XI
ETAIN
My love is dying, dying in my heart;
There is no song in heaven for such as I
Who watch the days and years of youth depart,
The bloom decay and die;
The rose that withers in the hollow cheek,
The leaden rings that mark us old and wise;
And Time that writes what Pity dares not speak
Around the fading eyes.
He dreams he loves; but only loves his dream;
And in his dream he never can forget
Abana seems a so much mightier stream
And Pharpar wider yet;
The little deeds of love that light the shrine
Of common daily duties with such gleams
Of heaven, to me are scarcely less divine
Than those poor wandering dreams
Of deeds that never happen! I give him this,
This heart he cannot find in heaven above;
This heart, this heart of all the eternities,
This life of mine, this love;
Love that is lord of all the world at once
And never bade the encircled spirit roam
To the circle's bound, beyond the moons and suns,
But makes each heart its home, And every home the heart of Space and Time,
And each and all a heaven if love could reign;
One infinite untranscended heaven sublime
With God's own joy and pain.
Why, that was what God meant, to set us here
In Eden, when he saw that all was good;
And we have made the sun black with despair,
And turned the moon to blood.
So has Love taught me that too learnèd tongue,
And in his poorer wisdom made me wise;
I grew so proud of the red drops we wrung
From all philosophies.