English

I said, " My love is sweet, and I will seek
Whereto to liken her; her eyes are grey
As the grey water mingled in a creek
With green, and greener than the seas are they,
And browner than the golden moor-fed stream;
Her hands are wonderful, her lips are red,
And as the light of morning is the beam
That like a coronet crowns my lady's head;
She hath a supple fawn's advancing grace,
She hath the flushing of a mountain rose, —
Like some sweet lily in a shady place
My lady, quiet yet most queenly, grows,

There is a love beyond the love we hold
In earthly grasp of over-eager hand, —
A love that bloometh in another land,
With petals of divine untarnished gold.
When from the shuddering organ notes are rolled
Conveying hints we fail to understand,
Or when with slender moonlight on the sand
A distant horn blends paeans clear and bold: —

When music at these seasons wakes in us
Some glimpse of evanescent heavenly fire,
When learn that love is consummated thus!
Yea, woman's hands in heaven are a lyre,

Who shall possess the whole of any flower, —
Both petals, leaves, and fragrance that abides
In the sweet golden core where God resides,
Casting that fragrance forth with lavish power?
Man doth possess a woman for an hour: —
Upon her ample bosom's roseate tides
Softly and sweetly for a month he rides;
Then winter shakes the rose-leaves from his bower.

How shall we grasp in one excessive bliss
The beauty and fragrance that the world has seen,
Even from the rose-red blossom of Eve's kiss

A most sweet vision holds my spirit now,
And Music adds its magic (for before
My dreams were silent as a moonless shore
At midnight, or a vessel's midnight prow).
Over a woman's stately marble brow
A pure cascade of coal-black hair doth pour: —
The black-brown tresses that I loved of yore,
Darkened by contrast of her body of snow.

Ah! lady, goddess, is it not enough
To overcome me with thy body of white
Surrounded with that mist of tresses black,
As the moon rides serene upon the rough

I wander ever onward, weak and weary:—
At times there comes a great desire for rest:
The days are sad, the nights are dark and dreary;
I long to sink into my love's soft breast,
My home, my abiding place, my snowy nest,—
I long to run and hide my head therein,
My face all scarred and marred with shame and sin,—
And yet she loves me! why, she knoweth best.

My sweet, my life, my all, my golden treasure,
My bower of buds and blossoms of delight,
What joy for us, what pale pursuit of pleasure,

Each rain-shower is an evidence to the air
Of the relief of heaven, and each storm
Of sobs the pressure of God's bosom warm,—
A token sent our spirits to prepare
For a closer tenderness, a joy more rare,
A weeping purer and more clear and sweet,
Deliverance after yet more fervent heat,
A trouble greater than our souls could bear.

Just as a husband weeps upon the breast
Of his wife, and in that holy shower of rain
The thunder-clouds and copper skies of pain
Expand, and sob their terror into rest,

I pay a sorrowful tribute to the sun
Of genius overcast, and downward hurled, —
Its flag no sooner hoisted than 'twas furled,
Its flame no sooner kindled than 'twas done,
Its race no sooner started than 'twas run,
And love no sooner tasted than 'twas sour,
And fruit of beauty faded with the flower,
Great things attempted, yet how little won.

A poor pale finger-post he seems to stand,
Saying to men that follow in his wake,
" In front of me there lies a lonely land.
One of two courses, brothers, you must take:

He is fallen, the poet, from his high estate.
How he hath fallen, God knows, and only God.
The high ethereal stairs he would have trod
Have vanished from beneath his feet of late,
And he is vanquished by uneasy fate,
And sinks upon a damp inferior sod,
And, mournful, breaks his sweet divining rod,
And sighs a broken-hearted sad " Too late! "

Ah, God, make poets not, or make them wise,
Girded with power to accomplish their high ends.
Thou givest them that fire within their eyes

Fear not, my poet brothers, — Beauty guards
With shield of sunset and with waving wings
The self-forgetful soul of him that sings,
And draws a charmed circle round her bards.
Tradition your development retards:
Burst bands of custom, wander forth alone,
Subdue the nations, make the earth a throne,
Shake falsehood as one shakes a house of cards.

Some higher work the world's a right to ask
Than floods of flowery diction, rivers of rhyme:
Expression, after all, is but a mask
Concealing some reality sublime;

Not Florence, nor the Baian bay, I sing,
Nor sunny vine-clad slopes of southern France
Nor gardens where the Spanish maidens dance
With laughter in a white-armed starry ring,
Not unto Palestine, nor Greece, I cling,
As many with a longing backward glance, —
Through London's flowerless gloom my steps advance,
The crownless city seeks a crownless king.

Mine are the suns of morning, looming red
Through misery and smoke, till gleams of blue,
Occasional at midday, glisten through,