The heavens and earth along.
Oh! thou art as the cloudless moon,
Undimmed and unarrayed;
No robe hast thou, no crown save yon—
Goddess! thy long locks’ soft and sunbright braid.
And there’s thy son, Love—beauty’s child—
World-known for strangest powers—
Boy-god thy place is blest o’er all!
Smil’st thou at thoughts of ours?
And there, by thy luxurious side,
The Queen of Heaven and Jove
Stands; and the deep delirious draught
Drinks, from thy looks, of love,
And lips, which oft have kissed away
The thunders from his brow
Who ruled, men say, the world of worlds,
As God our God rules now.
And thou art jet as great o’er this
As erst o’er olden sky;
Of all Heaven’s darkened deities
The last live light on high.
God after God hath left thee lone,
Which lived on human breath;
When prayers were breathed to them no more,
The false ones pined to death.
But in the service of young hearts
To loveliness and love;
Live thou shalt while yon wandering world
Named unto thee shall move.
No fabled dream art thou: all god,
Our souls acknowledge thee;
For what would life from love be worth,
Or love from beauty be?
Come, universal beauty, then,
Thou apple of God’s eye,
To and through which all things were made—
Things deathless—things that die.
Oh! lighten—live before us there—
Leap in yon lovely form,
And give a soul. She comes! it breathes—
So bright—so sweet—so warm.
Our sacrifice is over: let us rise!
For we have worshipped acceptably here;
And let our glowing hearts and glimmering eyes,
O’erstrained with gazing on thy light too near,
Prove that our worship, Goddess, was sincere!
I read that we are answered. The soft air
Doubles its sweetness; and the fainting flowers,
Down hanging on the walls in wreaths so fair,
Bud forth afresh, as in their birth-day bowers,
Dew-laden, as oppressed with love and shame,
The rose-bud drops upon the lily’s breast;
Brighter the wine, the lamps have softer flame,
Thy kiss flows freer than the grape first pressed.
A dance, a dance!
Let us remain!
We will not tempt your sport again.
Behold where Marian sits alone,
The dance all sweeping round,
Like to some goddess hewn in stone,
With blooming garlands bound.
Tell me, Marian, what those eyes
Can discover in the skies?—
Those eyes, that look, so bright, so sweet their hue,
As they had gained from gazing on that view,
The high and starry beauty of their blue.
For earth my soul hath lost all love,
But Heaven still loves and watches o’er me;
Why should I not, then, look above,
And pass, and pity all before me?
Oh! if yon worlds that shine o’er this,
Have more of joy—of passion less—
I would not change earth’s chequered bliss
For thrice the joys those orbs possess;
Which seem so strange their nature is,
Faint with excess of happiness.
Thy heart with others hath its rest,
And it shall wake with me;
And if within another breast
Thy heart hath made itself a nest,
Mine is no more for thee.
Heart-breaker, go! I cannot choose
But love thee, and thy love refuse;
And if my brow grow lined while young,
And youth fly cheated from my cheek,
’Tis, that there lies below my tongue
A word I will not speak;
For I would rather die than deem
Thou art not the glory thou didst seem.
But if engirt by flood or fire,
Who would live that could expire?
Who would not dream, and dreaming die,
If to wake were misery?
Whose woes are like to my woes? What is madness?
The mind, exalted to a sense of ill,
Soon sinks beyond it into utter sadness,
And sees its grief before it like a hill.
Oh! I have suffered till my brain became
Distinct with woe, as is the skeleton leaf
Whose green hath fretted off its fibrous frame,
And bare to our immortality of grief.
Like the light line that laughter leaves
One moment on a bright young brow;
So truth is lost ere love believes
There can be aught save truth below.
But as the eye aye brightlier beams
For every fall the lid lets on it,
So oft the fond heart happier dreams
For the soft cheats love puts upon it.
I never dreamed of wretchedness;
I thought to love meant but to bless.
It once was bliss to me to watch
Thy passing smile, and sit and catch
The sweet contagion of thy breath—
For love is catching—from such teeth;
Delicate little pearl-white wedges,
All transparent at the edges.
False flatterer, cease!
It is my fate
To love, and make who love me hate.
No! ’tis to sue—to gain—deceive—
To tire of—to neglect—and leave:
The desolation of the soul
Is what I feel—
A sense of lostness that leaves death
But little to reveal;
For death is nothing but the thought
Of something being again nought.
Cease, lady, cease those aching sighs,
Which shake the tear-drops from thine eyes,
As morning wind, with wing fresh wet,
Shakes dew out of the violet.
Forgive me, if the love once thine
Hath changed itself unsought to me;
I did not tempt it from thy heart,
I nothing knew of thee;
And soon, perchance, ’twill be my part
As thou now art, to be.
I blame no heart, no love, no fate,
And I have nothing to forgive;
I wish for nought, repent of nought,
Dislike nought but to live.
Nay, sing; it will relieve thy heart
I cannot sing a mirthful strain;
And feel too much to act my part
E’en of an ebbing vein.
Our hearts e not in our own hands:
Why wilt thou make me say
I cannot love as once I loved?
Hear!—’tis for this I stay—
To say we part—for ever part:
But oh! how wide the line
Between thy Marian’s bursting heart
And that proud heart of thine.
And thou wilt wander here and there,
Ever the gay and free;
To other maids wilt fondly swear,
As thou hast sworn to me;
And I—oh! I shall but retire
Into my grief alone;
And kindle there the hidden fire,
That burns, that wastes unknown.
And love and life shall find their tomb
In that sepulchral flame:—
Be happy—none shall know for whom—
I will not dream thy name.
As sings the swan with parting breath,
So I to thee;
While love is leaving—worse than life—
Forewarningly.
Speak not, nor think thou, any ill of me,
If thou wouldst not die soon and wretchedly.
I cannot waver on my path
To shun fair lady’s love or wrath.
Nor condescend the world to undeceive
Which doth delight in error and believe.
Thus then farewell, dear
