Her beauty is the bourne thought cannot pass;
And the angel of the heart's intelligence,
Young Love, might deem that boundary infinite,
So he within the glamour of her eyes,
As in some ether too thin to be weighed,
Might breathe for ever.
I
Fair is my Love and cruel as she 's fair;
Her brow-shades frown, although her eyes are sunny.
Her smiles are lightning, though her pride despair,
And her disdains are gall, her favours honey:
A modest maid, deck'd with a blush of honour,
Whose feet do tread green paths of youth and love;
The wonder of all eyes that look upon her,
Sacred on earth, design'd a Saint above.
Chastity and Beauty, which were deadly foes,
Live reconciled friends within her brow;
And had she Pity to conjoin with those,
I have been touched with her, and have ta'en (Unclear
The acquaintance of her beauty like a dream,
Or as it were a flower of Faerie breathed
By an immortal; for the light and air
Of life and love so, so endue her, she
Puts on and off the sweetest favours like
The momentary raiment that
A goddess dons and doffs.
Beauty does not walk through lovely days.
Beauty walks with horror in her hair.
Down long centuries of pleasant ways
Men have found the terrible most fair.
Youth is lovelier in death than life,
Beauty mightier in pain than joy.
Doubly splendid burn the fires of strife,
Brighter in the brightness they destroy.
Off on the prairie, where the balmy air
Kisses the waving corn,
There lives a farmer, with a daughter fair--
Fair as a summer's morn!
She has a nature gentle as a dove,
Pure as the mountain snows;
Say! is it strange that everyone should love--
Love such a girl as Rose?
Beautiful Rose! lovely Rose!
Pride of the prairie bower!
Everybody loves her--everybody knows
She is the fairest flower.
Rose is a lady yet from early dawn,
Labors her skillful hand;
It ought to be lovely to be old
to be full of the peace that comes of experience
and wrinkled ripe fulfilment.
The wrinkled smile of completeness that follows a life
lived undaunted and unsoured with accepted lies
they would ripen like apples, and be scented like pippins
in their old age.
Soothing, old people should be, like apples
when one is tired of love.
Fragrant like yellowing leaves, and dim with the soft
stillness and satisfaction of autumn.
And a girl should say:
Everyone seeks a perfect faith; rarely some one seeks a perfect Love (Divine Love) ,
They ask for faith but not for love, for this my heart is filled with rage,
The stage of divinity where one can reach with love, the faith is not aware of that.
O Bahoo! Keep my Love alive, I request you in the name of Faith.
I am banished from the patient men who fight
They smote my heart to pity, built my pride.
Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side,
They trudged away from life’s broad wealds of light.
Their wrongs were mine; and ever in my sight
They went arrayed in honour. But they died,—
Not one by one: and mutinous I cried
To those who sent them out into the night.
The darkness tells how vainly I have striven
To free them from the pit where they must dwell
In outcast gloom convulsed and jagged and riven
THE end that Love doth seek, what bard can say,
In that fair season when the tender green
Of opening leaves doth roof the woods of May,
And sweet wild buds from out their places lean
To touch the dainty feet that heedless stray
Among them, with a youth in knight's attire?
His lady's will capricious to obey,
This is the end of dawning Love's desire.
And when amid the summer's bright array
Of blossoms, are the crimson roses seen,
And one young maid, fairer than any spray
Who have loved and ceased to love, forget
That ever they loved in their lives, they say;
Only remember the fever and fret,
And the pain of Love, that was all his pay;
All the delight of him passes away
From hearts that hoped, and from lips that met -
Too late did I love you, my love, and yet
I shall never forget till my dying day.
Too late were we 'ware of the secret net
That meshes the feet in the flowers that stray;
There were we taken and snared, Lisette,
In the dungeon of La Fausse Amistie;
