The House of Life | Page 7

curled shoot
Seemed from another hand like shame's salute,--

Gifts that I felt my cheek was blushing for.
At last Love bade my Lady give the same:
And as I looked, the dew
was light thereon;
And as I took them, at her touch they shone
With
inmost heaven-hue of the heart of flame.
And then Love said: 'Lo!
when the hand is hers, Follies of love are love's true ministers.'

PRIDE OF YOUTH
Even as a child, of sorrow that we give
The dead, but little in his
heart can find,
Since without need of thought to his clear mind

Their turn it is to die and his to live:
Even so the winged New Love
smiles to receive
Along his eddying plumes the auroral wind,
Nor,
forward glorying, casts one look behind
Where night-rack shrouds the
Old Love fugitive.
There is a change in every hour's recall,
And the last cowslip in the

fields we see
On the same day with the first corn-poppy.
Alas for
hourly change! Alas for all
The loves that from his hand proud Youth
lets fall, Even as the beads of a told rosary!

WINGED HOURS
Each hour until we meet is as a bird
That wings from far his gradual
way along
The rustling covert of my soul,--his song
Still loudlier
trilled through leaves more deeply stirr'd:
But at the hour of meeting,
a clear word
Is every note he sings, in Love's own tongue;
Yet,
Love, thou know'st the sweet strain wrong,
Through our contending
kisses oft unheard.
What of that hour at last, when for her sake
No wing may fly to me
nor song may flow;
When, wandering round my life unleaved, I

The bloodied feathers scattered in the brake,
And think how she, far
from me, with like eyes Sees through the untuneful bough the
wingless skies?

MID - RAPTURE
Thou lovely and beloved, thou my love;
Whose kiss seems still the
first; whose summoning eyes,
Even now, as for our love-world's new
sunrise,
Shed very dawn; whose voice, attuned above
All
modulation of the deep-bowered dove,
Is like a hand laid softly on
the soul;
Whose hand is like a sweet voice to control
Those worn
tired brows it hath the keeping of:--
What word can answer to thy word,--what gaze
To thine, which now
absorbs within its sphere
My worshipping face, till I am mirrored
there
Light-circled in a heaven of deep-drawn rays?
What clasp,
what kiss mine inmost heart can prove, 0 lovely and beloved, 0 my
love?

HEART'S COMPASS
Sometimes thou seem'st not as thyself alone,
But as the meaning of
all things that are;
A breathless wonder, shadowing forth afar
Some

heavenly solstice hushed and halcyon;
Whose unstirred lips are
music's visible tone;
Whose eyes the sun-gate of the soul unbar,

Being of its furthest fires oracular;--
The evident heart of all life sown
and mown.
Even such Love is; and is not thy name Love?
Yea, by thy hand the
Love-god rends apart
All gathering clouds of Night's ambiguous art;

Flings them far down, and sets thine eyes above;
And simply, as
some gage of flower or glove, Stakes with a smile the world against
thy heart.

SOUL-LIGHT
What other woman could be loved like you,
Or how of you should
love possess his fill?
After the fulness of all rapture, still,--
As at
the end of some deep avenue
A tender glamour of day,--there comes
to view
Far in your eyes a yet more hungering thrill,--
Such fire as
Love's soul-winnowing hands distil
Even from his inmost arc of light
and dew.
And as the traveller triumphs with the sun,
Glorying in heat's
mid-height, yet startide brings
Wonder new-born, and still fresh
transport springs
From limpid lambent hours of day begun;--
Even
so, through eyes and voice, your soul doth move My soul with
changeful light of infinite love.

THE MOONSTAR
Lady, I thank thee for thy loveliness,
Because my lady is more lovely
still.
Glorying I gaze, and yield with glad goodwill
To thee thy
tribute; by whose sweet-spun dress
Of delicate life Love labours to
assess
My Lady's absolute queendom; saying, 'Lo!
How high this
beauty is, which yet doth show
But as that beauty's sovereign
votaress.'
Lady, I saw thee with her, side by side;
And as, when night's fair fires
their queen surround,
An emulous star too near the moon will ride,--

Even so thy rays within her luminous bound
Were traced no more;

and by the light so drown'd, Lady, not thou but she was glorified.

LAST FIRE
Love, through your spirit and mine what summer eve
Now glows
with glory of all things possess'd,
Since this day's sun of rapture filled
the west
And the light sweetened as the fire took leave?
Awhile
now softlier let your bosom heave,
As in Love's harbour, even that
loving breast,
All care takes refuge while we sink to rest,
And
mutual dreams the bygone bliss retrieve.
Many the days that Winter keeps in store,
Sunless throughout, or
whose brief sun-glimpses
Scarce shed the heaped snow through the
naked trees.
This day at least was Summer's paramour,

Sun-coloured to the imperishable core With sweet well-being of love
and full heart's ease.

HER GIFTS
High grace, the dower