Classic Poem

The walls and the dome of the evening
Are walls and a dome as of fire
The grasses are gold and the roses
Dark red as low fires on the brier,
Stir deep, as dim banners and broidered
Bronze forests below and above,
A day dieth happy and kingly,
And two have known love.

Flame, walls of the world as a temple
Gleam fenland and field as a floor
For two have made way through a woodland
And two have ta'en hands at a door
The fields give them fierier petals
The woodlands deep shadows and strong
The world giveth bounty and welcome
And I give a song

And here is a rift in the firwood
And there is a fold in the fell
A rift for two faces to pause in
A fold where two lovers might dwell
A hay-waste their feet would make golden
An orchard their brows would make fair
All houses God built for these wedded
If these were but there.

Two have heard through the dusk of things doubtful
The lute of the spirit that sings
With his feet on the globe everlasting
The song of the meaning of things
Two have gathered what earth has of worthy
Two have spelled what the old stars can teach
Two have opened their eyes and seen all things
Each looking on each.

To the host of the mystical victors,
Who alone have been quickened and are
To the martyrs of love through the ages
He has blazoned and burnt with his star
To the bands of the aureoled chosen
Who have known how to see and to give
To the numberless army of lovers
Two are added and live.

In the girth of a room and a garden
In the space of a house and a street
The plan of the world has had meaning
The life of the heart has been sweet
Two lives to themselves been sufficient
Two lives found that life had a law
Let none say they slumbered and fancied
Who wakened and saw.

Two have seen as God saw in the circles
Of the plumage of passionate wings
Ere he bound on the limbs of the spirit
The armour of bodily things
Two are seen as the soul was seen; risen
Before God in the dome of the morn
Archetypal, primeval and perfect
—A spirit unborn.

No eulogies starry and frantic
No loves that are trackless and vast,
No ruinous trust and delusion
No idols titanic of cast
Ever figured a man or a woman,
As they stand at the start or the goal
Ever climbed with long seasons of climbing,
The height of a soul.

Once more are a man and a woman
Once again are a man and a wife
Girt round with the newest of Edens
By the tree of the shadow of Life
In the signs of their limbs and their spirits
Fresh secrets and futures unfurled
New children, new chances, new races
To people a world.

This only is change and is triumph
This alone is a movement of things
More deep than the ruin of races
More high than the daydreams of Kings
For a stone to the house has been added
That is deeper than flood-time that mars
For a flower to the flowers has been gathered.
A star to the stars