Volume I Part 4 (1/2)
ANGELIC LOVE
Angelic love that stoops with heavenly lips To meet its earthly mate; Heroic love that to its sphere's eclipse Can dare to join its fate With one beloved devoted human heart, And share with it the pa.s.sion and the smart, The undying bliss Of its most fleeting kiss; The fading grace Of its most sweet embrace:- Angelic love, heroic love!
Whose birth can only be above, Whose wandering must be on earth, Whose haven where it first had birth!
Love that can part with all but its own worth, And joy in every sacrifice That beautifies its Paradise!
And gently, like a golden-fruited vine, With earnest tenderness itself consign, And creeping up deliriously entwine Its dear delicious arms Round the beloved being!
With fair unfolded charms, All-trusting, and all-seeing, - Grape-laden with full bunches of young wine!
While to the panting heart's dry yearning drouth Buds the rich dewy mouth - Tenderly uplifted, Like two rose-leaves drifted Down in a long warm sigh of the sweet South!
Such love, such love is thine, Such heart is mine, O thou of mortal visions most divine!
TWILIGHT MUSIC
Know you the low pervading breeze That softly sings In the trembling leaves of twilight trees, As if the wind were dreaming on its wings?
And have you marked their still degrees Of ebbing melody, like the strings Of a silver harp swept by a spirit's hand In some strange glimmering land, 'Mid gus.h.i.+ng springs, And glistenings Of waters and of planets, wild and grand!
And have you marked in that still time The chariots of those s.h.i.+ning cars Brighten upon the hus.h.i.+ng dark, And bent to hark That Voice, amid the poplar and the lime, Pause in the dilating l.u.s.tre Of the spheral cl.u.s.ter; Pause but to renew its sweetness, deep As dreams of heaven to souls that sleep!
And felt, despite earth's jarring wars, When day is done And dead the sun, Still a voice divine can sing, Still is there sympathy can bring A whisper from the stars!
Ah, with this sentience quickly will you know How like a tree I tremble to the tones Of your sweet voice!
How keenly I rejoice When in me with sweet motions slow The spiritual music ebbs and moans - Lives in the l.u.s.tre of those heavenly eyes, Dies in the light of its own paradise, - Dies, and relives eternal from its death, Immortal melodies in each deep breath; Sweeps thro' my being, bearing up to thee Myself, the weight of its eternity; Till, nerved to life from its ordeal fire, It marries music with the human lyre, Blending divine delight with loveliest desire.
REQUIEM
Where faces are hueless, where eyelids are dewless, Where pa.s.sion is silent and hearts never crave; Where thought hath no theme, and where sleep hath no dream, In patience and peace thou art gone--to thy grave!
Gone where no warning can wake thee to morning, Dead tho' a thousand hands stretch'd out to save.
Thou cam'st to us sighing, and singing and dying, How could it be otherwise, fair as thou wert?
Placidly fading, and sinking and shading At last to that shadow, the latest desert; Wasting and waning, but still, still remaining.
Alas for the hand that could deal the death-hurt!
The Summer that brightens, the Winter that whitens, The world and its voices, the sea and the sky, The bloom of creation, the tie of relation, All--all is a blank to thine ear and thine eye; The ear may not listen, the eye may not glisten, Nevermore waked by a smile or a sigh.
The tree that is rootless must ever be fruitless; And thou art alone in thy death and thy birth; No last loving token of wedded love broken, No sign of thy singleness, sweetness and worth; Lost as the flower that is drowned in the shower, Fall'n like a snowflake to melt in the earth.
THE FLOWER OF THE RUINS
Take thy lute and sing By the ruined castle walls, Where the torrent-foam falls, And long weeds wave: Take thy lute and sing, O'er the grey ancestral grave!
Daughter of a King, Tune thy string.