Life is a certainty,
Death is a doubt;
Men may be dead
While they’re walking about.
Love is as needful
To being as breath;
Loving is dreaming,
And waking is death.
Henry, Henry, do you love me?
Do I love you, Mary?
Oh, can you mean to liken me
To the aspen tree.
Whose leaves do shake and vary,
From white to green
And back again,
Shifting and contrary?
Henry, Henry, do you love me,
Do you love me truly?
Oh, Mary, must I say again
My love's a pain,
A torment most unruly?
It tosses me
Like a ship at sea
When the storm rages fully.
Henry, Henry, why do you love me?
Mary, dear, have pity!
I swear, of all the girls there are
Or whether sad or joyous be her hours,
Yet ever is she good and ever fair.
If she be glad, 'tis like a child's wild air,
Who claps her hands above a heap of flowers;
And if she's sad, it is no cloud that lowers,
Rather a saint's pale grace, whose golden hair
Gleams like a crown, whose eyes are like a prayer
From some quiet window under minister towers.
But ah, Beloved, how shall I be taught
To tell this truth in any rhymed line?
For words and woven phrases fall to naught,
Lost in the silence of one dream divine,
I.
SHE stood against the Orient sun,
Her face inscrutable for light;
A myriad larks in unison
Sang o'er her, soaring out of sight.
A myriad flowers around her feet
Burst flame-like from the yielding sod,
Till all the wandering airs were sweet
With incense mounting up to God.
A mighty rainbow shook, inclined
Towards her, from the Occident,
Girdling the cloud-wrack which enshrined
Half the light-bearing firmament.
Lit showers flashed golden o'er the hills,
Afflictions do not come alone,
A voice attends the rod;
By both he to his saints is known,
A Father and a God!
Let not my children slight the stroke
I for chastisement send;
Nor faint beneath my kind rebuke,
For still I am their friend.
The wicked I perhaps may leave
Awhile, and not reprove;
But all the children I receive
I scourge, because I love.
If therefore you were left without
This needful discipline;
You might, with cause, admit a doubt,
If you, indeed, were mine.
Even now the night's intoxication has not passed,
eyes filled with passion;
the string of ?iuli-flowers in the parting of my hair
has wilted, the world is overwhelmed with scent.
I have kept the window-shutters open,
extinguishing my lamp -
so the dew may enter and cool
the fearful outcry of my heart!
Dream's intoxication in my eyes, in my breast
a message of hope -
the distant woodland song, birds' twittering
will enter here I know.
Rising with a sudden start I see: my heart's monarch,
'Tis a point I long to know,
Oft it causes anxious thought;
Do I love the Lord, or no?
Am I his, or am I not?
If I love, why am I thus?
Why this dull and lifeless frame?
Hardly, sure, can they be worse,
Who have never heard his name!
Could my heart so hard remain,
Prayer a task and burden prove;
Every trifle give me pain,
If I knew a Saviour's love?
When I turn my eyes within,
All is dark, and vain, and wild;
Filled with unbelief and sin,
Can I deem myself a child?
O Love, thine empire is not dead,
Nor will we let thy worship go,
Although thine early flush be fled,
Thine ardent eyes more faintly glow,
And thy light wings be fallen slow
Since when as novices we came
Into the temple of thy name.
Not now with garlands in our hair,
And singing lips, we come to thee.
There is a coldness in the air,
A dulness on the encircling sea,
Which doth not well with songs agree.
And we forget the words we sang
When first to thee our voices rang.
I am one with thee, and thou
Art a vision of me now,
Which love, and not life, has made;
It with life, then, may not fade,
But like lightning, swiftly gone,
Breathe a more immortal tone
Than the dull light of the day
That is slow to pass away.
TRANSPORTED out of self by Youth's sweet madness,
Emulous of love, to Love's empyrean height,
Where I beheld you aureoled in light,
My soul upsprang on wings of angel-gladness.
Far, far below, the earth and all earth's badness--
A speck of dust--slipped darkling into night,
As suns of fairer planets flamed in sight,
Pure orbs or bliss unstained by gloom or sadness.
Lo, as I soared etherially on high,
You vanished, from my swimming eyes aloof,
Alone, alone, within the empty sky,
