STRANGE law, whose reason man doth not possess,
That underlieth every age and clime,
That every human bosom must sometime
Its presence and its influence confess!
Whether in youth’s own gay and careless dress,
Or when old age doth feel the weight of Time,
Or art describe, or poet paint with rhyme,
Or warrior bold, or maiden in distress:
This law of love its course must e’er pursue,
And join two spirits in eternal bliss;
Or each torment, with unresponsive thought,
One loving, one love wishing to undo.
Oh! may I not find love with thee like this,
But still obtain what I so long have sought!
LXXXV
FROM Thee, Eternal Power, came my life,
And by Thee was love born within my soul.
Since I have felt Time and the hours toll,
And have experienced my heart at strife,
And felt it severed oft, as with a knife,
I must with one good thought myself console.
For since I may not consummate the whole,
Nor reach the fulness of love when ’tis ripe;
Then ne’ertheless have I account to give
When, unfulfilled in happiness, my days
In number cease and I on high must go,
To render unto Thee the life I live.
So be it then, that in these passing lays
I prove not faithless to the things I know.
LXXXVI
MY hope had been, that I might find in thee
The soul’s ideal, as my love’s recompense,
That Heaven her fairest flowers might dispense,
In prodigal profusion unto me.
But with Reality’s cold eyes I see
How different doth fate, in truth, compense
The disappointment of love’s blighted sense;
And turn to rhymes the hope that cannot be.
Oh, if thou shouldst outlive my broken heart,
And in compassion see thy lover dead,
And once behold on earth his crumbling bones,
Thou wouldst find in these living lines a part
Of what thou hast flung from thee, and must read
Love’s epitaph upon the moss-grown stones.
LXXXVII
GOD, through his offspring Nature, gave me love,
Though man in opposition saith me nay,
And taketh from my heart its life to-day,
As through the valley of the world I rove.
Still unaccompanied, within the grove
That doth enamored beings hold at play,
My spirit must pursue its lonely way,
And strive to pluck some flowers that bloom above.
Oh, wherefore then doth Nature give desire
To have that which mankind may not possess,
And force him to endure on earth hell’s fire,
And live in one perpetual distress?
Some evil power must such love inspire,
And with it masquerade in Cupid’s dress!
LXXXVIII
WITH some, the law of love doth work at ease:
To some it doth seem oft to make amends.
To some the power of giving birth it sends;
To others the dull pain of a disease.
And yet how few this passion seems to please.
At first its force to extasy it lends,
Then deep into the depth of grief descends,
And on the beauty of the soul doth seize.
Yet, on the whole love is a mad possession,
Taking from men the peacefulness of life,
Bewild’ring warfare, with the heart’s obsession,
That turneth Heaven into ceaseless strife,
Now seeking love’s increase, now its repression,
Until the maid be merged into the wife.