spoke her name alone. Thrice-happy days!

The flower of each, those moments when we met, The crown of all, we met to part no more.”

”Now, now, his footsteps smite the threshold stairs Of life.”

”The drooping flower of knowledge changed to fruit Of wisdom. Wait.”

”Tall as a figure lengthen'd on the sand When the tide ebbs in suns.h.i.+ne.”

”Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears By some cold morning glacier; frail at first And feeble, all unconscious of itself, But such as gather'd color day by day.”

”I could no more, but lay like one in trance, That hears his burial talk'd of by his friends, And can not speak, nor move, nor make one sign, But lies and dreads his doom.”

”Behold, ye speak an idle thing: Ye never knew the sacred dust; I do but sing because I must, And pipe but as the linnets sing.

I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; 'T is better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all.

But brooding on the dear one dead, And all he said of things divine, (And dear to me as sacred wine To dying lips is all he said).

And look thy look, and go thy way, But blame not thou the winds that make The seeming-wanton ripple break, The tender-pencil'd shadow play.

Beneath all fancied hopes and fears, Ah me! the sorrow deepens down, Whose m.u.f.fled motions blindly drown The bases of my life in tears.

Be near me when my light is low, When the blood creeps, and the nerves p.r.i.c.k, And tingle; and the heart is sick, And all the wheels of being slow.

I can not love thee as I ought, For love reflects the thing beloved; My words are only words, and moved Upon the topmost froth of thought.

From point to point, with power and grace And music in the bounds of law, To those conclusions when we saw The G.o.d within him light his face.

And while the wind began to sweep A music out of sheet and shroud, We steer'd her toward a crimson cloud That landlike slept along the deep.

Abiding with me till I sail To seek thee on the mystic deeps, And this electric force, that keeps A thousand pulses dancing, fail.

And hear at times a sentinel, Who moves about from place to place, And whispers to the worlds of s.p.a.ce, In the deep night, that all is well.”

”Brawling, or like a clamor of the rooks At distance, ere they settle for the night.”

”In words whose echo lasts, they were so sweet.”

”That I could rest, a rock in ebbs and flows.”

”But as a man to whom a dreadful loss Falls in a far land, and he knows it not.”

”The long way smoke beneath him in his fear.”

”Then, after all was done that hand could do, She rested, and her desolation came Upon her, and she wept beside the way.”

”Seam'd with an ancient sword-cut on the cheek, And bruised and bronzed, she lifted up her eyes And loved him, with that love which was her doom.”

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