FOR what strange purpose hath God sent this longing
Unto my soul, for thy most precious love,
To raise it suddenly to realms above,
And then deliver it to one belonging
More to the realm of Satan’s world, destroying
The fair ideal that all my life I strove
To realize? Oh, cause me to remove
This spell that is no happiness employing!
Yet who that falleth in love’s meshes knoweth
Why he hath fallen, or from whence he fell,
Or who in truth can understand love’s reason,
Save that some joy and pain it often soweth;
The most of which we cannot always tell,
When they at first appear in love’s sweet season.
L
HOW little comfort is there in the thought,
Kind friends so often give love’s bleeding heart:
That love’s sharp pain grows less whene’er we part,
And leave behind the prize so dearly bought!
Yet who doth learn this lesson he hath taught,
So that when love shall send its subtle dart
Within his soul, he may the same impart
Unto himself, and leave what he hath sought?
I know but few, among them not myself,
Who practise this sad cure for love’s disease,
That do not bear some wound, in after years,
More painful than love’s wounding pain itself;
Or that do find elsewhere, what doth appease
The hunger in their souls, or dry their tears.
LI
FOR each long league that bears me far from thee
Doth seem to take life’s blood from out my veins,
As every yearning hour that passeth drains
The spring of my affection, that might be
O’erflowing with love’s precious remedy.
Ah me! This is a grievous fate that stains
Love’s half-possessed ambition, and remains
To overshadow all that rests of me!
Loved one, I find not, as the world I roam,
A spirit half so comforting as thine,
Ev’n in thy moments of most wilful charm,
None that would half so fittingly my home
Grace with its presence, or from whose eyes shine
A sweeter light, while giving love’s alarm.
LII
WHEN last I saw thee, thou wert uppermost
In every thought that stirred my inner being,
In every act thy presence I was seeing.
And now thou comest to me like a ghost,
While I receive thee as some phantom host;
For every time I touch thee thou art fleeing
Far from the tempest of my heart; agreeing
With some sad fate that happiness hath lost.
Now, though I strive to sever from my heart
Those elements divine that make thy love
For me the object of my life’s desire,
There cometh that, which doth from Heaven depart,
To lift me once again to Heaven above,
And thus forbid that I should quench love’s fire.
LIII
O MIGHTY Prophet, who dost signify
To little man the vanity of life,
The folly of its temporary strife,
Give to the only one who doth deny
My love some passing sense, to gratify
The constant longing that is ever rife
Within my soul, and sever with a knife
This fatal cord, my love is fettered by.
With some such prayer to thee would I appeal,
In impotence, to strike ’gainst nature’s law,
That causeth love unhonored still to live.
Before thy throne now humbly do I kneel,
As at the feet of her whom I adore,
And pray that love to me thou still mayst give.