In an attitude of prayer
O how fair!
All the body crouched, constrained
As if pained
With the spirit’s inward groan
To entreat
For a sin you could not own,
O how sweet!
Hands God making must have praised;
Clasped and raised
Holy mediæval way
Used to pray;
Sky all wrapped about your head
Blue and sweet,
Earth all golden from the tread
Of your feet.
God, who of all this world of ours
Gathers flowers,
Gathered you in the old sublime
Flower time:
If God had left some flowers like you—
Who can tell?—
He might have had yet one or two
Flowers that fell.
O then there were great sins of course;
Men were worse
Some ways no doubt; at any rate
Men were great:
We cannot bear their mail, much less
Lose or win
Their heavens, through their great holiness
Or great sin.
There were high things for men to see,
Do, or be;
Fair struggles after every throne:
And to atone
Fair crowns and kingdoms for the best;
All men strove,
And, loss or gain, for each man’s rest
There was love.
And men and women bore their part
Heart to heart,
For oh! the women and the men
Loved then;
And love from love you could not break,
Half to save;
If one sinned, for the other’s sake
God forgave.
Would thou wert yet, thou great and old
Time of gold!
Wert thou with me, or could I flee
Back to thee,
God might have had one other flower
Nigh to fall,
And I known love at least one hour
—Once for all.
O who shall have the barren years?
Who the tears?
One with false bosom and cold kiss
May have this:
But somewhere, unless love forget
His old way,
There shall be something better yet
—Ay, some day.
LOST BLISSES.
THINK, O Heart, what sweet—had you waited
A moment, on such a day—
Had yet been to do or to say
That shall never be said now or done!