The House of Life | Page 6

knee?--
How to their father's
children they shall be
In act and thought of one goodwill; but each

Shall for the other have, in silence speech,
And in a word complete
community?
Even so, when first I saw you, seemed it, love,
That among souls
allied to mine was yet
One nearer kindred than life hinted of.
0 born
with me somewhere that men forget,
And though in years of sight and
sound unmet, Known for my soul's birth-partner well enough!

A DAY OF LOVE
Those envied places which do know her well,
And are so scornful of
this lonely place,
Even now for once are emptied of her grace:

Nowhere but here she is: and while Love's spell
From his
predominant presence doth compel
All alien hours, an outworn
populace,
The hours of Love fill full the echoing space
With sweet
confederate music favourable.
Now many memories make solicitous
The delicate love-lines of her
mouth, till, lit
With quivering fire, the words take wing from it;
As

here between our kisses we sit thus
Speaking of things remembered,
and so sit Speechless while things forgotten call to us.

BEAUTY'S PAGEANT
What dawn-pulse at the heart of heaven, or last
Incarnate flower of
culminating day,--
What marshalled marvels on the skirts of May,

Or song full-quired, sweet June's encomiast;
What glory of change by
nature's hand amass'd
Can vie with all those moods of varying grace

Which o'er one loveliest woman's form and face
Within this hour,
within this room, have pass'd?
Love's very vesture and elect disguise
Was each fine
movement,--wonder new-begot
Of lily or swan or swan-stemmed
galiot;
Joy to his sight who now the sadlier sighs,
Parted again; and
sorrow yet for eyes Unborn that read these words and saw her not.

GENIUS IN BEAUTY
Beauty like hers is genius. Not the call
Of Homer's or of Dante's heart
sublime,--
Not Michael's hand furrowing the zones of time,--
Is
more with compassed mysteries musical;
Nay, not in Spring's or
Summer's sweet footfall
More gathered gifts exuberant Life
bequeathes*
Than doth this sovereign face, whose love-spell breathes

Even from its shadowed contour on the wall.
As many men are poets in their youth,
But for one sweet-strung soul
the wires prolong
Even through all change the indomitable song;
So
in likewise the envenomed years, whose tooth
Rends shallower grace
with ruin void of ruth,
Upon this beauty's power shall wreak no
wrong. *[sic]

SILENT NOON
Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,--
The finger-points look
through the rosy blooms:
Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams
and glooms
'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.
All round
our nest, far as the eye can pass,
Are golden kingcup-fields with

silver edge
Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
'Tis
visible silence, still as the hour-glass.
Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
Hangs like a blue
thread loosened from the sky:
So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from
above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This
close-companioned inarticulate hour When twofold silence was the
song of love.

GRACIOUS MOONLIGHT
Even as the moon grows queenlier in mid-space
When the sky
darkens, and her cloud-rapt car
Thrills with intenser radiance from
afar,--
So lambent, lady, beams thy sovereign grace
When the drear
soul desires thee. Of that face
What shall be said,--which, like a
governing star,
Gathers and garners from all things that are
Their
silent penetrative loveliness?
O'er water-daisies and wild waifs of Spring,
There where the iris
rears its gold-crowned sheaf
With flowering rush and sceptred
arrow-leaf,
So have I marked Queen Dian, in bright ring
Of cloud
above and wave below, take wing And chase night's gloom, as thou
the spirit's grief.

LOVE-SWEETNESS
Sweet dimness of her loosened hair's downfall
About thy face; her
sweet hands round thy head
In gracious fostering union garlanded,

Her tremulous smiles, her glances' sweet recall
Of love; her
murmuring sighs memorial;
Her mouth's culled sweetness by thy
kisses shed
On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led
Back to her
mouth which answers there for all:--
What sweeter than these things, except the thing
In lacking which all
these would lose their sweet:--
The confident heart's still fervour: the
swift beat
And soft subsidence of the spirit's wing,
Then when it
feels, in cloud--girt wayfaring, The breath of kindred plumes against
its feet?

HEART'S HAVEN
Sometimes she is a child within mine arms,
Cowering beneath dark
wings that love must chase,--
With still tears showering and averted
face,
Inexplicably filled with faint alarms:
And oft from mine own
spirit's hurtling harms
I crave the refuge of her deep embrace,--

Against all ills the fortified strong place
And sweet reserve of
sovereign counter-charms.
And Love, our light at night and shade at noon,
Lulls us to rest with
songs, and turns away
All shafts of shelterless tumultuous day.
Like
the moon's growth, his face gleams through his tune;
And as soft
waters warble to the moon, Our answering spirits chime one
roundelay.

LOVE'S BAUBLES
I stood where Love in brimming armfuls bore
Slight wanton flowers
and foolish toys of fruit:
And round him ladies thronged in warm
pursuit,
Fingered and lipped and proffered the strange store:
And
from one hand the petal and the core
Savoured of sleep; and cluster
and