I will not.
No; my greeting is forever.
Well, well, come on!
Oh! show me that sweet soul
Thou brought’st to me the first night that we met.
She must be here, where all are good and fair:
And thou didst promise me.
Is that not she
Walking alone, up-looking to thine earth?
For, lo! it shineth through the mid-day air.
It is! it is!
Well, I will come again. Goes.
Knowest thou me, mine own immortal love?
How shall I call thee? Say, what mayest thou be!
I am a spirit, Festus; and I love
Thy spirit, and shall love, when once like mine,
More than we ever did or can even now.
Pure spirits are of Heaven all heavenly.
Yet marvel not to meet me in this guise,
All radiant like a diamond as it is.
We wander in what way we will through all
Or any of these worlds, and wheresoe’er
We are, there Heaven is, here, and there too, God.
Thou dost remember me.
Ay, every thought
And look of love which thou hast lent to me,
Comes daily through my memory as stars
Wear through the dark.
And thou art happy, love?
Yes: I am happy when I can do good.
To be good is to do good. Who dwell here?
Are they all deathless—happy?
All are not:
Some err, though rarely—slightly. Spirits sin
Only in thought; and they are of a race
Higher than thine—have fewer wants and less
Temptations—many more joys—greater powers.
They need no civil sway: each rules himself—
Obeys himself: all live, too, as they choose,
And they choose nought but good. They who have come
From earth, or other orb, use the same powers,
Passions, and purposes, they had e’er death;
Although enlarged and freed, to nobler ends,
With better means. Here the hard warrior whets
The sword of truth, and steels his soul against sin.
The fierce and lawless wills which trooped it over
His breast—the speared desires that overran
The fairest fields of virtue, sleep and lie
Like a slain host ’neath snow; he dyes his hands
Deep in the blood of evil passions. Mind!
There is no passion evil in itself;
In Heaven we shall enjoy all to right ends.
There sit the perfect women, perfect men;—
Minds which control themselves, hearts which indulge
Designs of wondrous goodness, but so far
Only, as soul extolled to bliss and power
Most high, sees fit for each, divinely. Here,
The statesman makes new laws for growing worlds,
Through their forefated ages. Here, the sage
Masters all mysteries, more and more, from day
To day, watching the thoughts of men and angels
Through moral microscopes; or hails afar,
By some vast intellectual instrument,
The mighty spirits, good or bad, which range
The space of mind; some spreading death and woe
On far off worlds—some great with good and life.
And here the poet, like that wall of fire
In ancient song, surrounds the universe;
Lighting himself, where’er he soars or dives,
With his own bright brain—this is the poet’s heaven.
Here he may realize each form or scene
He e’er on earth imagined; or bid dreams
Stand fast, and faery palaces appear.
Here he has Heaven to hear him; to the which
He sings, with manlike voice and song, the love
Which lent him his whole strength, as is the wont
Of all great spirits and good throughout the world.
Oh! happiest of the happy is the bard!
Here, too, some pluck the branch of peace wherewith
To greet a suffering saint, and show his flood
Of woe hath sunken: this I love to do.
My love, we shall be happy here.
Shall I
Ever come here?
Thou mayest. I will pray for thee,
And watch thee.
Thou wilt have, then, need to weep.
This heart must run its orbit. Pardon thou
Its many sad deflections. It will return
To thee and to the primal goal of Heaven.
Practice thy spirit to great thoughts and things,
That thou mayst start, when here, from vantage ground,
We can foretell the future of ourselves,
And fateful only to himself is each.
I do not fear to die; for, though I change
The mode of being, I shall ever be.
World after world will fall at my right hand;
The glorious future be the past despised:
All now that seemeth bright will soon seem dim,
And darker grow, like earth, as we approach it;
While I still stand upon yon heaven which now
Hangs over me. If aught can make me seek
Other to be than that lost soul I fear me,
It is, that thou lovest me. Heaven were not Heaven
Without thee.
I am here now. Art thou ready?
Let us go.
Well—farewell. It makes me grieve
To bid a loved one back to yon false world—
To give up even a mortal unto death.
Thou wilt forget me soon, or seek to do.
When I forget that the stars shine in air—
When I forget that beauty is in stars—
When I forget that love with beauty is—
Will I forget thee: till then, all things else.
Thy love to me was perfect from the first,
Even as the rainbow in its native skies:
It did not grow: let meaner things mature.
The rainbow dies in heaven, and not on earth;
But love can never die; from world to world,
Up the high wheel of heaven, it lives for aye.
Remember that I wait thee, hoping, here.
Life is the brief disunion of that nature
Which hath been one and same in Heaven ere now,
And shall be yet again, renewed by Death.
Come to me when thou diest!
I will, I will.
Then, in each other’s arms, we will waft through space,
Spirit in spirit, one! or we will dwell
Among these immortal groves; or watch new worlds,
As, like the great thoughts of a Maker-mind,
They are rounded out of chaos: and we will
Be oft on earth with those we love, and help them;
For God hath made it lawful for good souls
To make souls good; and saints to help the saintly.
That thou right soon mayst fold unto thy heart
The blissful consciousness of separate
Oneness with God, in Him in whom alone
The saved are deathless, shall become, for thee,
My earliest, earnest, and most constant prayer.
Oh! what is dear to creatures of the earth?
Life, love, fight, liberty! But dearer far
Than all—and oh! an universe more divine—
The gift, which God
