How shallow is this mere that gleams!
Its depth of blue is from the skies,
And from a distant sun the dreams
And lovely light within your eyes.

We deem our love so infinite
Because the Lord is everywhere,
And love awakening is made bright
And bathed in that diviner air.

We go on our enchanted way
And deem our hours immortal hours,
Who are but shadow kings that play
With mirrored majesties and powers.

Love will live while the pale stars glow, while the world shall last,
On the present hopes, and in hours of woe, on a dreamy past,
Love will live, while the flowers bloom, and the meadows wave;
Nor yet be quenched by the charnel tomb — the ghastly grave;
For o'er the tomb and the silver stars, to the gates above
The soul will seek in the great Afar the Endless Love.

Do you not feel the white glow in your breast, my bird?
That is the flame of love I send to you from afar:
Not a wafted kiss, hardly a whispered word,
But love itself that flies as a white-winged star.

Let it dwell there, let it rest there, at home in your heart:
Wafted on winds of gold, it is Love itself, the Dove.
Not the god whose arrows wounded with bitter smart,
Nor the purple-fiery birds of death and love.

Do not ask for the hands of love or love's soft eyes:
They give less than love who give all, giving what wanes.

I did not deem it half so sweet
To feel thy gentle hand,
As in a dream thy soul to greet
Across wide leagues of land.

Untouched more near to draw to you
Where, amid radiant skies,
Glimmered thy plumes of iris hue,
My Bird of Paradise.

Let me dream only with my heart,
Love first, and after see:
Know thy diviner counterpart
Before I kneel to thee.

So in thy motions all expressed
Thy angel I may view:
I shall not on thy beauty rest,
But beauty's self in you.

Tell me, Lydia, why you ruin
Sybaris with your burning love?
Once he was a discus bruin;
Once he loved the sun above.

Soft the sinew, gone the fibre
Of his green, athletic youth;
Now he fears the yellow Tiber —
He who might have rivalled Ruth!

Sulks he as the son of Thetis
At the Trojan falling did;
This the burden of my treatise:
Why don't you lay off him, Lyd?

Tell me, Lydia, why you ruin
Sybaris with your burning love?
Once he was a discus bruin;
Once he loved the sun above.

I cannot see you in the light
Or find you in the day,
For when the sun springs up at dawn
I think you slip away.

I wait until the night is come
To pass beyond the veil,
And then I find you in the land
Of the unuttered tale.

Then gazing out across the night
I see with glad surmise
The shadows of your loosened hair,
The depth of your grave eyes.

She dressed her well in her bodice brown
And well in her gown of gray.
" Off am I to my own love's town
A hundred miles away —
And will not tire by brough or brae
And will walk on the soft-floored sea:
For my love is his from day to day —
But, oh! does my love love me?

Has his strong arm a place for my head?
Will his strong hand feel my breast?
Fine soft linen and a bridal bed,
For that's what a girl loves best!

Word or warning not mine to send
Of the journey so soon to be:
Though my love is his to the world's end.

There in her old-world garden smiles
A symbol of the world's desire,
Striving with quaint and lovely wiles
To bind to earth the soul of fire.

And while I sit and listen there,
The robe of Beauty falls away
From universal things to where
Its image dazzles for a day.

Away! the great life calls; I leave
For Beauty, Beauty's rarest flower;
For Truth, the lips that ne'er deceive;
For Love, I leave Love's haunted bower.

I have seen the harlot decked for death,
I have seen the fruitful woman scorned for ugliness.
I will not embrace Beauty but Order,
Scorning this body which must grow old.

I have heard the loveless laughter of fools,
I have seen the wanton and the pander drunk with mirth.
Laughter is a sacrament which should be shared for Love's sake.
Let us then be merry when mirth is no sacrilege.

I have seen the eyes of a smirched man turn from his paramour's lapdog
To find refreshment in a child's look.

How did she abdicate?
Was it with soft sighs
And pretty feignings of a lover's state,
Or was it solemn-wise,
With altar offerings and rapt vows?
O no! when Love himself was there,
Most housewifely she bound her hair
And went off across the field to milk the cows.