Perpetual Light | Page 7

fear,?Joined by the closest of immortal bonds.?They shall speak truth when prayer to prayer responds,?"Death but precedes us as the shadow of Love.?Light falls about us from a surer sphere!"
LOVE IN THE DAWN
Dawn, with hallowed flame, seemed to sing your name?Through our open window as the golden glory came.?Ardor thrilled me through; Dawn again--with you!?"Up and at the world again! The world is made anew!"
Newly on my sight flashed the lovely light,?All the ringing roads of fame glittered broad and bright.?On again! with new visions to pursue;?And dawn again, dawn again, dawn again--with you!
Other dawns may keep joy as pure and deep??Dawns of greater splendor may awaken me from sleep??Nay! they never can bless a stubborn man?Like the dawn, the wonder-dawn with which this day began!
Oh, my deeds must take triumph for its sake!?Loud my heart shall sing it while the mind remains awake:?Words I never knew could so thrill me through--?Dawn again, dawn again, dawn again--with you!
"HAD I A CLAIM TO FAME?"
Had I a claim to fame??Little to honor;?Save when I spoke her name,?Gazing upon her.?Then was I crowned of men,?More than my seeming.?Youth's glorious hope again?Bannered my dreaming.
So, when our day is past;?When we lie stilly?Under the earth at last,?Clod by white lily.?Give me neither tear nor sigh;?Breath but this in passing by,?Where empearled with morning dew?The high grass above her?Waves, and above me too,--?"He was her lover!"
THE ONE
You are that belov��d thing?Which, through all my seeking?In silence or in speaking,?I would find, and finding sing!
You are that belov��d air?Which, o'er all the chiming?Of music or of rhyming,?Reconciles my long despair.
You are that belov��d sight?Which, beyond life's fairest?Or rich beauty's rarest,?Fills my heart with true delight.
You are that belov��d place?Where, past all the portals?To the pomp of mortals,?Love perceives the courts of grace,
And what splendors more,--ah, well!?Though I often fashion?Songs of praise and passion,?Now--I look--but cannot tell!
DREAM AND DEED
All day long I am fashioning crowns,?Crowns of great price for you!?What do I fashion them of??Opals and pearls of the dew,?Diamonds of old renowns,?Blazing rubies of love,?And gold from the heart of the golden sun, brought down
by a sunset djinn,--?Brighter gold, purer gold than ever gleamed under
Andvari's fin!
All day long I am tempering swords,?Swords for my thought to wield!?What is the steel I true,?And how is their splendor annealed??High dreams, to slay evil hordes,?And flaming thoughts of you?That light my dark heart from their white-hot forge--
a glory to take one's breath--?Like the dove-gray, rose-faint veils of faith you wind
round the skull of death!
But when was a sword or a crown?For praise or for honor meet,?When the truth transcends, and sees?Knighthood kneeling at your feet??In the darkness they go down!?There is better trust in these:?Set teeth, and the furious will to strive through the dust
of the world for you;?The hardly builded house of deeds each day, that must
prove me true!
A TAPER OF INCENSE
You are a bannered balcony?Of God's heraldic house,?Waving above the dinning throng of the days?Pennants of purple and oriflammes of crimson?And cloths of gold.?Your varying device is on every shining shield?Of the brilliant row that flames beneath the eaves?Of that house whose street is cobbled with silver clouds.
The days go down that street, the troops of days?Dark and bright, tramping to tread the earth.?Ever, with trumpets and tumult, rigor or laughter,?They pass saluting, to press upon the world,?Regiment after regiment unnumbered.
Your beauty is a balcony hung with banners?To wave them on. The foremost have sent your name?Echoing rearward to hearten new battalions.?Your beauty is the sunset's streaming flag,?It is the vivid standard of the dawn?Flapping over dazed dream-voyagers?That kneel on new sun-pooled, mysterious strands.?It wasted the moon to pallor, set the sun?Pulsing with burning blood--it shattered the mind?Of heaven into stars.
The beauty of your spirit has sent the winds?Eternally sighing, and sharpened the cold ache?Of the heart-broken, incessantly-sobbing sea.?It has scattered its sparks in the hearts of silken flowers And has raised the frozen fury of glaciers against the North And has permeated the South with its elusive fragrance.?Auroral over East and West it dances.
You are a crystal goblet of such wine?Set in a niche of night?That when Death quaffs you he must glow to life?Flushed with eternity.
O proud Love, so humble and human,?Yet beyond the gods to exalt--?O quiet Love, couching with the curled might and majesty?Of tawny leopards!?O tamed tiger, Love, whose golden eyes?Weep for the thrift of angels!?Thou pinnacled pain of the midnight,?Rose-strewer of daylit mire,?Transfiguration of our futile lives,?Dazzler into the secret courts of heaven--?Thou whose passion is written in all men's blood and tears?And in silver letters upon the books of God--?Make me to stand erect, and walk with danger,?And strive like a flame!?For Thou and I are struck as cymbals of God's exultation?In Life, His song!
TO PURITY
God knows that you are beautiful as Death?Chanced on in some hot, sunlit forest-clearing?Where--burst from tangled