Poems of Passion | Page 7

of impending woe and loss.
Again I saw you drifting
from my life,
As barques are rudely parted in a stream;
Again my
heart was torn with awful strife:
A dream--a dream!
Again the deep night settled on me there,
Alone I groped, and heard
strange waters roll,
Lost in that blackness of supreme despair
That
comes but once to any living soul.
Alone, afraid, I called your name
aloud--
Mine eyes, unveiled, beheld white stars agleam,
And lo!
awake, I cried, "Thank God, thank God!
A dream--a dream!"
[Illustration:]
DELILAH.
In the midnight of darkness and terror,
When I would grope nearer to
God,
With my back to a record of error
And the highway of sin I
have trod,
There come to me shapes I would banish--
The shapes of
the deeds I have done;
And I pray and I plead till they vanish--
All
vanish and leave me, save one.
That one with a smile like the splendor
Of the sun in the middle-day
skies--
That one with a spell that is tender--
That one with a dream
in her eyes--
Cometh close, in her rare Southern beauty,
Her
languor, her indolent grace;
And my soul turns its back on its duty,

To live in the light of her face.
She touches my cheek, and I quiver--
I tremble with exquisite pains;

She sighs--like an overcharged river
My blood rushes on through
my veins',
She smiles--and in mad-tiger fashion,
As a she-tiger
fondles her own,
I clasp her with fierceness and passion,
And kiss

her with shudder and groan.
Once more, in our love's sweet beginning,
I put away God and the
World;
Once more, in the joys of our sinning,
Are the hopes of
eternity hurled.
There is nothing my soul lacks or misses
As I clasp
the dream shape to my breast;
In the passion and pain of her kisses

Life blooms to its richest and best.
O ghost of dead sin unrelenting,
Go back to the dust and the sod!

Too dear and too sweet for repenting,
Ye stand between me and my
God.
If I, by the Throne, should behold you,
Smiling up with those
eyes loved so well,
Close, close in my arms I would fold you,
And
drop with you down to sweet Hell!
[Illustration: DELILAH]
LOVE SONG.
Once in the world's first prime,
When nothing lived or stirred--

Nothing but new-born Time,
Nor was there even a bird--
The
Silence spoke to a Star;
But I do not dare repeat
What it said to its
love afar,
It was too sweet, too sweet.
But there, in the fair world's youth,
Ere sorrow had drawn breath,

When nothing was known but Truth,
Nor was there even death,
The
Star to Silence was wed,
And the Sun was priest that day,
And they
made their bridal-bed
High in the Milky Way.
For the great white star had heard
Her silent lover's speech;
It
needed no passionate word
To pledge them each to each.
Oh, lady
fair and far,
Hear, oh, hear and apply!
Thou, the beautiful Star--

The voiceless Silence, I.
[Illustration:]
TIME AND LOVE.

Time flies. The swift hours hurry by
And speed us on to untried ways;

New seasons ripen, perish, die,
And yet love stays.
The old, old
love--like sweet, at first,
At last like bitter wine--
I know not if it
blest or curst
Thy life and mine.
Time flies. In vain our prayers, our tears!
We cannot tempt him to
delays;
Down to the past he bears the years,
And yet love stays.

Through changing task and varying dream
We hear the same refrain,

As one can hear a plaintive theme
Run through each strain.
Time flies. He steals our pulsing youth;
He robs us of our care-free
days;
He takes away our trust and truth:
And yet love stays.
O
Time! take love! When love is vain,
When all its best joys die--

When only its regrets remain--
Let love, too, fly.
[Illustration: TIME AND LOVE]
CHANGE.
Changed? Yes, I will confess it--I have changed.
I do not love in the
old fond way.
I am your friend still--time has not estranged
One
kindly feeling of that vanished day.
But the bright glamour which made life a dream,
The rapture of that
time, its sweet content,
Like visions of a sleeper's brain they seem--

And yet I cannot tell you how they went.
Why do you gaze with such accusing eyes
Upon me, dear? Is it so
very strange
That hearts, like all things underneath God's skies

Should sometimes feel the influence of change?
The birds, the flowers, the foliage of the trees,
The stars which seem
so fixed and so sublime,
Vast continents and the eternal seas--
All
these do change with ever-changing time.
The face our mirror shows us year on year
Is not the same; our

dearest aim or need,
Our lightest thought or feeling, hope or fear,

All, all the law of alteration heed.
How can we ask the human heart to stay
Content with fancies of
Youth's earliest hours?
The year outgrows the violets of May,

Although, maybe, there are no fairer flowers.
And life may hold no sweeter love than this,
Which lies so cold, so
voiceless, and so dumb.
And shall I miss it, dear? Why, yes, we miss

The violets always--till the roses come!
DESOLATION.
I think that the bitterest sorrow or pain
Of love unrequited, or cold
death's