The House of Life | Page 8

of queens; and therewithal
Some wood-born
wonder's sweet simplicity;
A glance like water brimming with the sky

Or hyacinth-light where forest-shadows fall;
Such thrilling pallor
of cheek as doth enthral
The heart; a mouth whose passionate forms
imply
All music and all silence held thereby;
Deep golden locks,
her sovereign coronal;
A round reared neck, meet column of Love's
shrine
To cling to when the heart takes sanctuary;
Hands which for
ever at Love's bidding be,
And soft-stirred feet still answering to his
sign:--
These are her gifts, as tongue may tell them o'er. Breathe low
her name, my soul; for that means more.

EQUAL TROTH
Not by one measure mayst thou mete our love;
For how should I be
loved as I love thee?--
I, graceless, joyless, lacking absolutely
All
gifts that with thy queenship best behove;--
Thou, throned in every
heart's elect alcove,
And crowned with garlands culled from every
tree,
Which for no head but thine, by Love's decree,
All beauties

and all mysteries interwove.
But here thine eyes and lips yield soft rebuke:--
'Then only,' (say'st
thou), 'could I love thee less,
When thou couldst doubt my love's
equality.'
Peace, sweet! If not to sum but worth we look,
Thy heart's
transcendence, not my heart's excess, Then more a thousandfold thou
lov'st than I.

VENUS VICTRIX
Could Juno's self more sovereign presence wear
Than thou, 'mid
other ladies throned in grace?--
Or Pallas, when thou bend'st with
soul-stilled face
O'er poet's page gold-shadowed in thy hair?
Dost
thou than Venus seem less heavenly fair
When o'er the sea of love's
tumultuous trance
Hovers thy smile, and mingles with thy glance

That sweet voice like the last wave murmuring there?
Before such triune loveliness divine
Awestruck I ask, which goddess
here most claims
The prize that, howsoe'er adjudged, is thine?
Then
Love breathes low the sweetest of thy names;
And Venus Victrix to
my heart doth bring Herself, the Helen of her guerdoning.

THE DARK GLASS
Not I myself know all my love for thee:
How should I reach so far,
who cannot weigh
To-morrow's dower by gage of yesterday?
Shall
birth and death, and all dark names that be
As doors and windows
bared to some loud sea,
Lash deaf mine ears and blind my face with
spray;
And shall my sense pierce love,--the last relay
And ultimate
outpost of eternity?
Lo! what am I to Love, the lord of all?
One murmuring shell he
gathers from the sand,--
One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand.

Yet through thine eyes he grants me clearest call
And veriest touch
of powers primordial That any hour-girt life may understand.

THE LAMP'S SHRINE
Sometimes I fain would find in thee some fault,
That I might love

thee still in spite of it:
Yet how should our Lord Love curtail one whit

Thy perfect praise whom most he would exalt?
Alas! he can but
make my heart's low vault
Even in men's sight unworthier, being lit

By thee, who thereby show'st more exquisite
Like fiery chrysoprase
in deep basalt.
Yet will I nowise shrink; but at Love's shrine
Myself within the
beams his brow doth dart
Will set the flashing jewel of thy heart
In
that dull chamber where it deigns to shine:
For lo! in honour of thine
excellencies My heart takes pride to show how poor it is.

LIFE - IN - LOVE
Not in thy body is thy life at all
But in this lady's lips and hands and
eyes;
Through these she yields the life that vivifies
What else were
sorrow's servant and death's thrall.
Look on thyself without her, and
recall
The waste remembrance and forlorn surmise
That lived but in
a dead-drawn breath of sighs
O'er vanished hours and hours eventual.
Even so much life hath the poor tress of hair
Which, stored apart, is
all love hath to show
For heart-beats and for fire-heats long ago;

Even so much life endures unknown, even where,
'Mid change the
changeless night environeth, Lies all that golden hair undimmed in
death.

THE LOVE- MOON
'When that dead face, bowered in the furthest years,
Which once was
all the life years held for thee,
Can now scarce bide the tides of
memory
Cast on thy soul a little spray of tears,--
How canst thou
gaze into these eyes of hers
Whom now thy heart delights in, and not
see
Within each orb Love's philtred euphrasy
Make them of buried
troth remembrancers?'
'Nay, pitiful Love, nay, loving Pity! Well
Thou knowest that in these
twain I have confess'd
Two very voices of thy summoning bell.
Nay,
Master, shall not Death make manifest
In these the culminant changes
which approve The love-moon that must light my soul to Love?'

THE MORROW'S MESSAGE
'Thou Ghost,' I said, 'and is thy name To-day?--
Yesterday's son, with
such an abject brow!--
And can To-morrow be more pale than thou?'

While yet I spoke, the silence answered: 'Yea,
Henceforth our issue
is all grieved and grey,
And each beforehand makes such poor avow

As of old leaves beneath the budding bough
Or night-drift that the
sundawn shreds away.'
Then cried I: 'Mother of many malisons,
0 Earth, receive me to thy
dusty bed!'
But therewithal the tremulous silence said:
'Lo! Love
yet bids thy lady greet thee once:--
Yea,