The House of Life | Page 4

heart finds fair:--
Truth, with awed
lips; and Hope, with eyes upcast;
And Fame, whose loud wings fan
the ashen Past
To signal-fires, Oblivion's flight to scare;
And Youth,
with still some single golden hair
Unto his shoulder clinging, since
the last
Embrace wherein two sweet arms held him fast;
And Life,
still wreathing flowers for Death to wear.
Love's throne was not with these; but far above
All passionate wind
of welcome and farewell
He sat in breathless bowers they dream not
of;
Though Truth foreknow Love's heart, and Hope foretell,
And

Fame be for Love's sake desirable, And Youth be dear, and Life be
sweet to Love.

BRIDAL BIRTH
As when desire, long darkling, dawns, and first
The mother looks
upon the new-born child,
Even so my Lady stood at gaze and smiled

When her soul knew at length the Love it nursed.
Born with her
life, creature of poignant thirst
And exquisite hunger, at her heart
Love lay
Quickening in darkness, till a voice that day
Cried on him,
and the bonds of birth were burst.
Now, shielded in his wings, our faces yearn
Together, as his
fullgrown feet now range
The grove, and his warm hands our couch
prepare:
Till to his song our bodiless souls in turn
Be born his
children, when Death's nuptial change Leaves us for light the halo of
his hair.

REDEMPTION
O Thou who at Love's hour ecstatically
Unto my lips dost evermore
present
The body and blood of Love in sacrament;
Whom I have
neared and felt thy breath to be
The inmost incense of his sanctuary;

Who without speech hast owned him, and intent
Upon his will, thy
life with mine hast blent,
And murmured o'er the cup, Remember
me!--
0 what from thee the grace, for me the prize,
And what to Love the
glory,--when the whole
Of the deep stair thou tread'st to the dim shoal

And weary water of the place of sighs,
And there dost work
deliverance, as thine eyes Draw up my prisoned spirit to thy soul!

LOVESIGHT
When do I see thee most, beloved one?
When in the light the spirits
of mine eyes
Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
The worship of
that Love through thee made known?
Or when in the dusk hours, (we
two alone,)
Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies
Thy

twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies,
And my soul only sees thy
soul its own?
0 love, my love! if I no more should see
Thyself, nor on the earth the
shadow of thee,
Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,--
How then
should sound upon Life's darkening slope
The ground-whirl of the
perished leaves of Hope, The wind of Death's imperishable wing?

HEART'S HOPE
By what word's power, the key of paths untrod,
Shall I the difficult
deeps of Love explore,
Till parted waves of Song yield up the shore

Even as that sea which Israel crossed dry-shod?
For lo! in some
poor rhythmic period,
Lady, I fain would tell how evermore
Thy
soul I know not from thy body, nor
Thee from myself, neither our
love from God.
Yea, in God's name, and Love's, and thine, would I
Draw from one
loving heart such evidence
As to all hearts all things shall signify;

Tender as dawn's first hill-fire, and intense
As instantaneous
penetrating sense, In Spring's birth-hour, of other Springs gone by.

THE KISS
What smouldering senses in death's sick delay
Or seizure of malign
vicissitude
Can rob this body of honour, or denude
This soul of
wedding-raiment worn to-day?
For lo! even now my lady's lips did
play
With these my lips such consonant interlude
As laurelled
Orpheus longed for when he wooed
The half-drawn hungering face
with that last lay.
I was a child beneath her touch,--a man
When breast to breast we
clung, even I and she,--
A spirit when her spirit looked through me,--

A god when all our life-breath met to fan
Our life-blood, till love's
emulous ardours ran,
Fire within fire, desire in deity.* *[sic]

NUPTIAL SLEEP
At length their long kiss severed, with sweet smart:
And as the last

slow sudden drops are shed
From sparkling eaves when all the storm
has fled,
So singly flagged the pulses of each heart.
Their bosoms
sundered, with the opening start
Of married flowers to either side
outspread
From the knit stem; yet still their mouths, burnt red,

Fawned on each other where they lay apart.
Sleep sank them lower than the tide of dreams,
And their dreams
watched them sink, and slid away.
Slowly their souls swam up again,
through gleams
Of watered light and dull drowned waifs of day;

Till from some wonder of new woods and streams He woke, and
wondered more: for there she lay.

SUPREME SURRENDER
0 all the spirits of love that wander by
Along the love-sown
fallowfield of sleep
My lady lies apparent; and the deep
Calls to the
deep; and no man sees but I.
The bliss so long afar, at length so nigh,

Rests there attained. Methinks proud Love must weep
When Fate's
control doth from his harvest reap
The sacred hour for which the
years did sigh.
First touched, the hand now warm around my neck
Taught memory
long to mock desire: and lo!
Across my