A NOCTURNE OF SPIRITUAL LOVE
SLEEP, sleep, imperious heart! Sleep, fair and undefiled!
Sleep, and be free!
Come in your dreams at last, comrade and queen and child,—
At last to me.
Come, for the honeysuckle calls you out of the night.
Come, for the air
Calls with a tyrannous remembrance of delight,
Passion and prayer.
Sleep, sovereign heart! And now—for dream and memory
Endure no door,—
My spirit undenied goes where my feet, to thee,
Have gone before.
A moonbeam or a breath, above thine eyes I bow,
Silent, unseen,
But not, ah not unknown! Thy spirit knows me now
Where I have been.
Surely my long desire upon thy soul hath power.
Surely for this
Thy sleep shall breathe thee forth, soul of the lily flower,
Under my kiss.
Sleep, body wonderful! Wake, spirit wise and wild,
White and divine!
Here is our heaven of dreams, O dear and undefiled,
All thine, all mine.