English

When womanhood is loved by manhood with the tender
Love wherewith I love thee, when manhood's heart can render
Homage to her like this,
The world will be redeemed. When woman's soul can fashion
In the deep heart of man a stainless worldwide passion,
Evil will flee before their stainless kiss.

This waits,—that every heart of woman win the power
To be to some one man his pure immortal flower,
His holiest pride and bliss
When womanhood is loved, as I love thee, the yearning

Oh, this I say of thee, that thy sweet face,
When passion else were undisputed king,
Reminds me ever of a fairer thing
Than passion, — even love, whose gentle grace
Fills as with shine of flowers each barren place
And makes the birdless sunless mountains sing

Thou bringest back to me, O love divine,
O gentle girl-heart full of God indeed,
Hope, and a tenderer higher nobler creed
Thou makest this despairing soul of mine
Just for one moment bright-hued even as thine:
Thou hast the power to lift and power to lead

O'er every common task Love casts a glow
Of pleasure, and a sacred healing calm,
As o'er the garden paths the rose-trees throw
Their petals, and their tender odorous balm:
O'er each day's common toil Love flings a light
Delicious, and a hope of fairer things, —
As in the ancients' dreams a heavenly sprite
Hovered above the good with golden wings.

When I am quite engulfed in common toil,
I faint not, lady, — but I think of thee,
And fear not lest my paltry labour soil
The silver-shining plumes of Poesy;

As we grow older, life grows more divine:
Slow word by word and tedious line by line
We learn the next world's lore.
Then all our hearts are changed, the temporal ends;
We bid farewell to old, we make new friends
Upon the eternal shore.

Wife, mother, brother, sister, father, these
Pass, like the passing of a summer breeze;
The soul is that which stays.
No local earthly frail relationship
Hallowed by grasp of hand or touch of lip
Defies the fleeting days.

Our personality grows wholly new, —

The sweet night reaches thee, my lady fair!
The winds caress thee, and the same stars shine
Upon thee, — thy pure heavens are also mine;
The same rich darkness mixes with thy hair, —
We breathe the same involuntary air, —
In thy soft locks the braided vapours twine, —
And all their countless scents of larch and pine
From each to each the darkling hill-sides bear.

The sweet night reaches thee; — we are not far
Apart, — the sweet night reaches thee, and falls
About thee like a mantle; every star

TO ENGLAND

Dark days are coming, England. Lo! the sky
Is foul and rank with treason, and there are
Who say they see the setting of thy star
And hold that thou wilt pass away and die.
With storm and strife, with keen device and lie
Thy foes assail thee. Thou hast journeyed far
Since on the Belgian plain thine hosts did bar
The hosts of France, and mocked the eagle's cry.

When first I saw thee, lady of my dreams,
And watched love's sunrise shed its ardent gold
O'er hill and valley and wild purple wold —
The golden light which once superbly gleams,
Then fades for ever; when, beside the streams
Of that fair Northern many-tinted sea,
Thy girlish tender presence shone on me,
But fifteen years had crowned thee with sunbeams.

And Dante's Beatrice was but fifteen!
And her sweet deathless eyes were soft sea-green,
When first she stood before him in the way; —
So wast thou girl-soft, simple and divine,

A GLORY of light beyond his utmost dream
Had flashed with sunlike flame and moonlike gleam
On Wordsworth's eyes
Had he discerned the sovereign force that fills
With lovelier light than theirs the laughing hills
And answering skies.

The secrets of the grass and of the dew,
And of the lakes, the lonely poet knew:
These spake aloud.
He heard the voices of the stars at night
As they climbed upward from slow height to height,
From cloud to cloud.

And yet he missed the magic of each place,

Slowly my song grows, — as from day to day
I add fresh flowers of ever-intenser thought;
Bright buds the calm of riper age has brought,
Soft violets, roses, red leaves, — many a spray
Rich with the flying tints of autumn gay,
Or blossoms in dense woods of summer sought: —
Blue hyacinths and crocus-petals fraught
With spring, and spikes of frost from winter grey.

Slowly my song grows: to each word a year
Of patient and of earnest thought I give,
If haply, when the world's last leaf is sere,

I.

It was but in a room;—I had been sleeping;
 The still night deepened,—and I was alone.
When on a sudden I awoke low-weeping,
 And through and through me rang thy silver tone.
And then I saw thee, sweet one, far more clearly
 Than I shall ever see again in life,
Not face to face, but soul to soul,—more nearly
 Than mother is to son, or man to wife.
Then all the room was filled as with some essence
 Ethereal, heavenly, fragrant and divine;—
God's own intoxicating gracious presence,