DEAR heart! why dost thou shun my own desire
To be with thee each hour of every day,
Each day in every year, and with thee play
The game of love thy beauty would inspire?
I cannot now extinguish the sweet fire
That burns within my soul. To thee I say,
I am in an imperishable way
Thy faithful friend, whose love shall never tire.
Dost thou then fear committal to be mine,
Even for a space, lest scandal touch thy name?
No thought is further from my wish towards thee.
To make our sweet companionship, in time,
Ripen to all that life may bring to fame,
Is my intention for thyself and me.
XXXV
WHAT fault within me dost thou cultivate?
What still reject, though I assure my heart
That I am all thine own, and not in part
The man thou dost possess and captivate?
Still, while I thank the gods, I would berate
The irony of nature that doth start
In me the wound that Cupid’s fiery dart
Hath caused to flow, and mourn it, now too late.
Why must the mistress of emotion give
To one a portion of divine desire,
And to another an unending flow
Of love’s untempered thought, that cannot live,
Save in some reservoir, that must inspire
The whole of thy fair being love to know?
XXXVI
LOVED one, though thou shouldst spurn me as a thing
Unworthy of affection or regard,
Think not alone that vanity may guard
Thy spirit from the friend that thou wouldst fling
So heedlessly aside. For life may bring
Its own swift sorrow, sad, or cold, or hard;
Then mayst thou think, perchance, of that young bard,
Who came to thee, his song of love to sing!
And when thy heart repine thee, if it doth,
Take from my own the sorrow thou hast given,
Like to a travesty of happiness,
Devoured in its fulness by a moth,
That eats the leaf from off the tree of Heaven,
And leaves the soul of man in loneliness!
XXXVII
DIDST have, for me, one fleeting hour of love?
Then conjure to thyself that thought again;
Nor from its own sweet constancy refrain,
Till earth and air, and everything above
This hemisphere of human hearts, doth have
No longer any substance in its train.
Toward this ideal I willingly would strain
Each nerve, my soul from endless grief to save.
Sweet, honeyed flower, whose breath, to me divine,
Makes earth at once seem Heaven, that Heaven thyself;
Bring me the fragrance of thy scented being,
More full of fair sensation than sweet wine,
That doth entice new torments to myself;
And give to me what I, half blind, am seeing.
XXXVIII
AH me! Sad fate doth overcome my soul,
As the old year now passeth from my sight,
And many a hope lies dying with its flight,
To hear the death-knell of the hours toll.
Even as the sounds upon the night airs roll,
Death giveth place to birth, and Love’s delight
Is born, in some young heart, that soon may plight
Its simple troth, and reach the promised goal.
I would that, with this old year, there might die
In me all sorrow, or desire to have
That which I may not soon possess as mine,
Or that this hour new-born might still defy
My own well-founded fear, that thy true love
Should never once through life upon me shine!