Thus, if thou wilt prove me, dear,
Woman's love no fable,
I will love thee - half-a-year –
As a man is able.
She has laughed as softly as if she sighed! She has counted six and over,
Of a purse well filled, and a heart well tried
Oh, each a worthy lover!
They "give her time;" for her soul must slip
Where the world has set the grooving:
She will lie to none with her fair red lip-
But love seeks truer loving.
She trembles her fan in a sweetness dumb,
As her thoughts were beyond recalling;
With a glance for one, and a glance for some,
From her eyelids rising and falling.
Speaks common words with a blushful air;
Hears bold words, unreproving:
But her silence says what she never will
And love seeks better loving.
Go, lady!, lean to the night-guitar,
And drop a smile on the bringer;
Then smile as sweetly, when he is far,
At the voice of an in-door singer!
Bask tenderly beneath tender eyes;
Glance lightly, on their removing:
And join new vows to old perjuries —
But dare not call it loving!
Unless you can think, when the song is done,
No other is soft in the rhythm;
Unless you can feel, when left by One,
That all men else go with him;
Unless you can know, when unpraised by his breath,
That your beauty itself wants proving,
Unless you can swear-"For life, for death!".
Oh, fear to call it loving!
I thought once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;
And a voice said in mastery while I strove,
"Guess now who holds thee?"-"Death!" I
said. But there,
The silver answer rang: "Not Death, but Love."
The face of all the world is changed, I think.
Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul
Move still, oh, still, beside me; as they stole
Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink
Of obvious death, where I who thought to sink
Was caught up into love and taught the whole
Of life in a new rhythm. The cup of dole
God gave for baptism, I am fain to drink,
And praise its sweetness, sweet, with thee anear.
The name of country, heaven, are changed away
For where thou art or shalt be, there or here; 11
And this this lute and song loved yesterday,
(The singing angels know) are only dear. Because thy name moves right in what they say.
My poet, thou canst touch on all the notes
God set between His After and Before,
And strike up and strike off the general roar
Of the rushing worlds a melody that floats
In a serene air purely. Antidotes
Of medicated music, answering for
Mankind's forlornest uses, thou canst pour
From thence into their ears. God's will devotes
Thine to such ends and mine to wait on thine!
How, Dearest, wilt thou have me for most use?
A hope, to sing by gladly?— or a fine
Sad memory, with thy songs to interfuse?
A shade, in which to sing of palm or pine?
A grave on which to rest from singing? - Choose.
When our two souls stand up erect and strong,
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,
Until the lengthening wings break into fire
At either curvèd point,
What bitter wrong
Can the earth do to us, that we should not long
Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher,
The angels would press on us, and aspire
To drop some golden orb of perfect song
Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay
Rather on earth, Beloved, — where the unfit,
Contrarious moods of men recoil away
And isolate pure spirits, and permit
A place to stand and love in for a day,
With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.
Beloved, my Beloved, when I think
That thou wast in the world a year ago,
What time I sate alone here in the snow
And saw no footprint, heard the silence sink
No moment at thy voice, but link by link
Went counting all my chains as if that so
They never could fall off at any blow
Struck by thy possible hand, — why, thus I drink
Of life's great cup of wonder. Wonderful,
Never to feel thee thrill the day or night
With personal act or speech, - nor ever cull
Some prescience of thee with the blossoms white
Thou sawest growing! Atheists are as dull,
Who cannot guess God's presence out of sight.
Say over again and yet once over again
That thou dost love me. Though the word repeated
Should seem "a cuckoo-song," as thou dost treat it, Remember never to the hill or plain,
Valley and wood, without her cuckoo-strain, Comes the fresh Spring in all her green completed!
Beloved, I, amid the darkness greeted
By a doubtful spirit-voice, in that doubt's pain
My letters all dead paper, mute and white!
And yet they seem alive and quivering
Against my tremulous hands which loose the
And let them drop down on my knee to-night.
This said, he wished to have me in his sight
Once, as a friend; this fixed a day in spring
To come and touch my hand—a simple thing,
Yet I wept for it! - this the paper's light -
Said, "Dear, I love thee"; and I sank and quailed
As if God's future thundered on my past:
This said, "I am thine" and so its ink has paled
With lying at my heart that beat too fast:
And this O Love, thy words have ill availed,
If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and Ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise;
We looked into the pit prepared to take her:
Was no room for any work in the close clay! From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her
Crying, 'Get up, little Alice! it is day.' If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower, With your ear down, little Alice never cries; Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her,
For a smile has time for growing in her eyes: And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in The shroud by the kirk-chime. 50
It is good when it happens," say the children, "That we die before our time."
They look up with their pale and sunken faces, And their look is dread to see, 150 For they mind you of their angels in high places, With eyes turned on Deity.
"How long," they say, "how long, O cruel nation, Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart,
Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,
And tread onward to your throne amid the
mart?
Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper,
And your purple shows your path!
But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper
Than the strong man in his wrath."
A CURSE FOR A NATION
PROLOGUE
I heard an angel speak last night
And he said, "Write!
Write a nation's curse for me,
And send it over the Western Sea."
I faltered, taking up the word: "Not so, my lord!
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