The Lover's Letter

I

I T chanced while being in that idle mood
When every vagrant object from without,
Through the dim windows which our senses make,
Hath liberty to cast upon the mind
Its shadow, as it passes and is lost,
That I sate toying with a blotting-pad,
And with a thousand thoughts fantastical
Watched the innumerable glancing waves
Upspringing, 'neath the touches of the sun,
Whose fingers swept the playful ocean crests,
And forming in the region of the clouds
A lovely continent of fairy lands,
Of seas immeasurable and rippling bays, —
Where solitude for ever pined away —
Of guarded passes on tempestuous hills,
Where beauty walked secure, and dragon eyes
That from their caverned eminences swept
The silent region of the golden plains;
With other antique tricks, and shapes of thought
Which the creating mind will form, then throw
As lightly from it as a truant boy
Shakes his imprisoned bubble free on air.
Then turning lightly to that blotting-pad,
Held gently poised between the finger-tips.
I thought of the impressions it had ta'en,
And of the various thrills of joy and pain,
Thought and emotion, it held record of
Within its blurred and ruined characters.
And how the rare confusion of its lines
Was an epitome of this wild world
With interwoven lines of thought and life.
Soon my attention grew less general,
For I began to read the characters
Which some young lover's ink had left thereon,
Though fragmentary and confused they lay
Even as the passion that created them,
And these the broken sentences I saved.

II

" It seems that years "; — O heart that panteth here,
In these four words, for what hath passed away!
What visions hath the fancy leave to paint
While musing on the passion of these words!
What undertones of time and love are here,
What comment on the briefness of our joys,
Set starlike 'mid this life's monotony!
What dream-brief hope — what glory in young eyes!
What love-tinged lips budding towards a kiss!
We are not as we were — the world hath ta'en
The more ethereal part of us away,
And with the iron pen of circumstance
Hath writ its callous prudence on our lives,
And therefore when we call up once again
The beauty of our younger state and love,
The contrast strikes such shame into our souls
That we can only say — " It seems that years!"

III

" Ah! that you could but know this heart of mine", —
I see the picture of a yearning soul
Trembling towards its mate in these few words,
An innocence as pure as God's own thought
Forming the life within some infant frame,
What self-sufficiency and power is here
Championing the dragon evils of the world
In isolated strength! ah me! how far
True love transcends the bounds of ignorance
As made and coined by speech, what weakness here,
What might in its unloosened utterance!
What straining of high feeling 'gainst the chains
Of our small knowledge — ending in a sigh!
And do these words imply there is a doubt
Thrown o'er the holy secret of one heart?
O vows breathed underneath o'ershadowing trees!
O secrets only spoken by that tongue
That dwells within a mystic consciousness,
Wherefrom the silent soul of love puts forth
A seeking hand upon the world of things
To leave its impress. Time reveals even love.
And then how much of love is selfishness,
For the gross things of this material frame
Are only everlasting — holiest thoughts,
High promptings die! a few winged years, and lo!
Are we so ready with that innocence
That we desire to show our sealed hearts?
Love may deceive itself, prove insecure
Against the odds of time, and the belief
In its own being be shattered in an hour.

IV

" This inner life "; — Poor lover, what was that
Which you next wrote of? — nothing can be seen
But these three words; before and after — blank —
For the ambitious, grasping characters
Of some gold son of Cain blots out the rest,
Leaving the tender form and spirit of love
Close jostled by the hard, dry signs of gain.
Of the sweet quiet of a lover's mood,
That estimates its idol at a price
Above the mighty balances of time,
And shines amid the tempest of the world
A beacon to forlorn and wearied men,
Too happy, lover, wert thou dreaming then?
Or had love kindled thy intelligence,
And shown to thee the beauteous forms of thought
With Dante-fervour? — Didst thou then discern
Some heights scaled only by the godlike ones?
I question: thou being gone, who answers me?

V

" Death "; — How that word stands out among the rest
Spared by the ink, as death is spared by all —
A skull and crossbones carved upon a ring
That decks the coral finger of a girl. —
What shuddering fear or hope didst draw from death?
What dread or consolation? let it pass
As silent as the silence that it gives:
Yet love, in its great innocence of speech,
Will play with death, even as a little child,
Unconscious of the venom it provokes,
Will touch the burnished skin of sleeping snake.
For was not love before the heaven and earth,
When wide chaotic death lay everywhere,
And can it well forget its ancient mate?

VI

" Heaven "; — The last word we trace, and with this word
The crown of all illusions, do we close
The great illusion of our insect lives;
But love awakes young hearts when we are dust.
Translation: 
Language: 
Rate this poem: 

Reviews

No reviews yet.