Hear, O Self-Giver, infinite as good;
This faith, at least, my wavering heart should hold, Nor find in dark regret its daily food,
But catch the gleam of glories yet untold.
Yea, even on earth, beloved, as love well knew, Brief absence brought our fond returning kiss, So let my soul to God's great world and you Look onward with sweet pain of secret bliss;- O sunset sky and lonely gleaming star, Your beauty thrills me from the bound of space, O Love, thy loveliness shows best afar, And only Heaven shall give thee perfect grace; Grant then, dear Lord, that all who love may be Heirs of Thy glorious Immortality.
How shall I tell the measure of my love?
'Tis vain that I have given thee vows and tears, Or striven in verse my tenderness to prove, Or held thy hand in journeyings through the years; Vain that I follow now with hastening feet, And sing thy death, still murmuring in my song, "Only for thee I would the strain were sweet, Only for thee I would the words were strong;" Vain even that I closed with death, and fought To hold thee longer in a world so dear, Vain that I count a weary world as naught, That I would die to bring thee back; I hear God answer me from heaven, O angel wife— "To prove thy love, live thou a nobler life." Morton Luce [1849-
From "Sonnets from the Portuguese "
I THOUGHT Once how Theocritus had sung Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years, Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue, I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, Those of my own life, who by turns had flung A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware, So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair; And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,-
"Guess now who holds thee?"-"Death," I said. But, there, The silver answer rang,-"Not Death, but Love."
Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart! Unlike our uses and our destinies. Our ministering two angels look surprise On one another, as they strike athwart Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art A guest for queens to social pageantries, With gages from a hundred brighter eyes Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part Of chief musician. What hast thou to do With looking from the lattice-lights at me, A poor, tired, wandering singer, singing through The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree?
The chrism is on thine head,-on mine, the dew,- And Death must dig the level where these agree.
Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore Alone upon the threshold of my door Of individual life, I shall command The uses of my soul, nor lift my
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore,- Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine With pulses that beat double. What I do And what I dream include thee, as the wine Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine, And sees within my eyes the tears of two.
The face of all the world is changed, I think, Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul Move still, oh, still, beside me, as they stole Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink
Of obvious death, where I, who thought to sink, Was caught up into love, and taught the whole Of life in a new rhythm. The cup of dole God gave for baptism, I am fain to drink, And praise its sweetness, Sweet, with thee anear. The name of country, heaven, are changed away For where thou art or shalt be, there or here;
And this... this lute and song . . . loved yesterday, (The singing angels know) are only dear
Because thy name moves right in what they say.
What can I give thee back, O liberal
And princely giver, who hast brought the gold And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold, And laid them on the outside of the wall For such as I to take or leave withal, In unexpected largess? Am I cold, Ungrateful, that for these most manifold High gifts, I render nothing back at all? Not so; not cold,--but very poor instead.
Ask God who knows. For frequent tears have run
The colors from my life, and left so dead
And pale a stuff, it were not fitly done
To give the same as pillow to thy head. Go farther! let it serve to trample on.
Can it be right to give what I can give? To let thee sit beneath the fall of tears As salt as mine, and hear the sighing years Re-sighing on my lips renunciative
Through those infrequent smiles which fail to live For all thy adjurations? O my fears,
That this can scarce be right! We are not peers So to be lovers; and I own, and grieve, That givers of such gifts as mine are, must Be counted with the ungenerous. Out, alas! I will not soil thy purple with my dust, Nor breathe my poison on thy Venice-glass, Nor give thee any love--which were unjust. Beloved, I only love thee! let it pass.
Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright, Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed: And love is fire. And when I say at need
I love thee... mark! . . . I love thee-in thy sight I stand transfigured, glorified aright,
With conscience of the new rays that proceed
Out of my face toward thine. There's nothing low In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures Who love God, God accepts while loving so. And what I feel, across the inferior features Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show How that great work of Love enhances Nature's.
Indeed this very love which is my boast,
And which, when rising up from breast to brow, Doth crown me with a ruby large enow
To draw men's eyes and prove the inner cost,- This love even, all my worth, to the uttermost, I should not love withal, unless that thou Hadst set me an example, shown me how,
When first thine earnest eyes with mine were crossed, And love called love. And thus, I cannot speak Of love even, as a good thing of my own: Thy soul hath snatched up mine all faint and weak, And placed it by thee on a golden throne,--
And that I love (O soul, we must be meek!) Is by thee only, whom I love alone.
If thou must love me, let it be for naught Except for love's sake only. Do not say "I love her for her smile-her look-her way Of speaking gently, for a trick of thought That falls in well with mine, and certes brought A sense of pleasant ease on such a day❞— For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee, and love, so wrought, May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,- A creature might forget to weep, who bore Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby! But love me for love's sake, that evermore Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.
My poet, thou canst touch on all the notes God set between His After and Before, And strike up and strike off the general roar Of the rushing worlds a melody that floats In a serene air purely. Antidotes
Of medicated music, answering for
Mankind's forlornest uses, thou canst pour From thence into their ears. God's will devotes Thine to such ends, and mine to wait on thine. How, Dearest, wilt thou have me for most use? A hope, to sing by gladly? or a fine
Sad memory, with thy songs to interfuse? A shade, in which to sing of palm or pine? A grave, on which to rest from singing? Choose.
I never gave a lock of hair away
To a man, Dearest, except this to thee, Which now upon my fingers thoughtfully I ring out to the full brown length and say
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