Chapter II

I have another lover loving me,
Himself beloved of all men, fair and true.
He would not have me change although I grew
Perfect as Light, because more tenderly
He loves myself than loves what I might be.
Low at my feet he sings the winter through,
And, never won, I love to hear him woo.
For in my heaven both sun and moon is he,
To my bare life a fruitful-flooding Nile,
His voice like April airs that in our isle
Wake sap in trees that slept since autumn went.
His words are all caresses, and his smile
The relic of some Eden ravishment;
And he that loves me so I call: Content.

_Treasure Song._

The miser loves to count his store
Of barren ducats o’er and o’er:
Above all pomp or pleasure
He loves his golden treasure.

And I do love to count alone
A useless treasure of mine own
Heigho! Delights of dreaming,
So dear, and only seeming!

_Love, Death, and Art._

Lord, give me Love! give me the silent bliss
Of meeting souls, of answering eyes and hands;
The comfort of one heart that understands;
The thrill and rapture of Love’s sealing kiss.
Or grant me—lest I weary of all this—
The quiet of Death’s unimagined lands,
Wherein the longed-for Tree of Knowledge stands,
Where Thou art, Lord—and the great mysteries.

Nay let me sing, my God, and I’ll forego,
Love’s smiling mouth, Death’s sweetlier smiling eyes.
Better my life long mourn in glorious woe,
Than love unheard in a mute Paradise—
For no grief, no despair, can quail me long,
While I can make these sweet to me in song.

_Friendship._

For your sovereign sake, my friend,
All my lovers are estranged,
Shadow lovers without end;
But last night they were avenged.

On the middle of the night
One by one I saw them rise,
Passing in the ghostly light,
Silent, with averted eyes.

First, my master from the South
With the laurels round his brow,
And the bitter-smiling mouth,
Left me—without smiling now.

Then came one long used to rule
All I was, or did, or had—
Plato, that I read at school
Till my playmates called me mad.

Maiden saints as pure as pearls,
Beautiful, divine, austere;
Sweeter-voiced Æolian girls,
Left their friend of many a year.

But my earliest friend and best,
My Beethoven, this was hard,
You should leave me with the rest,
Pass without one last regard.

For all went and left me there,
Sighing as they passed me by;
Ah, how sad their voices were!
I shall hear them when I die.

“Fare thee well,” they said; “we go
Scorned as shades and dreams. Adieu!
Love thine earthly friend, but know
Shadows still thou dost pursue.”

_Wild Cherry Branches._

I.

Lithe sprays of freshness and faint perfume,
You are strange in a London room;
Sweet foreigners come to the dull, close city,
Your flowers are memories, clear in the gloom,
That sigh with regret and are fragrant with pity.

II.

Flowers, a week since your long, sweet branches
Swayed, hardly seen, in the dusk overhead;
(We live, but the bloom on our living is dead).
Ah! look, where the white moon launches
Her skiff in the skies where the roof-tops spread.

III.

Like rocks on her course. But she rose not so
Through your wavering sprays when the April weather
Smelt only of flowers a week ago—
On your stems, in my heart, did such blossoms blow!
Let us sigh all together.

IV.

Your sigh is, perchance, for the neighbouring bushes,
With soft, yellow palms, or the song of the thrushes;
But mine for none of the birds that sing,
No flower of the spring,
But for two distant eyes and a voice that hushes.

V.

Such light and music, O blossom,
Was ours when I plucked you one moonrise, and you
Remember in fragrance her smile that you knew,
As you lived in her hand, as you lay on her bosom
Once, for a moment, and blossomed anew.

VI.

As I took you I looked, half in awe, where my friend
Crowned with completeness
All heaven’s peace and the whole earth’s sweetness;
So does her soul all souls transcend,
So, in my love for her, all loves blend.

VII.

For more than the vast everlasting heaven
Declares in its infinite mute appeal
To hearts that feel,
More than the secret and peace of dim even
Knows of God, may a love reveal.

VIII.

For then indeed it was clear to my soul
That in loving the one I loved the whole,
Fulfilled all aims, attained every goal,
And God was with me, eternity round me,
Though Life still bound me.

IX.

Past is that hour, but the heart’s trouble lessens
Because it has been.
When I die, when free of its selfish screen
The god in me soars to the Godhead, the Presence
May seem to it first as the love once seen.