But lo! thou comest like the sweet moonlight
That turns the flashing waters into gold:
Thou comest, — and the world is no more old,
But young and glad, and robed in wedding white.
The swift waves laugh with ever tuneful might;
Amid the trees the enamoured breeze is bold;
And all this just because thine hand I hold
And watch with quiet eyes thine eyes most bright.

The whole world changes, love, when thou art here!
The thunderous dark oppressive huge clouds break:
Fallen are the broken wings of vanquished fear:

But there are lonely times when all the seas
Seem stricken into mournful dreary grey,
And no sunlight streams o'er the darkened day,
And not one sign of music charms the breeze
Or breaks the silence of the leaden trees,
Nor are the clouds made glad by one moonray:
We are not yet completely one; delay
Wearies, — and lonely long weeks blight and freeze.

Then life seems purposeless. My lyre rings hollow:
I cease to track the footprints of Apollo,
And every sunset's wings, once draped in gold,
Hang damp and heavy o'er the lifeless woods,

And have we left the roses far behind?
Are never any flowers and soft green leaves
Waiting to gladden us, — no golden sheaves
Bright underneath the sun-warmed August wind?
What shall we in the fierce strange journey find
Of rapture, as our struggling step achieves
Height after height, while every height deceives,
Each seeming that dim mount for which we pined?

Oh, far and fair the deep green valleys glow!
The valleys that we left so long ago,
Climbing we knew not whither with joined hands.

Because thou hast not feared the darts of men
Flung forth against me in their feeble hate,
But hast believed in me in spite of fate, —
Yea, in thine heart, sweet, often and again
Hast borne their poison-pointed arrows when
Their anger-maddened ranks around the gate
Of song surged foaming, fierce-tongued and elate, —
Beholding in me love beyond their ken: —
Because thou hast not shivered when the seas
Brake hard against me, and the pettish spray
Of hostile words leaped round from day to day,
And evil arrows quivered in the breeze, —

Thy Sweetness

A sweetness not of flowers or suns or seas
Broods o'er thee. Thou art mingled with the air
Of summer: yet than summer sky more fair
Thou art, and tenderer than June-soft breeze.
Thy sweetness, love, is in the almond-trees
And in the lilacs, — and the breath of spring
Doth round about thee like a garment cling;
Yet art thou sweeter, sweetest soul, than these.

Thy sweetness meets me in the morning-tide,

No lover ever kissed the eternal blue
Broad sky. No eyes of stars have e'er shone through
A golden star-wife's eyes. —
In lonely loveless silence through the waste
Trackless abysses must their footsteps haste.
Forlorn are all the skies.

If we set forth from this our planet's rim
And sailed the sky-sea to the farthest brim
We should not find one fair
Oasis-island thronged by human faces: —
Vacant and eyeless are the abysmal spaces:
No laugh thrills the blue air.

No woman's silvery laughter rings along

For thou art measureless as are the seas:
Thy soul is as the solemn waters grey
When ships traverse their spaces day by day
And mark their colour deepen with the breeze.
Blue now they are, afar from rocks and trees;
So thou art boundless, and thy spirit partakes
The silent force of silent mountain-lakes,
And all the passionate unrest of these.

When the storm strikes thee lo! thou art divine.
Thy waves climb upward, seeking the dark sky,
And I stoop downward, yearning to be thine,
And rustle with my soul through mountain-pine,

How can I cease to sing? thou art not soon
Exhausted, fathomed, done with — like a girl
Who claims one sonnet on a golden curl,
And that's the scope and end of passion's tune!
Thou art as endless as the endless moon
That broods above the waters as they swirl,
Not twice the same, — now white, now silver-pearl,
Now golden-red: thou art my boundless June.

Thou art my love, my summer, my delight;

And then comes perfect peace: the leaves are dead
And not one trace of summer lingers now
Within the woods; yet summer round our brow
Its own eternal coronet hath shed,
And we are summer-souled, and crowned with red
Blossoms that never for the winter bow
Fear-darkened petals or subservient head,
Or even the stress of autumn mists allow.

Spring we have had, and summer, and the gay
Death-gilded foliage of the autumn day,
And winter now with snows about us stands;
But, dying into life, we heed him not.

Then autumn comes, — and the wild woods retain,
Sighing, their golden splendour for awhile,
Maddened at heart for lack of summer's smile
And all the reckless glory of her reign.
Calm settles down o'er valley, hill, and plain,
And quiet meadow and red-leafed defile, —
And fair blue glimpses in the skies beguile,
Nor yet the first frost stiffens in the lane.

The calm of autumn round our brows we bind,
Love, for a circlet: not the summer day
Brought more of peace than this sky cold and grey
And this soft-whispering faint unfiery wind,